The downside.
I’m currently month-to-month on my three-year-old two-year Verizon contract with a Droid Global 2. I think that if I upgrade, I’ll just buy it outright, but right now, I don’t see anything on the new phones that I can’t live without. Of course, I only use my phone when I’m traveling, or out of the house, so since I usually work at home, it’s no biggie.
Huge amounts of freshwater reserves have been found, under the ocean:
Water scarcity has been a favorite topic for the Chicken Littles of the world. Just 18 years ago the vice president of the World Bank was ominously warning that “the wars of the next century will be fought over water.” It’s easy to drum up fears of “water wars” some undetermined time in the future, but studies like this one, and discoveries of new water sources like this one in Kenya, or this one under the Sahara, suggest that these fears that have gripped Malthusians — and that Malthusians have in turn used to push through otherwise unworkable policy recommendations — are a lot less serious.
One less excuse for socialism.
Six reasons you should get one, if you don’t have one.
Some of them are surprisingly low cost
The Juno probe provided the best view ever of the earth-moon system.
Since the 1960s – and following the Nuremberg trials – it has been standard practice for researchers to follow certain ethical standards in the treatment of human subjects. These rules include the requirement to submit research proposals to an ethics committee for prior approval, clearly explain clearly the risks of any procedures to potential research subjects, before obtaining their informed consent. Since Mars One now admits to planning research on the colonists themselves, the mission becomes bound to these same standards.
Mars One may not meet these conditions. As far as we know, no ethics committee has considered the Mars One plan or the risks it poses to the colonists. These risks will need to be communicated clearly before volunteers are recruited to take part in the mission.
I’ve previously expressed my own concerns, but I don’t agree that having it done by government space agencies instead is the solution, or that a disaster will inhibit human migration into space.
Jon Goff has another post up on utilizing the upper atmosphere of Venus.
The book
Note the implicit but not necessarily valid assumption — that in order to do space activities, you have to launch from your own soil. For instance, I’d bet that Kodiak would be happy to lease some real estate to them for high-inclination launches.
Lileks has a righteous rant on the subject. Buck-sucking fail boxes indeed.