http://nasawatch.com/archives/2015/06/quick-read-the.html

Quick: Read The Planetary Society Mars Plan While It Is Free
By Keith Cowing on June 29, 2015 7:06 PM. 4 Comments

In April 2015 the Planetary Society held an invitation-only "Humans Orbiting Mars" workshop wherein they unveiled their idea for a mission to Mars. At a quick press conference after the event (no media were allowed to attend the workshop) the Planetary Society promised more detail would be made public - later. Since then nothing but crickets. Well, it now looks like the Planetary Society Mars plan is now online - but only for a few weeks - then you will have to pay to read it. An article on the grand plan by Scott Hubbard will only be online here until 29 July 2015. I do not see any mention of this report's availability on the Planetary Society website. I am not sure how far a mission concept like this is going to get if no one can read the details. Given that most of these new space policy ideas have been semi-secret lately it would seem that the authors are not really interested in any meaningful public engagement.

- Stealthy Humans Orbiting Mars Workshop Update, earlier post
- Making Space Policy In Secret (Again), earlier post
- Good News Everyone: Another Closed Door Humans to Mars Thing, earlier post

SpaceX rocket explosion: 'It's space and it's difficult'
USA TODAY
Published on Jun 28, 2015

An unmanned SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying supplies for the International Space Station broke apart minutes after liftoff. As engineers analyze flight data to pinpoint what went wrong, NASA and SpaceX officials emphasize no negligence was involved.

http://ecowatch.com/2015/06/26/pope-francis-pesticides-gmos/



Pope Francis Slams GMOs and Pesticides for Destroying the Earth’s ‘Complex Web of Ecosystems’
Lori Ann Burd, Center for Biological Diversity | June 26, 2015

Pope Francis’s encyclical didn’t just cover climate change, he also denounced pesticides and genetically engineered (GE) crops, declaring “the spread of these crops destroys the complex web of ecosystems, decreases diversity in production and affects the present and the future of regional economies.”

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The Pope observed that pesticide use “creates a vicious circle in which the intervention of the human being to solve a problem often worsens the situation further.” He said, “many birds and insects die out as a result of toxic pesticides created by technology … [and this] actually causes the Earth we live in to become less rich and beautiful, more and more limited and gray …”

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Like Pope Francis, I believe protecting the Earth is our moral imperative. With this encyclical, the Pope reminds us that our fates are intertwined with all species, and calls us to action.

http://www.humansandnature.org/mind---morality---frances-moore-lapp---response-151.php

Growing Up as a Species: Accepting the Worst, Realizing the Best
Frances Moore Lappé
Cofounder – Small Planet Institute

All of my life’s work has, in a sense, been a journey to help enable mind and morality to meet and, even more, to live and cocreate together—happily.

I was born during the Holocaust and grew up in Texas in the 1950s surrounded by a racist, religiously narrow culture. As a young adult my heart was grabbed by one question: Why does humanity tolerate the cruelty of hunger in a world of plenty?

Over decades of asking “why” and “why” again, I’ve come to define the core challenge that humanity has yet to meet: it is to understand that we can evolve as “moral” societies—by this I mean life-serving—only as we accept the good, the bad, and the ugly in our own nature, in every person’s nature! To this end, we can put our minds to work on the moral task of creating those identifiable, specific conditions that have proven over our lengthy social evolution to bring forth the best in our species and to keep the worst in check. I think of this primary task as “growing up as a species.”

For most of us, embracing such complexity in our nature is difficult because a very different framing of social progress—the “good guys” defeating the “bad guys”—is entrenched in the worldviews that most cultures propagate. A variant of this dichotomous perspective is the notion of the good inside us defeating the evil inside us

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http://smallplanet.org/newsroom/mind-and-morality-where-do-they-meet

Mind and Morality: Where do they meet?
June 15, 2015

The Center for Humans & Nature has just published a frame-shifting essay by Small Planet Institute cofounder Frances Moore Lappé. “I’ve finally gotten my worldview down to 1,000 words!” says Frances. She argues that the breakthrough for humanity, lies in accepting all aspects of our nature; then basing our social rules on hard evidence about what brings out the best and the worst in our species. The great news, she stresses, is that we don’t have to change human nature to build the world we want.

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http://www.independentmail.com/news/northeast-georgia/analyst-new-savings-erode-as-cost-of-nuclear-plant-grows

Analyst: New savings erode as cost of nuclear plant grows
By: Associated Press
Posted: 7:14 AM, Jun 24, 2015

ATLANTA - The rising cost of building a new nuclear plant in Georgia will swallow most of the $2.7 billion in newfound savings that Southern Co. has publicly touted, a state analyst said Tuesday.

Southern Co. and its partners are building two more nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle, a project running more than three years behind schedule. Time is money. The longer it takes to build, the more Southern Co. subsidiary Georgia Power must pay in construction and finance charges.

Since state regulators approved the plant in 2009, power company executives said they secured $2.7 billion in newfound savings, making the project more financially attractive. For example, the utility benefited from cheaper-than-expected borrowing and inflation costs, received government loans and expects to get tax credits.

But the actual savings could be as small as $208 million after subtracting new costs related to the delays, according to financial analyst Philip Hayet, who monitors project finances for the state Public Service Commission. By comparison, Georgia Power now expects to spend $7.5 billion on its share of construction expenses.

"It's now virtually negligible," Hayet said, describing the value of the savings identified by the utility.

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