The 107-country Outer Space Treaty signed in 1967 prohibits nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons from being placed in or used from Earth’s orbit.
What they didn’t count on was the US Air Force’s most simple weapon ever: a tungsten rod that could hit a city with the explosive power of an intercontinental ballistic missile.
During the Vietnam War, the US used what it called “Lazy Dog” bombs. These were simply solid-steel pieces, less than 2 inches long, fitted with fins.
Jack Beard, a professor in the University of Nebraska College of Law’s Space, Cyber and Telecommunications Law Program, told Politico that the Woomera Manual on the International Law of Military Space Operations “will become the definitive document on military and security law as it applies to space.”
The Woomera Manual won’t actually lay out any new guidelines. Instead it will organize and present the laws that are already on the books so that politicians, industry leaders, and others can make better informed decisions regarding activity in space.
Given the fact that the Outer Space Treaty, which banned military actions in outer space, has all but been tossed aside, it’s unclear how much they’ll actually listen.
There is a noble frontier in the making that is growing internationally at speeds yet to be comprehended. And this frontier goes by the name “Transhumanism,” which is the pursuit to overcome aging and all biological limitations via advanced science and technology. What started as nothing more than a fringe concept among futurist circles has now become a global movement consisting of philosophers, political activists, scientists, and technologists.
But when it comes to Transhumanism here in the United States, there was one particular event in mind that helped introduce this movement into the national dialogue. That event is now famously known as the “Immortality Bus tour,” for which was led by then-presidential candidate Zoltan Istvan, representing the U.S. Transhumanist Party.
In this documentary, then-presidential candidate Zoltan Istvan travels across the country, spreading the word of Transhumanism—for the overcoming of aging using advanced science and technology!
I’m excited to share my new article from Quartz on how science will make it safer and easier for a 50-year-old woman to have a child in 2028 than a 25-year-old woman today. #IVG and #DelayedFertilityAdvantage are game changers.
Women’s biological clocks drive human conception—and, in turn, human history.
Biology’s inflexible window of female fertility is generally agreed to be between the ages 18 and 35. Any older, and the risk of miscarrying, not getting pregnant at all, or bearing unhealthy children skyrockets. When the average lifespan for a woman in the Western world now hovers at around 80 years old, this means that less than 25% of her life can be spent easily (and safely) procreating.
Men have the luxury of being able sow their seed for most of their lives with few health ramifications (which is why someone like 72-year-old US president Donald Trump has a 12-year-old child). By comparison, the average woman will only ovulate 300 to 400 eggs in her lifetime, which means she only has the same amount of menstrual cycles to ever pursue procreation.
This seemingly unfair accident of human biology is all about to change, thanks to transhumanist science. Genetic editing combined with stem-cell technology will likely make it safer for a 50-year-old woman to have a baby in 2028 than for a 25-year-old woman in 2018. In two decades’ time, healthy 75-year-old women could be starting new families once more.
By giving $1,000 per month to a family.
Presidential candidate Andrew Yang, a 43-year-old entrepreneur-turned-politician, is focusing his campaign on helping Americans who are losing jobs to automation.
Yang wants all Americans to benefit from a universal basic income, which would provide regular cash payments to people regardless of their employment status. Although he is a long-shot candidate, the Democrat said he believes so strongly in the need for a basic income that he is dedicated to running.
Following recent trends in state-of-the-art developments, from cryptocurrencies and universal basic income to biohacking and the surveillance state, transhumanism has been moved into the limelight of political discourse to reshape humanity’s future.
Andrew Vladimirov, Information security specialist, biohacker and one of the original members of the Transhumanist Party UK, spoke in-depth with Sputnik about the rise of transhumanism and its implications.
This is a fun new story to read, and highlights some interesting philosophical differences, especially as McAfee and I look at 2020 campaign possibilities: https://logosclubblog.com/2018/11/06/istvan-contra-mcafee/ #transhumanism
During 2016 presidential race, the majority of the US public were spellbound by the unlikely rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders and their various competing visions for the United States of America. Considerably less institutionally-heeled but far more imaginative and, some argued, outlandish, candidates, dead-ringer for the Dos Equis Man John David McAfee of The Cyber Party and Zoltan Istvan Gyurko of The Transhumanist Party. McAfee, a successful tech entrepreneur who worked with NASA between 1968 and 1970, was the more well-known of the two politicians, principally through the popularity (or infamy, depending on who one asked) of McAfee Antivirus Software. McAfee (the person, not the software) has also received a good deal of airtime and media attention for a scandal which saw him accused of murder and fleeing from the corrupt, Sinaloa-controlled Belize after the errant businessman found out about a government-sponsored plot to kill him.
Zoltan Istvan, a former NatGeo journalist and the founder of the US Transhumanist Party, though less well known than McAfee, garnered significant attention due to both his extraordinary statements concerning technological advancement and a 2015 four month campaign, wherein he drove around the country in a brown, coffin-shaped bus (dubbed ‘The Immortality Bus’) to bring awareness to his goal of working to end death itself through radical life-extension procedures. The Immortality Bus tour ended December 14, 2015, with Mr. Istvan delivering the Transhumanist Bill of Rights to the US Capitol Building in Washington, DC. The Verge dubbed him, a “modern-day Ken Kesey” referencing the beat generation countercultural figure, well known for his novel, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. The comparison was not entirely inaccurate as Istvan was also a novelist, having penned the highly contentious sci-fi novel, The Transhumanist Wager, in 2013.
Ha…which would be the bigger challenge? 🤔.
The growing mistrust and hostility towards global intuitions must be overcome if the world is to successfully tackle the environmental challenges it faces, the head of the University of Sussex’s global sustainability research centre has warned.
Professor Joseph Alcamo, Director of the Sussex Sustainability Research Programme (SSRP), said high-quality research and closer engagement with citizens around the world was needed to overcome the growing zeitgeist that viewed organisations such as the UN as meddling amid a geopolitical backdrop of cancelled treaties, neglected obligations and frozen negotiations.
Delivering his keynote speech at the 2018 Utrecht Conference on Earth System Governance this morning, Prof Alcamo said: To many people earth system governance is not beautiful, it is worrisome, it means loss of control over their lives, and this mistrust is a big part of the national retrenchment going on.
Countries should quickly agree a treaty banning the use of so-called killer robots “before it is too late”, activists said Monday as talks on the issue resumed at the UN.
They say time is running out before weapons are deployed that use lethal force without a human making the final kill-order and have criticised the UN body hosting the talks—the Convention of Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW)—for moving too slowly.
“Killer robots are no longer the stuff of science fiction,” Rasha Abdul Rahim, Amnesty International’s advisor on artificial intelligence and human rights, said in a statement.