Daily Archives: May 28, 2017

Thought for the week: Ascension Day – Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard

Posted: May 28, 2017 at 7:57 am

Thought for the week: Ascension Day

ON MAY 25, Christians celebrate the fact that Jesus, having risen from the dead, ascended back to his father in heaven.

As I write, Forest Green Rovers Football Club of Nailsworth celebrated their ascension to the Football League by beating Tranmere Rovers at Wembley! What an achievement! Their success brings pride and hope to their supporters.

Jesus ascension brings hope to us all. How come? One of the ultimate realities of life is that we all have to face our own death. For some it may come as a welcome end to a long time of suffering, but it inevitably means separation, pain and loss affecting everyone concerned.

Jesus ascension completes the work of the resurrection by ensuring that there is a man in heaven today who knows what it is to live on this earth and assures us that we have a champion in heaven who understands us and represents our interests. Were that true for us as we face a general election, I for one would be a lot more hopeful about engaging in the political process!

So well done Forest Green Rovers for your ascension, but thank God for your ascension Jesus, it truly inspires me that you are there for me and you really do understand!

REV DAVID AUSTIN Thameshead Benefice, Kemble

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Ascension Parish set to adopt new subdivision standards – Weekly Citizen

Posted: at 7:57 am

At the urging of Ascension Parish President Kenny Matassa, the Department of Planning and Development has crafted a set of standards that will apply to all subdivision development and construction.

Ascension Parish has never before had our own set of specifications, said Matassa. This will standardize and plainly lay out the requirements for all to see and understand.

Matassa said that a team consisting of Planning personnel and the Parishs engineering review agent CSRS collaborated to write the standards. The team reviewed the standards in use in other parishes and state agencies and solicited input from developers and engineers, while also considering the Parishs needs and concerns.

The standards will provide comprehensive standards for drainage, roads, and utilities, as well as all other regulations as required by ordinance.

After a public hearing and debate, the subdivision standards were approved by the Planning Commission at their May meeting. It will be considered for adoption by the full Council at the June 1 meeting.

These standards will provide a comprehensive path forward for development in Ascension Parish, added Matassa.

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Today’s Kids Could Live Through Machine Superintelligence, Martian Colonies, and a Nuclear Attack – Motherboard

Posted: at 7:56 am

It has become a cliche to declare that the future is full of both "great promise and great peril." Nonetheless, this aphorism expresses an important fact about the Janus-faced nature of our increasingly powerful technologies. If humanity realizes the best possible future, we could quite possibly usher in an era of unprecedented human flourishing, happiness, and value. But if the great experiment of civilization fails, our species could meet the same fate as the dinosaurs.

I find it helpful to think about what a child born today could plausibly expect to witness in her or his lifetime. Since the rate of technological change appears to be unfolding according to Ray Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns, this imaginative activity can actually yield some fascinating insights about our evolving human condition, which may soon become a posthuman condition as "person-engineering technologies" turn us into increasingly artificial cyborgs.

In a billion years or so, the sun will sterilize the planet as it turns into a red giant, eventually swallowing our planet whole inaccording to one study7.59 billion years. If we want to survive beyond this point, we will need to find a new planetary spaceship to call home. But even more immediately, evolutionary biology tells us that the more geographically spread out a species is, the greater its probability of survival. Elon Musk claims that "there is a strong humanitarian argument for making life multi-planetaryin order to safeguard the existence of humanity in the event that something catastrophic were to happen." Similarly, Stephen Hawkingwho recently booked a trip to space on Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic spaceshipbelieves that humanity has about 100 years to colonize space or face extinction.

There are good reasons to believe that this will happen in the coming decades. Musk has stated that SpaceX will build a city on the fourth rock from the sun "in our lifetimes." And NASA has announced that it "is developing the capabilities needed to send humans to an asteroid by 2025 and Mars in the 2030s." NASA is even planning to "send a robotic mission to capture and redirect an asteroid to orbit the moon. Astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft will explore the asteroid in the 2020s, returning to Earth with samples."

According to a PEW study, the global population will reach approximately 9.3 billion by 2050. To put this in perspective, there were only 6 billion people alive in 2000, and roughly 200 million living when Jesus was (supposedly) born. This explosion has led to numerous Malthusian predictions of a civilizational collapse. Fortunately, the Green Revolution obviated such a disaster in the mid-twentieth century, although it also introduced new and significant environmental externalities that humanity has yet to overcome.

It appears that "in the next 50 years we will need to produce as much food as has been consumed over our entire human history," to quote Megan Clark, who heads Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. She said this "means in the working life of my children, more grain than ever produced since the Egyptians, more fish than eaten to date, more milk than from all the cows that have ever been milked on every frosty morning humankind has ever known." Although technology has enabled the world to effectively double its food output between 1960 and 2000, we face unprecedented challenges such as climate change and the Anthropocene extinction.

Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku has claimed that human civilization could transition to a Type 1 civilization on the Kardashev scale within the next 100 years. A Type 1 civilization can harness virtually all of the energy available to its planet (including all the electromagnetic radiation sent from its sun), perhaps even controlling the weather, earthquakes, and volcanoes. The Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom tacitly equates a Type 1 civilization with the posthuman condition of "technological maturity," which he describes as "the attainment of capabilities affording a level of economic productivity and control over nature close to the maximum that could feasibly be achieved."

"The danger period is now because we still have the savagery."

Right now, human civilization would qualify as a Type 0, although emerging "world-engineering technologies" could change this in the coming decades, as they enable our species to manipulate and rearrange the physical world in increasingly significant ways. But Kaku worries that the transition from a Type 0 to a Type 1 civilization carries immense risks to our survival. As he puts it, " the danger period is now because we still have the savagery. We still have all the passions. We have all the sectarian fundamentalist ideas circulating around. But we also have nuclear weapons. We have chemical, biological weapons capable of wiping out life on Earth." In other words, as I have written, archaic beliefs about how the world ought to be are on a collision course with neoteric technologies that could turn the entire planet into one huge graveyard.

This is a primary goal of many transhumanists, who see aging as an ongoing horror show that kills some 55.3 million people each year. It is, transhumanists say, "deathist" to argue that halting senescence through technological interventions is wrong: dying from old age should be no more involuntary than dying from childhood leukemia.

The topic of anti-aging technology gained a great deal of attention the past few decades due to the work of Aubrey deGray, who cofounded the Peter Thiel-funded Methuselah Foundation. According to the Harvard geneticist George Church, scientists could effectively reverse aging withinwait for it the next decade or so. This means actually making older people young again, not just stabilizing the healthy physiological state of people in their mid-20s. As Church puts it, the ultimate goal isn't "about stalling or curing, it's about reversing." One possible way of achieving this end involves the new breakthrough gene-editing technology called CRISPR/Cas9, as Oliver Medvedik discusses in a 2016 TED talk.

According to a 2012 article in Nature, we could be approaching a sudden, irreversible, catastrophic collapse of the global ecosystem that unfolds on timescales of a decade or so. It would usher in a new biospheric normal that could make the continued existence impossible. In fact, studies confirm that our industrial society has initiated only the sixth mass extinction event in the last 3.8 billion years, and other reports find that the global population of wild vertebrates has declined between 1970 and 2012 by a staggering 58 percent. Among the causes of this global disaster in slow motion is industrial pollution, ecosystem fragmentation, habitat destruction, overexploitation, overpopulation, and of course climate change.

Deforestation. Image: Dikshajhingan/Wikimedia

Yet another major study claims that there are nine "planetary boundaries" that demarcate a "safe operating space for humanity." As the authors of this influential paper write, "anthropogenic pressures on the Earth System have reached a scale where abrupt global environmental change can no longer be excluded...Transgressing one or more planetary boundaries may be deleterious or even catastrophic" to our systems. Unfortunately, humanity has already crossed three of these do-not-cross boundaries, namely climate change, the rate of biodiversity loss (i.e., the sixth mass extinction), and the global nitrogen cycle. As Frederic Jameson has famously said, "it has become easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism".

The only time nuclear weapons were used in conflict occurred at the end of World War II, when the US dropped two atomic bombs on the unsuspecting folks of the Japanese archipelago. But there are strong reasons for believing that another bomb will be used in the coming years, decades, or century. First, consider that the US appears to have entered into a "new Cold War" with Russia, as the Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev puts it. Second, North Korea continues to both develop its nuclear capabilities and threaten to use nuclear weapons against its perceived enemies. Third, when Donald Trump was elected the US president, the venerable Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock minute-hand forward by 30 seconds in part because of "disturbing comments about the use and proliferation of nuclear weapons" made by Donald Trump.

And fourth, terrorists are more eager than ever to acquire and detonate a nuclear weapon somewhere in the Western world. In a recent issue of their propaganda magazine, the Islamic State fantasized about acquiring a nuclear weapon from Pakistan and exploding it in a major urban center of North America. According to the Stanford cryptologist and founder of NuclearRisk.org, Martin Hellman, the probability of a nuclear bomb going off is roughly 1 percent every year from the present, meaning that "in 10 years the likelihood is almost 10 percent, and in 50 years 40 percent if there is no substantial change." As the leading public intellectual Lawrence Krauss told me in a previous interview for Motherboard, unless humanity destroys every last nuclear weapon on the planet, the use of a nuclear weapon is more or less inevitable.

Homo sapiens are currently the most intelligent species on the planet, where "intelligence" is defined as the mental capacity to attain suitable ends to achieve one's means. But this could change if scientists successfully create a machine-based general intelligence that exceeds human-level intelligence. As scholars for decades have observed, this would be the most significant event in human history, since it would entail that our collective fate would then depend more on the superintelligence than our own, just as the fate of the mountain gorilla now depends more on human actions than its own. Intelligence confers power, so a greater-than-human-level intelligence would have greater-than-human-level power over the future of our species, and the biosphere more generally.

This would be the most significant event in human history.

According to one survey, nearly every AI expert who was polled agrees that one or more machine superintelligences will join our species on planet Earth by the end of this century. Although the field of AI has a poor track record of seeing the futurejust consider Marvin Minsky's claim in 1967 that "Within a generationthe problem of creating artificial intelligence will substantially be solved"recent breakthroughs in AI suggest that real progress is being made and that this progress could put us on a trajectory toward machine superintelligence.

In their 1955 manifesto, Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein famously wrote:

Many warnings have been uttered by eminent men of science and by authorities in military strategy. None of them will say that the worst results are certain. What they do say is that these results are possible, and no one can be sure that they will not be realized...We have found that the men who know most are the most gloomy.

This more or less describes the situation with respect to existential risk scholars, where "existential risks" are worst-case scenarios that would, as two researchers put it, cause the permanent "loss of a large fraction of expected value." Those who actually study these risks assign shockingly high probabilities to an existential catastrophe in the foreseeable future.

An informal 2008 survey of scholars at an Oxford University conference suggests a 19 percent chance of human extinction before 2100. And the world-renowned cosmologist Lord Martin Rees writes in his 2003 book Our Final Hour that civilization has a mere 50-50 chance of surviving the present century intact. Other scholars claim that humans will probably be extinct by 2110 (Frank Fenner) and that the likelihood of an existential catastrophe is at least 25 percent (Bostrom). Similarly, the Canadian biologist Neil Dawe suggests that he "wouldn't be surprise if the generation after him witnesses the extinction of humanity." Even Stephen Hawking seems to agree with these doomsday estimates, as suggested above, by arguing that humanity will go extinct unless we colonize space within the next 100 years.

So, the "promise and peril" cliche should weigh heavily on people's mindsespecially when they head to the voting booth. If humanity can get its act together, the future could be unprecedentedly good; but if tribalism, ignorance, and myopic thinking continue to dominate, the last generation may already have been born.

Phil Torres is the founding director of the X-Risks Institute . He has written about apocalyptic terrorism, emerging technologies, and global catastrophic risks. His forthcoming book is called Morality, Foresight, and Human Flourishing: An Introduction to Existential Risks .

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Coalition for Deep Space Exploration welcomes FY18 NASA budget – SpaceFlight Insider

Posted: at 7:56 am

Press Release

May 28th, 2017

Image Credit: Coalition for Deep Space Exploration

COALITION FOR DEEP SPACE EXPLORATION WELCOMES THE RELEASE OF THE FULL FY18 PRESIDENTS BUDGET REQUEST FOR NASA

WASHINGTON, D.C. The Coalition for Deep Space Exploration (Coalition) welcomes the release of the full Presidents Budget Request for NASA for Fiscal Year 2018, which builds on the information first released in March highlighting funding requests for NASAs exploration, science, and space operations programs. The budget requests $19.092 billion for NASA overall a little more than $560 million below the FY 2017 Omnibus level that was signed into law earlier this month but a significant increase above the prior Administrations final request for NASA in FY 2017.

The Coalition is encouraged by the relatively strong funding levels for key exploration, human spaceflight[,] and science programs across the agency, especially compared to requested levels for other non-defense agencies in FY 2018, said Dr. Mary Lynne Dittmar, Executive Director of the Coalition. Although overall funding levels are lower than the FY 2017 Omnibus levels, the Coalition recognizes that much of the planning for the FY 2018 Presidents Budget Request was completed prior to the negotiation and passage of the final Omnibus earlier this month. We are optimistic that the Administration and Congress will work together using the higher FY 2017 Omnibus levels as the basis for the development of the FY 2018 appropriations bill for NASA.

The Coalition appreciates the funding requested for NASAs key exploration programs, including its next-generation deep space rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), crewed spacecraft, Orion, and associated Exploration Ground Systems, as well as for key exploration mission capabilities funded under the Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) account. AES is developing technologies for deep space habitation via NASAs NextSTEP program, as well as deep space propulsion, lunar lander capabilities and other systems that will enable robust Exploration Missions. Some of these technologies notably those leading to a habitat, together with a propulsion module are components of NASAs planned Deep Space Gateway.

The Deep Space Gateway and other systems intended for the area around the Moon are part of a large-scale, in-space infrastructure that will open space to exploration and development, Dittmar said. This superhighway to space begins with SLS, Orion[,] and Exploration Ground Systems. Taken together, all of these programs will return NASA astronauts to deep space for the first time in nearly 50 years and will enable a range of compelling missions to strengthen Americas leadership in space.

The Coalition also applauds the requested funding for the James Webb Space Telescope, Mars 2020 and Europa mission[s], as well as a range of important astrophysics, heliophysics, and other space science programs. As the only country in the world to visit every planet in the Solar System, as well as to deploy the unique telescopes capable of detecting exoplanets and understand the formation of our universe, the United States must continue to invest in these groundbreaking science programs. We continue to support funding for the International Space Station (ISS), which is Americas testbed platform for exploration research including long-duration crewed mission and life support systems necessary to support such deep space missions as well as the cargo and crew transportation necessary to support the ISS.

We note with concern the flat out-year spending levels in this budget for most NASA programs, as well as the elimination of NASAs education office. It is imperative that NASAs topline and key program areas continue to grow, at or above the rate of inflation, to ensure no net decrease in the agencys resources to continue Americas leadership in space. Similarly, NASAs education efforts have engaged hundreds of thousands of students over the years, drawing students into careers in STEM that contribute to American security and global competitiveness.

The Coalition for Deep Space Exploration is a national organization of more than 70 space industry businesses and advocacy groups focused on ensuring the United States remains a leader in space, science, and technology. Based in Washington D.C., the Coalition engages in outreach and education reinforcing the value and benefits of human space exploration and space science with the public and our nations leaders, building lasting support for a long-term, sustainable, strategic direction for our nations space program.

###

MEDIA CONTACT Lauren Quesada Griffin Communications Group (832) 864-7224; Lauren@GriffinCG.com

Tagged: Coalition for Deep Space Exploration NASA Press Release The Range

The preceding is a press or news release either issued by one of the space agencies or by an aerospace firm or organization. The views expressed in the above post do not necessarily reflect those of SpaceFlight Insider.

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Will it be Stephen Hawking or Elon Musk who is proved right on space exploration? – New Statesman

Posted: at 7:56 am

In the opening pages of his seminal 1988 work A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking has a cause for concern. It has certainly been true in the past that what we call intelligence and scientific discovery have conveyed a survival advantage. It is not so clear that this is still the case: our scientific discoveries may well destroy us all, and even if they dont, a complete unified theory may not make much difference to our chances of survival.

The search for a singular theory that explains the cosmos, our place in it, where we are going, and why we are here troubles the professor. As scientists continue to come up short in their efforts to explain the grander reality of the universe, while contendingwith the development of technology at an inconceivably fast rate, the overarching feeling towards the future is one of anxiety, it seems.

It should be of no surprise to hear then, that Hawkings anxieties have grown; so much so that he believes the human race must leave Earth and find a new planetary home within the next 100 years. Speaking at The Royal Society in London ahead of Starmus IV, a science and music festival set to take place next month in Trondheim, Norway, the professor said: I strongly believe we should start seeking alternative planets for possible habitation. We are running out of space on Earth and we need to break through technological limitations preventing us living elsewhere in the universe.

The professor has previously stated that we need to leave planet Earth within the next 1,000 years, but his recent estimation of 100 years adds a new layer of urgency to his claims.

He will expand on this issue in Trondheim, accompanied by the likes of Buzz Aldrin and various Nobel Prize winners, some of who are thought to share this belief. Viewers of the BBCs new series Tomorrows World too will find these remarks reiterated by Hawking. For many, it may seem inconceivable to leave our planetary abode so soon, if at all. It must therefore be asked: is the concern warranted?

A central issue cited by Hawking is climate change, not least because of the overwhelming evidence pointing towards global warming, but also because of the anti-science movement that takes climate change to be a hoax. US President Donald Trumps administration has repeatedly threatened withdrawal from the Paris Agreement a move that, if carried through, would severely hamper the international effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and keep global temperature rises this century at well below 2 degrees Celsius.

However, Nobel Laureate Edvard Moser, who was also present at The Royal Society, may have succinctly summed up the appropriate response to climate change deniers. Speaking on the critical importance of clear science communication, Moser said: I think what it comes down to is explaining how the data of climate change has been collected and how the scientific process works, and how data is tested over and over again and I think its an educational job.

At a time when establishment ideas and opinions are under scrutiny, Mosers focus on education is perhaps what the professor too would like to encourage within public discourse. You have to explain to the public how science works, said Moser.

And what of artificial intelligence? At various times, Hawking has deemed the rise of artificial intelligence an existential threat. Autonomous robots may prove to be more efficient than humans in certain capacities, with the automation of factories making people redundant an oft-referred to indicator of this. The rise of powerful AI will either be the best or the worst thing ever to happen to humanity. We do not yet know which, Hawking has said.

But there is a third option, one in which artificial intelligence doesnt take up a Manichean good or evil position. Instead, it continues on as a tool for societal and cultural evolution. Indeed, it isthe unprecedented development of AI and other technologies that will make Hawkings desire of multi-planetary life a pragmatic possibility.

This brings me to his contention that we should start seeking alternative planets for possible habitation. Though the recent discovery of Earth-like exoplanets, particularly those orbiting the dwarf star Trappist-1, has fuelled some speculation about the possibility of life beyond the Solar System, the most obvious Planet B for humanity has been Mars. Hawking himself has referred to it as the obvious next target.

The most notable mission to take humans to Mars comes from Space Xs Elon Musk, whose Interplanetary Transport System hopes to take a million people to the red planet within the next 20 years. But it seems Musks ambitions to make the human race a space-faring civilisation come from a slightly different place to that of Hawkings.

In a recent conversation with TEDs Head Curator Chris Anderson, Musk was probed on why we need to build a city on Mars. If the future does not include being out there among the stars, and being a multi-planet species, I find that incredibly depressing, he said. Depressing indeed. Journeying to Mars will not only increase the likelihood of humanitys survival, but it will also offer the chance to search for extra-terrestrial life. The development of artificial intelligence can support our desires to create new colonies and food sources on Mars, to understand terrain other than our own and to move one step closer to knowing whether we are truly alone in space.

Hawkings pessimism is understandable. The planet is taking on a number of new challenges that it is yet to overcome: overpopulation, antibiotic resistance, overdue asteroid strikes, terrorism, resource depletion and more. The list of threats may be endless.

What cannot be allowed to happen is for humanity to succumb to that pessimism and fear. Of course, these issues will take a lifetime to counter, and many of Hawkings contemporaries understand this and share a deep concern for the future of the planet. But as the innovators and predictors of the future, it is the scientists who must maintain optimism about the world that humans can create for themselves. As Musk points out, its important to have a future that is inspiring and appealing.

In a hundred years time, we may still be searching for a unified theory of the universe. We most probably will have a new set of challenges to face. But with a radical rethink of scientific education and inspiration, perhaps one day the human race will feela lot more optimistic about its future on two planets.

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JFK’s 1036 Days in Office: From Space Exploration to the Bay of Pigs – NBC Bay Area

Posted: at 7:56 am

President John F. Kennedy was in office less than three years before his tenure came to an abrupt and bloody end. He didn't live to see the impact of his presidency, or to fulfill all he set out to accomplish when he entered the White House in 1961.

Kennedy came into office in 1961 at age 43, the youngest president ever to take office and the first Catholic president.Succeeding Dwight Eisenhower, the oldest president elected since James Buchanan in 1857, Kennedy brought a dose of youthfulness and energy to the job.

He entered office at a dynamic time, both at home and abroad. He was the first peacetime president in more than two decades, but Kennedy inherited Cold War tensions, a sluggish economy and simmering social unrest.

In his inaugural address, Kennedy acknowledged the profound challenges that lay ahead. The world is very different now," he said. "For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life.

In the speech, he expressed hope for peace, but also welcomed his generations role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. It was a responsibility that Kennedy took to heart and one that quickly led him into perhaps the biggest blunder of his presidency.

Just four months into his first term, Kennedy signed off on a plan to oust Cuban leader Fidel Castro. The U.S. provided training and supplies to Cuban exiles who were supposed to swiftly invade Cuba through the Bay of Pigs and topple its communist leader. Instead, the rebels found themselves outgunned and lacking critical intelligence. Their surrender was an embarrassment to Kennedy and a blemish on his early record in office.

But the president rebounded quickly. The following month he delivered an unexpected State of the Union address, recalibrating in the wake of his failure.

In the speech, which he said was warranted by the "extraordinary challenge" of upholding freedom, Kennedy laid out a vision of using aid and other peaceful measures to stanch the spread of communism.

No amount of arms and armies can help stabilize those governments which are unable or unwilling to achieve social and economic reform and development, he said.

Kennedy also unveiled in the famous speech one of the most ambitious plans of his presidency: to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. He framed the project as a response to Soviet space achievements (they had sent the first man to space the previous month) and a way to sway the minds of men everywhere, who are attempting to make a determination of which road they should take.

The speech was not a turning point, but his success, months later, in steering the U.S. from the brink of nuclear war, certainly was. in October 1962 Kennedy managed to strike a deal with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that prevented the installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles from the United States. The Soviets nixed their plan in exchange for the United States removal of missiles from Turkey. Kennedy's ability to appear cool and level-headed amid such a high-stakes crisis bolstered his image on the international stage.

Meanwhile, Kennedy was also navigating the growing conflict in Laos and Vietnam, which were steadily falling into the sphere of communist influence. He aimed for a measured approach, boosting U.S. aid and military presence in the region, without entering U.S. forces into combat.

They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them but they have to win it, the people of Vietnam against the Communists, he said, adding that he also did not believe the U.S. should withdraw. We also have to participatewe may not like itin the defense of Asia.

On the domestic front, Kennedy found himself the target of criticism from both civil rights proponents and segregationists who were engaged in a fiery fight over the future of America. Though he ran on a pro-civil rights platform, once elected, he was reluctant to push too hard or too early for legislation that would dismantle the country's system of racial inequality.

Civil rights leaders were particularly critical of Kennedys appointment of southern conservatives to federal judgeships and his failure to introduce a civil rights bill early in his presidency.

But Kennedy did use his powers to intervene in several high-profile instances, most notably the integration of the University of Mississippi in 1962. Kennedy ordered federal marshals to escort a black student, James Meredith, into the school amid massive protests that later turned violent. Months earlier, he had ratcheted up his rhetoric, framing civil rights as a moral issue as old as the Scriptures and as clear as the American Constitution.

He finally submitted a civil rights bill toward the end of 1963 but died before its passage.

He did live long enough, however, to see other significant goals accomplished. During his tenure, the U.S., U.K. and Soviet Union agreed to limit nuclear testing after Kennedy andKhrushchev entered into negotiations in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis.Though he died before Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 crew landed on the moon, making his vision a reality, Kennedy did live to see John Glenn orbit the earth. He was also able to watch the rapiddevelopment of the Peace Corp., which he established by executive order in 1961. In its first years, hundreds of Americans traveled to developing countries, bringing with them Kennedys vision of peace, friendship and servicea vision he consistently hammered in his major addresses.

In his final speech, which he never had the chance to deliver, Kennedy was to tout Americas strength, but emphasize that strength should only be used in the pursuit of peace.

We ask ... that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility," Kennedy was set to say at Trade Mart in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, according to the prepared text. " and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of 'peace on earth, good will toward men.'"

Published at 11:40 AM PDT on May 26, 2017 | Updated at 12:45 PM PDT on May 26, 2017

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North Korea crisis: Donald Trump sends nuclear submarines as he ramps up WW3 tensions – Express.co.uk

Posted: at 7:55 am

EPA/ AFP

The US president told his Philippine counterpart Washington had sent two nuclear submarines to waters off the Korean Peninsula.

Donald Trump told Rodrigo Duterte the US has a lot of firepower over there, according to the New York Times which quoted a transcript of an April 29 call between the two.

The US president said: We cant let a madman with nuclear weapons let on the loose like that. We have a lot of firepower, more than he has times 20, but we dont want to use it.

We have a lot of firepower over there. We have two submarines the best in the world we have two nuclear submarines

Donald Trump

We have a lot of firepower over there. We have two submarines the best in the world we have two nuclear submarines not that we want to use them at all.

Ive never seen anything like they are, but we dont have to use this, but he could be crazy so we will see what happens.

The report was based on a Philippine transcript of the call that was circulated under a "confidential" cover sheet by the Americas division of the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs.

A senior Trump administration official in Washington, who was not authorised to publicly discuss the call and insisted on anonymity, told the New York Times the transcript was an accurate representation of the call between the two leaders.

Mr Trump has previously said a major, major conflict is possible with North Korea is possible because of its nuclear and missile programmes and that all options are on the table but that he wants to resolve the crisis diplomatically.

AFP/Getty Images

1 of 8

The ground-to-ground medium-to-long range ballistic missile

North Korea has vowed to develop a missile mounted with a nuclear warhead that can strike the mainland US, saying the programme is necessary to counter US aggression.

In a show of force, the US sent the nuclear-powered USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier to waters off the Korean peninsula, where it joined the USS Michigan, a nuclear submarine that docked in South Korea in late April.

Tensions have escalated on the Korean Peninsula as the North continues to defy UN sanctions over its nuclear missile programme.

GETTY

REUTERS

Earlier today the South Korean military said as unidentified object that flew across the border from North Korea on Tuesday was most likely to have been a balloon carrying propaganda leaflets rather than a drone.

South Korea fired warning shots at the object as it crossed the border, and it disappeared from radar.

North Koreas only ally China has pushed for dialogue with North Korea and the full implementation of UN sanctions over Pyongyang's ballistic missile and nuclear tests, skirting questions about Beijing's talks with the United States on possible new measures.

REUTERS

Almost a month ago Washington began discussions with China on strengthening UN sanctions.

It comes a week after Pyongyang said it launched an intermediate-range ballistic missile which met all technical requirements and could now be mass-produced, although US officials questioned the extent of its progress.

The Security Council first imposed sanctions on Pyongyang in 2006 and ratcheted up the measures in response to five nuclear tests and two long-range missile launches. North Korea is threatening a sixth nuclear test.

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North Korea WW3: US preparing to shoot down Kim’s next nuke as all-out WAR edges closer – Daily Star

Posted: at 7:55 am

THE US is getting ready to shoot down Kim Jong-uns next nuclear missile as fears of World War 3 reach an all-time high.

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US President Donald Trumps military is carrying out unprecedented tests aimed at preparing to shoot down a nuclear missile launched from North Korea.

Pentagon officials said the tests, at the Vanderberg Air Force base in California, will be used in preparation for North Korea's growing threat."

The tests are designed to mimic the effects of a North Korean nuke strike on the US and put into practice Trumps extensive missile defence network.

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Since 2008, photographer Eric Lafforgue ventured to North Korea six times. Thanks to digital memory cards, he was able to save photos that was forbidden to take inside the segregated state

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Taking pictures in the DMZ is easy, but if you come too close to the soldiers, they stop you

The Pentagon likens it to hitting a bullet with a bullet

Christopher Johnson, a spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency, told the AP news agency: The basic defensive idea is to fire a rocket into space upon warning of a hostile missile launch.

The rocket releases a 5-foot-long device called a "kill vehicle" that uses internal guidance systems to steer into the path of the oncoming missile's warhead, destroying it by force of impact.

Officially known as the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, the Pentagon likens it to hitting a bullet with a bullet.

The target will be a custom-made missile meant to simulate an ICBM, meaning it will fly faster than missiles used in previous intercept tests.

It will also be an almost exact replica of the ICBMs used by the North Korean tyrant.

We conduct increasingly complex test scenarios as the program matures and advances, Johnson added.

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As Donald Trump has promised to start an arms race, we take a look at the futuristic weapons being developed for the US military.

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The Lockheed Martin HULC is an exoskeleton that allows soldiers to carry loads of up to 200lbs for long distances

Testing against an ICBM-type threat is the next step in that process.

The news will come as a devastating blow to Kim, who has promised weekly missile tests in response to US aggression.

Last month Trump also test fired his own nuke at the California missile site in a chilling statement to the tubby tyrant.

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North Korea WW3: US preparing to shoot down Kim's next nuke as all-out WAR edges closer - Daily Star

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A doctor is helping Silicon Valley execs live their best life for $40k a year – Quartz

Posted: at 7:53 am

Silicon Valley thinks our bodies need a reboot. PayPal founder and Donald Trump booster Peter Thiel, who plans to live for 120 years, is taking human-growth hormone pills (and possibly blood transplants from young people). Google spun off Calico in 2013 to defeat the inevitability of aging. Software engineers fast for days and order custom stacks of nootropics, or brain-enhancing substances, to gain a cognitive edge. One venture capitalist, requesting anonymity, said at a dinner he recently attended several people opened up boxes to pop nootropic pills before the first course.

Theres no end to the experimentation people will undertake in pursuit of productivity, even if most treatments and supplements dont yet have strong evidence or FDA approval. That hasnt phased the patients that Dr. Molly Maloof sees in her Silicon Valley practice. This is a place where people dont give a flying fuck what they do with their minds and bodies, she said.

The general practitioner wants to see real medical rigor behind people tryingto hack their health. Her concierge medicine practice in San Francisco serves a small number of patients for anywhere from $5,000 for an initial assessment to upwards of $40,000 per year for comprehensive care (every patient has a second, primary care physician as well). Her clients are often engineers and executives looking to hit peak performance, or recover from an over-stressed work-life. Maloof, who earned her medical degree from the University in Illinois in 2011, sees part of her work as ensuring they they are doing it safely, backed up by the maximum amount of evidence.

Too often, she says, executives and entrepreneurs place performance above health. All these people are not stupid but what used to be domain expertise is now everyone claiming to be the expert, she says.

Maloofs data-heavy approach begins with a battery of testsmeasuring thousands of biomarkers in allto understand her patients at the cellular level. By analyzing the results, she can prescribe food and lifestyle tailored to every individual, alongside standard western therapies. Only then does she consider pharmaceutical-grade supplements. If needed, she helps patients make better decisions (and practice harm reduction) about performance-enhancing substances from nootropics to micro-dosing LSD. Her philosophy, she says, is to do more than cure sickness, but to enhance health.

Investors are betting this approachoptimizing ones health through deep analysis of their genetics, physiology, and psychologybecomes the standard of care. Technology, they argue, will ultimately bring down prices so its affordable for almost everyone. Today, Maloof estimates less the 1% of private medical practices take this approach, but companies like Color Genomics, Forward, Nootrobox, Arivale, Metabolic Code, Habit, and Viome are already aiming to go mainstream.

Maloof is surprised at the cavalier acceptance of DIY health at the intersection of technology and personalized medicine. People will spend months researching which computer they will buy and then two minutes researching the nootropic brand theyre about to put into their body, she says.

Maloof sat down with Quartz to talk about her work and the future of personalized medicine. The interview was condensed and edited for clarity.

Can you describe your practice?

My practice has basically been an emergent phenomena: What if a doctor decided to optimize health instead of just fixing illness? The first thing Ive done differently is Ive positioned myself as a doctor who is aiming to improve the human condition rather than just get you from sick to not-sick.

Theres this spectrum of disease. Most people are in the sick-to-average part of that spectrum. The athletes and movie stars of the world are at the opposite end at the optimal part of the spectrum.

Theres this space between average and optimal that is a very grey area. Its been sort of commandeered by the wellness industry: the people who perpetuate mindfulness, fitness, and nutrition, but maybe dont have any rigorous medical training. And, as such, havent actually learned the basic science of the human body and how biology, physics, and chemistry works.

How did your practice begin?

I thought, if I was in a perfect world, What would I want my health experience to look like? I basically decided I would want a doctor to listen to me, and listen for a long time. In an ideal situation, it takes about two hours to ask all the questions I would want.

In a perfect world, your body is like the airplane and Im the co-pilot

The second thing is that, typically when you get blood drawn from a doctor, you might get 10 biomarkers or lab [tests]. Thats just not very much information. And they dont usually tell you theres something wrong with you unless its really wrong. In my practice, Im looking at 170 chemical biomarkers. Instead of normal or abnormal, Im looking at a range of whats good.

Instead of just looking at blood, Im looking at blood, urine, stool and saliva. Instead of just chemistry markers, Im looking at chemistry, metabolomics (chemical fingerprints of cellular processes), genomics, microbiome (microorganisms), hormone tests, and Im starting to look at immunology markers.

Thats a very different experience. In a perfect world, your body is like the airplane and Im the co-pilot and were using all these tools to identify if there are issues going wrong with the engine.

How does your typical day go? How would a patients visit to your office be different?

A typical patient is first going to have a meeting with me to go through all these questions, Ill gather all the data and then send a phlebotomist to their house [to draw blood].

I get all the information back and then I sit back down with the patient and we will go over all of the report together. And that will take up to an hour and a half.

At the end of that, we edit the decision together. So we decide what we we want to do. I come up with a summary, a one- to two-page summary, and then create a schedule for all their supplements and their nutrition, and then basically hand off the recommendations to any staff they have to help implement it, or just to them.

Then Ill check in with them in a couple weeks via text or via email or the phone and then well repeat the process. Well take some of the labs that we did and then well repeat that on a quarterly basis. And then well go over the changes we see over time.

Q: How long would a typical patient be with you?

The real benefit comes after working for a year. Six months to a year is the minimum amount of time that we should be working together. And the patients who tend to go off the program, they come back to me eventually and theyre like, Yeah, I fell off the wagon and I want to jump back on. But it takes some commitment because you want to optimize health.

The patients that dont do the best are the ones that think that everything is about the supplements, and everything is about the right supplements. Supplements are like the last mile of optimization.

The first and foremost thing you need to do is recognize that this is not an overnight fix. Youre not just going to feel amazing overnight. Its actually about building these changes over time, and it makes a lot of difference if you recognize its like compounding interest.

And the thing about it is that its not rocket science, but a lot of it is actually knowing what is right for your body and your lifestyle. And thats going to be different for different people.

Q: Thats tough what youre describing. How many stick with it?

I work with mostly entrepreneurs, investors, and executives. So I tend to work with people who, when I first evaluate whether or not theyre a fit for my practice, I can assess how willing are they to do the things that Im asking them to do? If theyre a six out of 10, then Im not going to ask them to do that.

The patients that dont do the best are the ones that think that everything is about the supplements, and everything is about the right supplements. Supplements are like the last mile of optimization. They can make a really big difference. But fundamentally, if your lifestyle is a disaster, for those people its about actually showing them whats happening in their lifestyle and showing them how food is affecting them, giving them continuous glucose monitors, getting them heart-rate variability monitors, so they can glean some real insight around whats happening day-to-day.

Q: What are some of the more dangerous things patients come in doing?

A big problem I see people buying everything they read on Bulletproof Coffee. Im just like, Guys, [Bulletproofs founder] Dave Asprey has not figured everything out. First and foremost hes a salesman and a marketer. And secondly he is a bio-hacker, and so lets get real.

Everything hes recommending! Bulletproof Coffee [which has as much as 4 tablespoons of fat or oil per cup) is probably the worst idea that a person can do in terms of their health. The problem is theres a large number of people that will have much higher rates of cholesterol, and some people will be fine on it. And people do it wrong: they add sugar to it, or eat sugary things, or dont have the right genetics for that level of fat consumption.

Ive seen three patients now with really, really high cholesterol levels. Way, way above normal. Im like, What are you drinking in the morning? What does your routine look like? They say, You know, I start my day with Bulletproof Coffee And Im like, Are you? Oh no.

Is what youre doing scalable?

What Im doing right now is not scalable at all. Ive been doing this practice in order to figure out what does scale. Because if you look at all this information, youll start to see things that make sense for larger populations of people, and I think this is where medicine could go if we had more convenience.

Can this become a standard of care for most people, or will it be concierge medicine forever?

Here are few things that have to happen.

The health care system needs to recognize that what they are doing isnt working for chronic disease, first and foremost. Second of all, we need large-scale studies on this kind of medicine.

Im looking at interventions from the perspective of what is the most sound, evidence-based recommendation I can make for this individual. If it doesnt have evidence, why doesnt it. Chinese medicine may not have much evidence in the western model but it has thousand of years of people using it. The question is, Is it totally bullshit? Well, probably not. Theres probably some truth in it.

Then we need doctors who want to learn how to do this. We have to be able to train them how to do this. When I was in med school, I thought there was a lot missing from my education: what about lifestyle, what about what happens after the patient goes home after the visit to the hospital?

The kitchen is no longer the medicine cabinet. The kitchen is now the place of ultra-toxicity and disease.

I saw this giant problem in my education, and I actually designed a course called, Physician Heal Thyself, Evidence-based lifestyle. I brought in all these doctors who are experts in sleep medicine, sleep, fitness nutrition, food as medicine, functional medicine, integrative medicine, osteopathy and acupuncture. I got them all in a room and said I want you to teach students what were missing. We need to make this medical school education and have to implement this into the board certification programs as well as board exams. If its not required, its not going to be taught.

Finally, we need to be able to prescribe these things. We need food companies to do the research to show their food has outcomes that can improve human health. If we believe its medicine, then we need to study food as medicine. And we have to put it through the same rigor that we put drugs through. Thats going to happen. Were not that far way, but one of the biggest things that needs to happen is a culture shift.

Where do you think a practice like yours will be in five years?

The way to explain this question is actually to look to the past. When I was trying to figure out if what I was doing was special, I started doing some research on doctors in antiquity. I found an interesting pattern.

Most people in Greek and Roman times considered their kitchen to be their medicine cabinet. The women of the world were responsible for managing a lot of illness through food. So food as medicine was fairly widespread, but the wealthy and the gladiators and the kings, all of these people had special doctors.

Theres always been doctors working with the elite and working with the athletes of the world. But the difference between now and then, is that the kitchen is no longer the medicine cabinet. The kitchen is now the place of ultra-toxicity and disease.

I think in five years, Im going to be, hopefully, speaking to the entire country through media and through public health campaigns (Im going to build a platform around this) trying to bring back what we knew for thousands of years about how food can treat our disease and how plants are a source of healing and how the way that we are living our lives in modern times is antithetical to optimal health.

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In a trance – The Nation – Thailand’s – The Nation

Posted: at 7:53 am

The party features one of the worlds biggest progressive psy trance acts Coming Soon!!!

Irad Brant and Dui Bitton released their debut EP in 2012 and have barely been out of the charts since. The popularity continues to grow and they now have more than half a million Facebook followers.

They have performed at the worlds biggest trance events including Armin Van Buurens A State of Trance Festival in Utrecht, the Cape Town NYE Street Party, GodkitchenAmor in the UK, Australias Earthcore Festival and Brazils XXXPerience Festival.

Thailands premier trance crews TLT, Psy Head Community and Pure Decibel will be in charge of the three festival areas while the main stage will feature back-to-beat sets by 6 of TLTs resident DJs: Jonnie B, Hybrid J, Lee Van Willem, Kno Millican, Hype Viper and Fiske.

Presale tickets are available for Bt800 (regular) and Bt1,000 (VIP). They cost Bt1,200 at the door. All tickets include unlimited Chang beer.

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In a trance - The Nation - Thailand's - The Nation

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