..it’s not that corporations are somehow a different form of life from us. They’re part of our “posthuman” evolution. And in fact, you could probably make a better case that the evolution and organization of the corporation as a mode of life in conjunction with the development of technology has more to do with our transformation as a species than the incorporation of new technology alone.

I kept reading this and thinking, “What if the Singularity already happened?” “What if our ideas about what constitutes intelligence render us incapable of recognising it when it appears?” How do bacteria revolt against the rise of humans? They don’t. They just go on, trying to survive in a new environment that’s changed for various reasons that they don’t quite understand. Imagine. Maybe corporations are already in communication with some higher galactic intelligence, first contact has already happened and WE WILL NEVER KNOW. We’ll just wonder why our environment seems to have gotten inexplicably ___er.

We are now living in a global state that has been structured for the benefit of non-human entities with non-human goals. They have enormous media reach, which they use to distract attention from threats to their own survival. They also have an enormous ability to support litigation against public participation, except in the very limited circumstances where such action is forbidden. Individual atomized humans are thus either co-opted by these entities (you can live very nicely as a CEO or a politician, as long as you don’t bite the feeding hand) or steamrollered if they try to resist.

In short, we are living in the aftermath of an alien invasion.

At COMPANY _______ we value your privacy a great deal. Almost as much as we value the ability to take the data you give us and slice, dice, julienne, mash, puree and serve it to our business partners, which may include third-party advertising networks, data brokers, networks of affiliate sites, parent companies, subsidiaries, and other entities, none of which we’ll bother to list here because they can change from week to week and, besides, we know you’re not really paying attention.

We’ll also share all of this information with the government. We’re just suckers for guys with crew cuts carrying subpoenas.

Remember, when you visit our Web site, our Web site is also visiting you. And we’ve brought a dozen or more friends with us, depending on how many ad networks and third-party data services we use. We’re not going to tell which ones, though you could probably figure this out by carefully watching the different URLs that flash across the bottom of your browser as each page loads or when you mouse over various bits. It’s not like you’ve got better things to do.

Each of these sites may leave behind a little gift known as a cookie – a text file filled with inscrutable gibberish that allows various computers around the globe to identify you, including your preferences, browser settings, which parts of the site you visited, which ads you clicked on, and whether you actually purchased something.

Those same cookies may let our advertising and data broker partners track you across every other site you visit, then dump all of your information into a huge database attached to a unique ID number, which they may sell ad infinitum without ever notifying you or asking for permission.
Also: We collect your IP address, which might change every time you log on but probably doesn’t. At the very least, your IP address tells us the name of your ISP and the city where you live; with a legal court order, it can also give us your name and billing address (see guys with crew cuts and subpoenas, above).

Besides your IP, we record some specifics about your operating system and browser. Amazingly, this information (known as your user agent string) can be enough to narrow you down to one of a few hundred people on the Webbernets, all by its lonesome. Isn’t technology wonderful?
The data we collect is strictly anonymous, unless you’ve been kind enough to give us your name, email address, or other identifying information. And even if you have been that kind, we promise we won’t sell that information to anyone else, unless of course our impossibly obtuse privacy policy says otherwise and/or we change our minds tomorrow.

We store this information an indefinite amount of time for reasons even we don’t fully understand. And when we do eventually get around to deleting it, you can bet it’s still kicking around on some network backup drives in somebody’s closet. So once we have it, there’s really no getting it back. Hell, we can’t even find our keys half the time – how do you expect us to keep track of this stuff?
Not to worry, though, because we use the very bestest security measures to protect your data against hackers and identity thieves, though no one has actually ever bothered to verify this. You’ll pretty much just have to take our word for it.

So just to recap: Your information is extremely valuable to us. Our business model would totally collapse without it. No IPO, no stock options; all those 80-hour weeks and bupkis to show for it. So we’ll do our very best to use it in as many potentially profitable ways as we can conjure, over and over, while attempting to convince you there’s nothing to worry about.

(Hey, Did somebody hold a gun to your head and force you to visit this site? No, they did not. Did you run into a pay wall on the home page demanding your Visa number? No, you did not. You think we just give all this stuff away because we’re nice guys? Bet you also think every roomful of manure has a pony buried inside.)

This privacy policy may change at any time. In fact, it’s changed three times since we first started typing this. Good luck figuring out how, because we’re sure as hell not going to tell you. But then, you probably stopped reading after paragraph three.

The planned Chinese space station will be the centerpiece of the country’s manned space program, which has seen three crews — each larger than the next — launch aboard Chinese Shenzhou spacecraft starting in 2003.

China hopes to launch its first unmanned space station module, Tiangong 1 (Chinese for “Heavenly Palace”), in 2011, the state news organization Xinhua has reported. Over time, other modules will be added on and astronauts will eventually take up residence on the station to conduct research.

The new space station will be constructed using China’s Shenzhou capsules and Long March carrier rockets. These spacecraft established China as only the third country, after Russia and the United States, to independently launch people to space.

…

“To the rest of the world, China’s working very eagerly and aggressively,” Johnson-Freese said. “Canada, Europe and Russia are all banging on the door for China to work with them. I certainly have a concern that the U.S. is going to end up the odd man out in terms of the globalization of space.”

While some American lawmakers have expressed wishes to cooperate with China in space, the idea also faces strong resistance. A trip last month by NASA chief Charlie Bolden to China sparked controversy.

“It should go without saying that NASA has no business cooperating with the Chinese regime on human spaceflight,” U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) wrote to Bolden in an Oct. 5 letter before the visit. “China is taking an increasingly aggressive posture globally, and their interests rarely intersect with ours.”