Lifeboat Foundation

RS: The third world war is at our gate, and it will be about water, if we don’t do something about this crisis. These walks are to raise awareness—this year we covered 17 countries, and in nine of them there were displaced people. So many people in the Middle East and African countries are moving to places like Europe, in part because of water scarcity—after forced migration comes, tension, conflict, and terrorism. Where terrorism is active, there is usually a scarcity of water. Look at Syria—a long time ago, it had very good agriculture, but then Turkey built a dam that changed things. It’s a similar story with Libya. If we want a safe future, we need to start conserving water.

What role can regulation play in conservation? Do you think privatizing water is a good way to promote its efficient use?

RS: If we really think about legal changes, we have to first think about river rights, or the rights of nature, and only then about water rights for humans. This type of thinking doesn’t exist today but we need this kind of legal framework that assures that the land of the river is only for the river, that the flow of the river is kept clean, and that the river has greenery on both banks to prevent erosion and silting. Only with all these factors can we ensure that rivers are healthy and only then that we are healthy.

Featured image source: NASA / spacex

Axiom Space Inc. is a Houston, Texas start-up, founded by Michael Suffredini who served as NASA’s International Space Station (ISS) Program Manager from 2005 to 2015. He was responsible for overseeing ISS transition from assembly to the initiation of commercial operations. Axiom is mostly staffed by NASA ex-employees, including former NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. – “The leadership team also includes world-class, specialized expertise in commercial utilization of microgravity, on-orbit operations, astronaut training, space financing, engineering, space system architecture/design/development, space medicine, marketing, and law,” the company states. Together, they are all working towards the commercialization of space.

Axiom aims to build a space station in low Earth orbit to continue operations once NASA retires the ISS program and moves beyond the orbiting laboratory to focus operations on the lunar surface. The company also offers spaceflights for regular civilians to experience microgravity and amazing views of Earth from ISS. “While making access to Low Earth Orbit global during the remainder of ISS’ lifetime, Axiom is constructing the future platform that will serve as humanity’s permanently growing home, scientific and industrial complex in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) – the cornerstone of human activity in space,” company states on its website.

13.8000000000 years ago, a speck of energy burst into life. We call it the big bang space and time pushed out in all directions ever since our universe has expanded. But the way it’s expanding makes finding an edge a major challenge. Universe is expanding and expands, according to a very simple law that the farther way the galaxy is from us. the faster it appears to be receding away from us. The furthest galaxies are moving at very high speeds. the most distant galaxy we’ve ever spotted. GNC Eleven seems to have moved 32000000000 light years away from us in just 13.4000000000 years that’s faster than the speed of light. We can measure the speed with which galaxies are moving away from us and many galaxies are moving away from us at speeds faster than the speed of light. This sounds like it’s breaking the law right. There’s this idea that you’ve all been told that Relativity says nothing goes faster than the speed of light. Okay you’ve been lied to. Space itself can do it once it makes the rules it can break the rules that rule applies to matter not the space itself. space can expand at whatever it wants simple way to think of this expansion law is imagine standing on an infinite rubber sheet that stretches all the way out into the distance and you’re standing on the same place. you can mark it with a little X now all the sheet expands in every direction so it expands. Two another galaxy that will say one foot away from you is now two feet away from you as we stretch the sheet, but another galaxy was ten feet away from you expand that by a factor of two and now it’s twenty feet away from you. So in the same amount of time, one galaxy move one foot where another galaxy moved ten feet. so the more stuff there is the more elastic between you and another galaxy the more it seems to expand away from you. Expansion means our observable universe stretches for a colossal 46000000000 light years in all directions 92000000000 light years across. Getting bigger by the second. This number is so incomprehensible large that it’s difficult to wrap your brain around. there are trillions of galaxies within this volume. It’s staggering. It’s so much larger than anything we’re familiar with.

Are you ready?

“if you were the type of geek, growing up, who enjoyed taking apart mechanical things and putting them back together again, who had your own corner of the garage or the basement filled with electronics and parts of electronics that you endlessly reconfigured, who learned to solder before you could ride a bike, your dream job would be at the Intelligent Systems Center of the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. Housed in an indistinct, cream-colored building in a part of Maryland where you can still keep a horse in your back yard, the ISC so elevates geekdom that the first thing you see past the receptionist’s desk is a paradise for the kind of person who isn’t just thrilled by gadgets, but who is compelled to understand how they work.”

Continue reading “The brain-computer interface is coming, and we are so not ready for it” »

After an internal investigation, the US Department of Defense (DoD) announced that is standing by its decision to award the $10 billion JEDI cloud computing contract to Microsoft and not Amazon. The probe was triggered after Amazon complained that the integrity of the bidding process was cast into doubt because of statements by President Trump.

The Pentagon affirmed its initial decision awarding the contract to Microsoft, but acknowledged that the legal battle isn’t over. In a press release, it said it “determined that Microsoft’s proposal continues to represent the best value to the government” but added that the contract “will not begin immediately.” That’s because of a temporary injunction issued over an Amazon lawsuit arguing that the contract had “clear deficiencies, errors and unmistakable bias.”

The bags of cannabis were dropped by the “green drone” Telegram group, which advocates for the legalization of cannabis in Israel, with “free love” being the group’s slogan.

Before dropping the cannabis over Tel Aviv, the group published a message on Telegram, hinting at the planned operation.

“It’s time my dear brothers. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s the green drone, handing out free cannabis from the sky… Enjoy my beloved brothers, this is your pilot brother, making sure we all get some free love,” the message read.

The House will vote on legislation next month to remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act and erase some marijuana criminal records.

The bill would not legalize the drug, which would be left up to states, but the vote will still be a historic step in the effort to reduce legal penalties related to the drug. House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said in an email to members that the vote will take place during the September work period.

BREAKING: The U.S. House will vote on a bill to remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act.

Given all the changes Vladimir Putin is making in these days in the Russian constitutional order, ones that legalize the presidentialist dictatorship he has already created, many may have failed to notice that a law he signed restoring a key feature of the GULAG, the use of convicts as slave laborers, went into effect on January 1.

And while some may be inclined to dismiss this as nothing more than the nearly universal practice of using prisoners to produce things like license plates and road signs as in the United States, it is already taking shape as something worse and more ominous with Russian businessmen calling for setting up forced labor camps in parts of the country.

The law discussed, passed and signed by Putin last year calls for creating two kinds of labor camps: entire colonies where inmates will be put to work either for the state or for businesses on a contract basis and special “correction centers” attached to business sites.

From most people’s perspectives, space law is a fairly niche field. Even more niche are particular sub-fields of space law, such as space human rights law. Despite being so niche, though, one can argue that space human rights law is extremely important. It defines how humans treat each other as they expand into new off-planet environments. It thus fundamentally shapes how humanity engages with space. To learn more about the intersection of human rights and space exploration, we spoke to Jonathan Lim, a solicitor at the law firm WiseLaw. He is also the founder of Jus Ad Astra, a project at WiseLaw that develops legal principles pertaining to space exploration.

What role do human rights play in space exploration?

Human rights are inalienable and universal values that recognize the inherent value of each person. They are based upon the common values of dignity, equality, and respect shared across all cultures, religions, and philosophies. The intersection between human rights and outer space can be viewed through two perspectives.