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why the journey to the stars starts with us

Once in a while, popular science publications will do a story about how one day, humans might just leave the world where their species began for the stars and colonize space in huge generation ships....

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when we’re not allowed to fix our problems

Recently, an economic think tank funded by a well known billionaire with liberal leanings and demonized by a cadre of Fox News pundits as the manifestation of either the Illuminati or the Politburo,...

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making people buy their right to vote

Over the years, some archconservatives voiced the opinion that people who don’t pay enough taxes or are not property owners probably shouldn’t vote because they have no skin in the game and are more...

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the rise and fall of the mythical corporation

Over the last month, I wrote a few examples of how corporations acting in their own self-interest can create a whole lot of problems for society at large when politicians basically allow them to buy...

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transforming politics one spaceflight at a time?

Here’s an old idea. Take the world’s politicians and launch them into space, literally. But as tempting as it will be to simply leave them there, the point of this exercise would be for them to see...

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why scientists won’t be elected in the u.s.

Not too long ago, there was an interesting blog post over at NYT asking why Americans don’t elect nearly as many scientists as most other advanced countries, preferring lawyers and businesspeople....

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why so many said that apollo wasn’t worth it

According to popular legend, Henry Ford once quipped that if he asked his customers what they wanted, they would’ve asked for a faster horse. Nowadays, when companies are all about trying to appear...

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why saving on space exploration is a mistake

In case you haven’t read anything about the U.S. national debt lately, it’s now more than $15.5 trillion. Surely, a rather large chorus of Americans says, we can’t afford to explore space or invest in...

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to sate appetites for war, bring back the draft?

One rather popular theory among foreign relations pundits about American attitudes towards war is that we’re ready and willing to fight because more than 99% of us don’t have any skin in the game....

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the return of the rising red moon scare?

History is not only written by the winners, as the old expression goes, it’s also written to emphasize the good, to brag about accomplishments, and to gloss over the bumps along the way. For example,...

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a terrible reason to oppose life extension

In the transhumanist lexicon, the word bioconservative is used to describe those who argue that humans will need to accept death as an eternal inevitability and experiments meant to extend human life...

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when technocrats think they’re better than you

If yours truly is supposedly a wet blanket when it comes to the long awaited and near imminent technocratic utopia of the post-Singularity world, Evgeny Morozov is a torrent from a firehose as he...

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what’s holding back modern science and technology

In the interest of full disclosure and not to pull a Lehrer on you, you should know that today’s posts was originally a comment I left on Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy blog prompted by a discussion about...

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why you can’t tax your way to a greener world

Regardless of what the numerous global warming deniers have been spouting in the comments here (they tend to go for the comments as soon as they spot the keywords at which to rage), I’ve always said...

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the peter principle stacks the deck against science

According to the famous Peter Principle, everyone eventually rises to a level of incompetence in an organization and nowhere does it seem to be more true than in Congress. As pointed out by many...

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the opening shots in the battle of the hackers

Nowadays, if you hack into a company’s servers, the company might hack you right back. No, it won’t wipe your hard drive or infect you with a virus of course. The goal is to figure out who you are and...

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why cyberwarfare won’t have a battle of thermopylae

While reporting about cyberwarfare and information security has been getting better and better as of late, there are still some articles that posit baffling ideas about how to prevent a massive cyber...

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nasa doesn’t care about other planets

Or at least that’s how Kanye West would’ve characterized the reaction of planetary scientists to NASA’s announcement that its next big mission in 2020 would be to send an updated Curiosity twin to...

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the flawed case for benevolent authoritarianism

New America Foundation’s fellow Charles Kenny recently outlined his case for Big Brother for a group of casual policy wonks and argues that because a lot of biometric and surveillance data could be...

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in defense of (some) technocracy

Generally, political pundits are quick to ridicule technocrats and wonks for assuming that they’ll solve all the world’s problems with spreadsheets and computers, sounding so very dispassionate as...

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