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Newt Gingrich must miss the spotlight. He’s now championing President Donald Trump’s off-hand proposal to turn establishing a lunar base into a reality television show. In addition to the TV angle, the Republican suggested $2 billion be offered to the “winner” of the lunar base contest. At this point, we’re unsure whether the spotlight has missed Mr. Gingrich as much. https://politi.co/2HlkcJf
2030. It’s a significant date for the Chinese government. That is the deadline set by the CCP to have overtaken the United States as the leader in Artificial Intelligence technology. Looks like they aren’t going to make it, but that’s not to say the AI industry in China isn’t flourishing. It is. In fact, it’s making significant strides. It just isn’t happening on the time table Chinese government officials wish. A Nature article breaks it down pretty well. https://go.nature.com/2HlWP23
Speaking of making strides, Sir Richard Branson’s space tourism dreams continue creeping forward. It’s latest space ship has successfully reached space on two occasions. According to Space.com, “The company’s newest six-passenger SpaceShipTwo vehicle, known as VSS Unity, is nearly ready to fly tourists to suborbital space and back.” Good news, but we can’t help but feel that Virgin Galactic is the Hyundai to Jeff Bezos’ Beamer or, even better, Elon Musk’s Tesla. http://bit.ly/2HlR7ND
There’s some major Open Access news coming out of Germany. According to The Bookseller, “Springer Nature and Projekt DEAL, which represents nearly 700 academic institutions in Germany, have reached an understanding on the world’s largest transformative Open Access agreement.” Elsevier where are you? http://bit.ly/2HlR98d
The infernos burning down immense swaths of the Amazon is an unmitigated disaster and can be seen from space. Many of the small fires that constitute the major conflagration are man made, efforts at clearing forest for other agricultural use. When will people learn that humans can, in fact, cause irreparable damage to the planet? http://bit.ly/2HlL6R7
IMAGE SOURCE: Creative Commons