Are we alone in the universe?

By Charles Krauthammer – Huge excitement last week. Two Earth-size planets found orbiting a sun-like star less than a thousand light-years away.

Modern satellite data, applied to the Drake Equation, suggest that the number should be very high. So why the silence? Carl Sagan (among others) thought that the answer is to be found, tragically, in the final variable: the high probability that advanced civilizations destroy themselves.

Fairly or not, politics is the driver of history. It will determine whether we will live long enough to be heard one day. Out there. By them, the few — the only — who got it right. more> http://is.gd/7ZDvLD

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• Carl Sagan’s Last Interview: Science as a Candle in the Dark (singularityweblog.com)
• Absence of Evidence is Evidence of Absence (foxholeatheism.com)
• Carl Sagan (examiner.com)
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Euro Leaders Aim to Buy Time to Save Currency

By Patrick Donahue – Some 157 billion euros ($203 billion) in debt will mature in the 17-member euro area in the first three months of 2012, according to UBS AG. By the end of that period, leaders have pledged to draft a stricter rulebook for controlling government spending. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy will meet in Berlin Jan. 9 to work out details.

The key to the euro’s survival may lie with Italy, the group’s third-largest economy and the second most-indebted after Greece. The government in Rome must repay 53 billion euros in debt in the first quarter, about a third of the euro area’s total amount for the period, after Prime Minister Mario Monti passed an emergency budget package aimed at curtailing borrowing costs. more> http://is.gd/zu1MYB

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• Crisis talk, austerity calls mark euro anniversary, Alexandra Hudson, Reuters
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Snow-tech in the Alps

Siemens – The new Monte Rosa Hut of the Swiss Alpine Club is already considered to be the alpine hut of the future. The hut also represents a research project of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. It develops and tests new concepts for increasing energy efficiency in extended use under difficult conditions, using new technologies to optimally design such buildings so that they can be operated on a sustainable basis. This also includes the building automation from Siemens Building Technologies. Its employee, engineer and amateur mountain climber Ivan Loetscher monitors the plants on site and keeps the operating stations in working order. more> http://is.gd/lU5eAf

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AT&T Has Few Weapons for Verizon Fight After T-Mobile Bid

Image by @jbtaylor @Flickr

By Scott Moritz – While AT&T focused on winning regulatory approval for the takeover, rivals negotiated their own airwave deals. That means several spectrum assets that would have still been available for AT&T to purchase earlier this year are now off the market.

On Dec. 1, wholesale wireless-service provider and spectrum-owner Clearwire Corp. secured its ties with partner Sprint Nextel Corp. through a financing and network-sharing agreement. Sprint, the No. 3 carrier, reserved rights to bid Clearwire’s spectrum if other offers were made.

That move was followed by Verizon Wireless’s $3.6 billion deal to acquire airwaves held mostly by Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Cable Inc., something Synesael called “a real coup.” more> http://is.gd/RnTlke

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