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posted by martyb on Thursday November 01 2018, @03:35AM   Printer-friendly
from the anything-you-can-do,-I-can-do-better dept.

Phys.org:

Antarctica is owned by no one, but there are plenty of countries[pdf] interested in this frozen island continent at the bottom of the Earth.

While there are some regulations on who can do what there, scientific research has no definition in Antarctic law. So any research by a country conducted in or about Antarctica can be interpreted as legitimate Antarctic science.

There are 30 countries – including Australia – operating bases and ships, and flying aircraft to and from runways across the continent.

Russia and China have increased their presence in Antarctica over the past decade, with China now reportedly interested in building its first permanent airfield.

It is not surprising there is significant interest in who is doing what, where – especially if countries ramp up their investment in Antarctic infrastructure with new stations, ships or runways.

Their actions might raise eyebrows and fuel speculation. But the freedom of countries to behave autonomously is guided by the laws that apply to this sovereign-neutral continent.

Is a reprise of the Great Game heating up in the deep freeze?


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday November 01 2018, @03:51PM

    by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Thursday November 01 2018, @03:51PM (#756495) Journal

    > the human brain, the most powerful thinking machine fine tuned by millions of years of natural selection

    There's your problem right there. You phrase that question as though the human brain is designed to think in the same way that we imagine cars are designed to drive[1].
    In truth, our brains aren't designed at all (as you point out) and in fact any "thinking" they do is purely a by-product of the business of survival. To use a software analogy, if you can think of the human brain as a piece of software or an operating system, then it is absolutely riddled with well-documented exploits and security holes and, as yet, we have no patching mechanism.

    Sadly these holes are routinely and mercilessly abused on a global scale. For example: Showing someone a enough images of beautiful sexy people drinking pepsi, and eventually some powerful, reptile portion of their brain will associate beauty+sexiness+getting laid with pepsi. Religions and weird cults of misinformation like the flat-earthers use them as well.

    [1] Similarly, one could make a very credible case that cars aren't designed to drive at all. They are designed to sell. That they drive is purely a by-product.

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