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[spam] Obama expressed his disappointment recently when rapper Kanye West stormed the stage at the MTV Video Music Awards to protest singer Taylor Swift's win of the "Best Female Video" trophy. Soon after, Obama himself was Swifted by critics who felt he was undeserving of his Nobel Prize win. It is obviously connected to the study of the Journal of Wine Economics that wine gold awards are given randomly http://www.wine-economics.org/journal/content/Volume4/number1/Full%20Texts/1_wine%20economics_vol%204_1_Robert%20Hodgson.pdf which also raised some controversy

New study on NASA strategy - though with strange hybrid mandate to on the one hand take the Obama strategy and then assess how well the strategy fits national goals (which I assume should be also Obama's) .... Leopold

nice summary overview

Assuming the worst, Obama always has its handy antispy kit with him http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/us/politics/obamas-portable-zone-of-secrecy-some-assembly-required.html?hp&_r=2&

in principle good news ... though also good news for Astrium and co?

not a surprise though still bad to read ....

On a side note, it's hilarious to read an article on something repeatedly referred to as being secret...

quite self-explanatory described though: "The terrorists apparently would win if Google told you the exact number of times the Federal Bureau of Investigation invoked a secret process to extract data about the media giant's customers. That's why it is unlawful for any record-keeper to disclose it has received a so-called National Security Letter. But under a deal brokered with the President Barack Obama administration, Google on Tuesday published a "range" of times it received National Security Letters demanding it divulge account information to the authorities without warrants. It was the first time a company has ever released data chronicling the volume of National Security Letter requests. National Security Letters allow the government to get detailed information on Americans' finances and communications without oversight from a judge. The FBI has issued hundreds of thousands of NSLs and has even been reprimanded for abusing them. The NSLs are written demands from the FBI that compel internet service providers, credit companies, financial institutions and businesses like Google to hand over confidential records about their customers, such as subscriber information, phone numbers and e-mail addresses, websites visited and more as long as the FBI says the information is "relevant" to an investigation." and ""You'll notice that we're reporting numerical ranges rather than exact numbers. This is to address concerns raised by the FBI, Justice Department and other agencies that releasing exact numbers might reveal information about investigations. We plan to update these figures annually," Richard Salgado, a Google legal director, wrote in a blog post. Salgado was not available for comment. What makes the government's position questionable is that it is required by Congress to disclose the number of times the bureau issues National Security Letters. In 2011, the year with the latest available figures, the FBI issued 16,511 National Sec

exciting news ... especially now that apparently Obama proposes to cut the mars exploration programme ...

nice video, and some criticism below

Personally I think this is great.

Well, the constellation program was a waste of money in its current form, overrun by delays and insufficient budget. We would have had Apollo 2.0 sixty years later, for what? At least now they are talking about going to asteroids, martian moons and stuff like that.

I agree that Constellation was a mistake. It is though a pity that now human Mars missions would certainly happen even later than initially hoped.

good news for scientists...

does not look good ....

very interesting article indeed - good basis for our own assessment! check especially this part: "At an international meeting of climate scientists last month in Copenhagen, 15 talks dealt with different aspects of geoengineering." do you have the references?

I found the abstracts for this meeting online (http://www.iop.org/EJ/toc/1755-1315/6/45). I'm also looking for the papers which relate to the different talks. These could be helpfull too.

interesting article - a lot of speculation though ...

in addition, the fact that Gates remains Defence Secretary might give some continuity to the Pentagon activities, -LS

an analysis of implications of the Falcon Heavy announcement