Some talk has been made of selling what are uncommon terrestrial minerals like gold and platinum, refined on orbit and deorbited at great expense as a business plan, but frankly that's absurd.

Are you crazy? Are you aware that this isSlashdot? That is pure unmitigated heresy around here! We don't want facts or lucid, rational arguments! We wan t space opera full of hot female astronauts!

Lies! It's clean, I tell you, it's clean! Get it through your thick stone cranium: Nuclear power is the cleanest of them all!

Sheesh...

You mean Bull Schitzer?

You mean there's already a linux desktop and they forgot to have a year of the linux desktop? What a bunch of party-poopers!

Naturally, you get modded down. These people are suckers for aerospace industry lobbyists.

So we will spend a reasonable amount of money to send a robot out someplace to fetch an asteroid and put it into lunar orbit so that some bozos can go check it out in person at much greater expense? Why not have the robot do everything for a lot less money? Could it be (just speculating here) that the $100M project is a distraction from the manned project that will, as usual, channel huge amounts of money for yet another pointless human presence?

Aerospace pork will never end. Their lobbying is just too strong, and hordes of fanboys still believe a human has to be out there or it isn't exciting enough.

This could lead to increased transparency for the program and stricter requirements for drone strikes.

1. We're supposed to believe that the agency chartered for secret activities will give up its secret drone program and not continue subsequent drone attacks in secret.
2. DoD, home of DIA, will for some reason not keep the formerly secret CIA drone program secret within the DIA. They will be transparent about it.
3. It came out in The Daily Beast, so it must be true. These highly secretive organizations are now being open, honest, and accoutable to the general public.

Every morning between the time you get up and the time you go to work do 25 sit-ups, 20 pushups, and 25 standing toe-touchings. If you can do that much yet, work up to it over a period of months. Every weekend, go on at least one 5 mile walk, preferably two. If 5 miles is too much, work up to it gradually. If you don't move yourself to do it, nobody will. Think about migrating to a plant based diet, at least a few days a week. Don't look at it as a belief system, philosophy, religion, doctrine, spiritual path, etc. It's just food. Go plant-based a few days a week and figure out what foods you like or don't like and take it from there. Again, you have to drive it.

we've found silicon based flora in our own deep oceans

Citation needed. There are no silicon-based life forms known to man.

They don't have an emission spectrum that can be analyzed?

What if they rinse it off a bit beforehand?

The EU should first hold a public contest with a large monetary reward to develop an algorithm that can reliably and objectively distinguish between porn and not-porn. Good luck, though.

Not to mention the beautiful expressiveness and readability of things like:

(and (or (= (string-length "hello world") (string->number "11"))
(string=? "hello world" "good morning"))
(>= (+ (string-length "hello world") 60) 80))

Especially for the average 9th grader.

"Is it time to stop spending billions on obsolete aircraft?"

You just don't get it, do you? The point isn't the weapons system, it's the expenditure.

The "sequestration" cuts are $85B out of $3.6T, or ~2.4 %. This has motivated politicians from both parties, and loud-mouthed political actors of all stripes, to make wild claims about terrible consequences if the cuts were to be made. The implicit claim is that cutting 2.4% across the board would result in an "unready, hollow force", 9% unemployment, and all sorts of other horrific things (which I'm sure you've heard of by now).

Is it even true? From cutting a measly 2.4% of future spending? Or is it yet another shock doctrine exercise to distract us from other things we should be paying attention to instead? There's a book, BTW.

• How did we get de-industrialized over the past 40 years? Was there an upside for someone, and if so, who?
• Why does petroleum cost over $100/bbl when there is no shortage, demand has been decreasing since 2008, and it costs a small fraction of that to produce?
• Who supports "Al Qaeda"? (Hint)
• Why is wealth distribution becoming more and more polarized?
• Do wealthy companies, individuals, and organizations control the world's governments through (surprisingly affordable) "lobbying"?
• What will you retire on?
• How will climate change affect you over your lifetime?
• Where will your potable water come from 20 years from now?
• Why do we continue to eat such a massively unhealthy diet? What fraction of "out of control" medical care costs are directly attributable to that?
• Will your job or a job like it still exist in 2025? What will you be doing then?
• Why did we invade Iraq? Why are we still in Afghanistan? Why are we rattling our sabers at Iran if our "allies" in the middle east are by far the greatest financiers of terrorism?

etc.