Menu

Blog

Archive for the ‘government’ category: Page 157

May 8, 2018

I-Team

Posted by in categories: government, military, space

Space entrepreneur Robert Bigelow’s interest in exotic subjects was as obvious as his company logo. He’d spent years — and millions of dollars — on his own scientific study of UFOs and related topics. For the DIA contract, he created BAASS, a seperate entity housed within his aerospace plant. He hired a team of 46 scientists and investigators, along with dozens of other support personnel.


LAS VEGAS — UFO investigators are hoping to obtain a treasure trove of Pentagon documents that were generated by a once-secret military study of flying saucers and other weird aircraft.

The government confirms there was a UFO program. It supposedly ended in 2012, but the Pentagon has not yet released any reports or files.

Continue reading “I-Team” »

May 5, 2018

This Facebook Co-Founder Wants to Tax the Rich

Posted by in categories: economics, government

Hughes, 34, now devotes his time to evangelizing for higher taxes on the rich, such as himself. He’s proposing that the government give a guaranteed income of $500 a month to every working American earning less than $50,000 a year, at a total cost of $290 billion a year. This is a staggering number, but Hughes points out that it equals half the U.S. defense budget and would combat the inequality that he argues is destabilizing the nation.


Chris Hughes thinks $290 billion a year is a small price to pay for equality.

Read more

May 2, 2018

A Spectre is Haunting California State Government — the Spectre of Transhumanism

Posted by in categories: government, transhumanism

A new in depth article on transhumanism by Jean-Paul Teitu II:


But his mission didn’t end there. Zoltan Istvan will once again push the Transhumanist agenda under the Libertarian Party for the state of California.

The clock of your life is ticking. As your body ages, you get closer and closer to reach the dead end. But your vote can make a difference and slow down the speed of your time.

Continue reading “A Spectre is Haunting California State Government — the Spectre of Transhumanism” »

May 2, 2018

Elon Musk: Automation Will Force Governments to Introduce Universal Basic Income

Posted by in categories: economics, Elon Musk, government, robotics/AI

Recently, Elon Musk had the chance to share his thoughts on universal basic income (UBI) at the World Government Summit in Dubai. At the Summit, Musk had the opportunity to talk about the future, and the challenges the world will face in the next hundred years – including artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and the job displacement expected to come with it.

When asked about the challenges civilization is set to face in the near future, Musk began by noting the threat of artificial intelligences that surpass humanity.

Continue reading “Elon Musk: Automation Will Force Governments to Introduce Universal Basic Income” »

May 1, 2018

Swarm may have to answer for launching satellites without US permission

Posted by in categories: finance, government, satellites

What happens if you launch satellites into space without government permission, but with government funding?

We may find out soon, according to the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates satellite operations by US citizens and companies. It has completed an inquiry into the January launch of four small satellites built by a start-up called Swarm Technologies, and has referred the case to its enforcement bureau, according to a spokesperson.

The FCC, which does not comment on potential enforcement actions, can propose financial penalties and ban companies and individuals from operating satellites. Swarm’s CEO, Sara Spangelo, did not respond to a request for comment.

Continue reading “Swarm may have to answer for launching satellites without US permission” »

Apr 29, 2018

Felix Klein and the Klein-Bottle

Posted by in categories: government, mathematics

On April 25, 1849, German mathematician and mathematics educator Felix Klein was born. Klein is known for his work in group theory, complex analysis, non-Euclidean geometry, and on the connections between geometry and group theory. His 1872 Erlangen Program, classifying geometries by their underlying symmetry groups, was a hugely influential synthesis of much of the mathematics of the day. Klein also devised the Klein-bottle, a one-sided surface which, if traveled upon, could be followed back to the point of origin while flipping the traveler upside down.

A mathematician named Klein Thought the Möbius band was divine. Said he: “If you glue The edges of two, You’ll get a weird bottle like mine.” ( Leo Moser )

Felix Klein’s father was an old Prussian Protestant from Ennepetal in southern Westphalia. He was district administrator of the government’s main fund in Düsseldorf, while Klein’s mother came from industrial circles in Aachen. In the autumn of 1865 Felix Klein began studying mathematics and natural sciences at the University of Bonn. Klein studied in Bonn with Rudolf Lipschitz and Julius Plücker, whose assistant he became. After Plucker’s death Alfred Clebsch took over the publication of his unfinished work and transferred this work to the talented Klein received his doctorate in 1868 from Plücker with a topic from geometry applied to mechanics. In 1869 he went to Berlin University and listened to a lecture by Leopold Kronecker on square forms.[5] He took part in the mathematical seminars of Ernst Eduard Kummer and Karl Weierstrass, where he also met Sophus Lie, with whom he went to Paris for a study visit in 1870 and was a friend.

Read more

Apr 29, 2018

Poor countries can increase food production

Posted by in categories: food, government

Poor countries tend to have out one-tenth of the crop yield per hectare compared to the yield from rich countries. Farmers in rich countries are more productive than those in poor countries because they use better technology and infrastructure, and are subject to better government policies.

If all the world’s farmers extracted the maximum potential output from their fields, the gap in yields between rich and poor countries would vanish almost entirely.

So what would it take for the developing world to catch up?

Continue reading “Poor countries can increase food production” »

Apr 27, 2018

Is Finland Ending Universal Basic Income? No, Not Exactly

Posted by in categories: economics, government

Reports began surfacing in the media earlier this week that Finland was scrapping its much-discussed basic income experiment. The country began paying 2,000 unemployed Finns a basic income of €560 ($678) a month in January of 2017.

Articles this week ran headlines implying that Finland had decided to halt the experiment, implying that it had become unpopular.” The eagerness of the government is evaporating. They rejected extra funding [for it],” said Olli Kangas, the leader of the research team at Kela (Social Insurance Institution of Finland), told the BBC.

In actual fact, Finland is continuing its basic income plan until the end of 2018, as it had initially planned. Yes, it’s true that it won’t be extended past that date — but there hasn’t been any official word from the Finnish government that the experiment has been a failure. If anything, the government appears to be intent on studying the effects of the two-year program but believe they can only do so after it’s finished.

Read more

Apr 23, 2018

America Just Can’t Match China’s Exploding Supercomputing Power

Posted by in categories: energy, government, supercomputing

1. blame the American public that lost serious interest in science in the 1990’s, And 2. the US government who’s only real interest now is war, and how to spend money on war.


If you want to crunch the world’s biggest problems, head east. According to a newly published ranking, not only is China home to the world’s two fastest supercomputers, it also has 202 of the world’s fastest 500 such devices—more than any other nation. Meanwhile, America’s fastest device limps into fifth place in the charts, and the nation occupies just 144 of the top 500 slots, making it second according to that metric.

The world’s fastest supercomputer is still TaihuLight, housed at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, China, and pictured above. Capable of performing 93 quadrillion calculations per second, it’s almost three times faster than the second-place Tianhe-2. The Department of Energy’s fifth-placed Titan supercomputer, housed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, performs 17.6 quadrillion calculations per second—making it less than a fifth as fast as TaihuLight.

Continue reading “America Just Can’t Match China’s Exploding Supercomputing Power” »

Apr 20, 2018

Model suggests well-designed subsidies can help farmers and give consumers better food choices

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, government, sustainability

When it comes to pegging the blame for the obesity crisis, farm subsidies are a popular target. Subsidies, the argument goes, encourage farmers to grow less-healthy foods—corn, turned into corn syrup, is the common culprit here—and fewer unsubsidized fruits and vegetables.

Not everyone agrees. Experts caution that cheap corn isn’t the only cause of poor nutrition and that other factors, like technology, are responsible for the low cost of . Still, it’s reasonable to ask: How can subsidies be used to make healthier food options more available?

One answer: by making sure that subsidies take into account consumer welfare as well as farmers’ incomes, suggest UCLA Anderson’s Prashant Chintapalli, a Ph.D student, and Christopher S. Tang. In a working paper examining a type of subsidy called “minimum support ,” or MSPs, the authors suggest that backing a diverse mix of crops—including fruits and vegetables—would give consumers a wider selection and be most effective at raising farmer profits at a lower cost to the government.

Continue reading “Model suggests well-designed subsidies can help farmers and give consumers better food choices” »