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Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Elon Musk Wants to Build 80,000-Person Mars Colony
(from wired.com)
Elon Musk doesn’t just want to send a person to Mars — he wants to send 80,000. According to Space.com, the billionaire founder and CEO of the private spaceflight company SpaceX spilled details about his hopes for a future Mars colony during a talk at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London on Nov. 16.
Earlier this year, SpaceX became the first private U.S. company to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. Musk has never been shy about his ambitions to take human colonists to another planet, mentioning in the past that he wants to provide flights to Mars for about $500,000 a person. But now he’s talking about building a small-city-sized settlement on the Red Planet, starting with a 10-person crew in the coming decades to begin establishing and building infrastructure.
That first flight would be expensive and risky but “once there are regular Mars flights, you can get the cost down to half a million dollars for someone to move to Mars,” Musk told Space.com. ”Then I think there are enough people who would buy that to have it be a reasonable business case.” Musk added that he sees the future 80,000-person colony as a public-private enterprise costing roughly $36 billion.
Read more here: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/11/elon-musk-mars-colony/
Monday, November 26, 2012
Will Cuba's lifting of exit visas mark a new migration surge to Miami?
Last October Cuba announced that on January 14, 2013 they will lift the exit visa requirement. Cubans will be able to depart for vacations, or forever, with only a passport and a visa from the country where they plan to go. Along with the wet foot dry foot policy in the U.S. which states that if a Cuban touches dry American land, they get a chance to remain in the United States, and later would qualify for expedited "legal permanent resident" status and, eventually, U.S. citizenship.Will there be a rush of Cubans coming to South Florida to take advantage of this loophole or will the U.S. government rush to close this loophole?
Cubans tend to be staunch anti-communists and the first generation votes republican, a large migration could potentially change the political landscape in Florida, once again giving republicans the edge.
Miami is already a city with both a very wealthy population and a very poor immigrant population, the education levels, literacy and poverty rates put parts of Miami on the same level as the third world. While the immigrants may have education, it is likely that English reading and writing was not part of that education.
The Mariel boat lift was a mass emigration of Cubans who departed from Cuba's Mariel Harbor for the United States between April 15 and October 31, 1980. Fidel Castro pulled a fast one on Jimmy Carter by releasing all his criminal and mentally ill population along with some political types and Cuban spies. Some 125,000 Cubans immigrated to the U.S. and half stayed in Miami, which dramatically changed Miami.
Oldest examples of hunting weapon uncovered in South Africa
More than 200 stone points found at a site called Kathu Pan 1 display modifications and damage consistent with having been attached to spear handles and hurled at animal prey such as springbok, say Jayne Wilkins, an anthropologist at the University of Toronto, and her colleagues.
“These were close-range weapons, either thrusting spears or spears thrown from fairly short distances,” Wilkins says.
A description of the South African spear points appears in the Nov. 16 Science.
Wilkins’ team determined an approximate age for the Kathu Pan 1 discoveries using a soil analysis method that estimates the time since artifacts were buried.
If the half-million-year-old age for the spear tips holds up, “the conclusion that Neandertals and Homo sapiens shared whatever mental abilities undergird hafted stone-tool technology seems reasonable,” remarks archaeologist John Shea of Stony Brook University in New York.
The two sets of finds “document a two-step process of projectile weapon evolution that ultimately allowed modern humans to conquer the planet,” says archaeologist Curtis Marean of Arizona State University in Tempe. Marean directs Pinnacle Point excavations.
He suggests that a common ancestor of humans and Neandertals began heaving stone-tipped spears at animals by a half-million years ago, but it wasn’t until much later that Stone Age people figured out how to make devices such as spear throwers that hurl weapons farther, harder and more accurately.
Fractures on the business ends of the Kathu Pan 1 stone points and intentional shaping of some of their bases indicate that these implements were spear tips. Wilkins’ team made replicas of the stone artifacts and attached them to the ends of wooden dowels using Acacia resin and animal sinews. Experimenters fired these makeshift spears into two springbok carcasses using a calibrated crossbow that simulated the force used by an adult spear thrower.
After repeated impacts, damage to the replicas looked much like that on Kathu Pan 1 stone points, Wilkins says.
(from ScienceNews)
Florida man dies from eating roaches
(from the AP - Official member of the corrupt media)
MIAMI, Florida (AP) - An autopsy has concluded that a Florida man choked to death after downing dozens of live roaches during a contest earlier this year.
The report released Monday says 32-year-old Edward Archbold of West Palm Beach died as a result of "asphyxia due to choking and aspiration of gastric contents."
Lab tests for drugs came back negative. The death has been ruled an accident.
Archbold died after downing the bugs as well as worms in October for the contest at Ben Siegel Reptile Store in Deerfield Beach, about 40 miles north of Miami. The grand prize was a python.
Archbold became ill shortly after and collapsed in front of the store. He was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Authorities said none of the other contestants became ill.
MIAMI, Florida (AP) - An autopsy has concluded that a Florida man choked to death after downing dozens of live roaches during a contest earlier this year.
The report released Monday says 32-year-old Edward Archbold of West Palm Beach died as a result of "asphyxia due to choking and aspiration of gastric contents."
Lab tests for drugs came back negative. The death has been ruled an accident.
Archbold died after downing the bugs as well as worms in October for the contest at Ben Siegel Reptile Store in Deerfield Beach, about 40 miles north of Miami. The grand prize was a python.
Archbold became ill shortly after and collapsed in front of the store. He was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Authorities said none of the other contestants became ill.
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