First of all, I've made the following addition to the TOS… I've done my best to write a policy that (a) serves the purpose of IAM, (b) meets the wishes of the IAM community, but (c) doesn't restrict the personal expression rights of the members… I hope this works alright, and feedback on it is still welcome of course:
Avatars
- If you use an adult avatar (that is, a gential or breast shot, or similar photo), you must rate is as “not safe for work” in order to allow safe browsing for IAM members who use IAM in environments where adult avatars would be inappropriate. (Click the blue RATE button under your main picture).
- Your avatar should represent you or your personality. Misleading avatars used to “get people to click” are strongly discouraged as they are both contrary to the community purpose of the site, and artifically inflate the site's bandwidth (thereby increasting the cost of the site). Most commonly this means men using naked photos of women as their avatars.
- Pages that ignore the above will simply be taken out of main-page rotation. That is, you can still use the avatar you choose (assuming you have legal rights), but it won't be placed on the first page when you update.
Now let me tell you something that really sucks. NASA's budget is now under $14 billion annually. They don't even have enough money to upgrade the sapce shuttle in order to make it safer, although the cost of doing so is less than the giant pile of cash big business handed to Bush's election campaign.
Since Bush seized power, the defense budget has had its anuual spending increased by about $70 billion yearly (from $329 billion to about $400 billion), not to mention the $20 billion annual increase on Homeland Security in that same time period and other associated costs.
So if there's $100 billion dollars just lying around (since he's claiming to reduce taxes), is a wise decision really being made by funnelling that to war efforts, rather that valuable space research? Here are a few of the pro's, as I see them for sending that money into the space program:
- The research it provides saves lives and improves lives for millions of people.
- It bolsters American companies.
- It's good for international relations.
- It increases national pride.
- It increases the international community's respect for America.
- It encourages the international community to work together in peace.
- It is the future, and any nation that doesn't embrace it will fall behind.
And here's the kicker: it's very expensive! Space research is by no means cheap. Which means that all these corporations that are currently getting very rich off the war efforts could be getting rich off the space program as well… So does that mean they prefer war?
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