50 Years later, we're still ignoring Ike's warning!

Ike's grandaughter, Susan Eisenhower, paid tribute to the legacy of his Cross of Iron speech with a 2011 article:

McCutcheon (and McConnel) vs FEC and what little remains of American Democracy

While most of us are focused on the shutdown, a landmark case that may destroy what's left of the fragile American Democracy is being decided by the Supreme Court.

From Huffington Post: McCutcheon vs FEC: Supreme Court Skeptical of Campaign Contribution Limits:

Playboy in orbit: A step toward the world of Elysium?

The movie Elysium (2013) provides a dystopian vision of the world of 2154; where the ultra-rich live in a luxurious space station / habitat and everyone else inherits a polluted ruin of a planet.

It's impossible to look at the private space station designs from Playboy Enterprises and Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson without thinking of Elysium.





There's a meme going around to the effect that: "The NASA program is winding down, so it's up to the private sector to take over." I've even seen that here, including some posts favorable to Virgin Galactic and the other space tourism companies.

Now I've been a supporter of some private efforts, like Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), largely because Elon Musk is challenging the aerospace giants who've run the space program as their fiefdom. SpaceX is successful because it has NASA, DOD and now the Canadian Space Agency as customers.

I've also got a long history of supporting space, going back to the old L-5 Society; I even organized a chapter in Tulsa back in the 70s. I hoped to see us making major steps toward building Gerard K. O'Neill's space settlements by now.

I'm sounding warnings because, like everyone here, I've observed:

• The growing inequality in American culture, and
  
• The evolution of our economy into a plutonomy, an economy run only for the benefit of the rich, and
  
• The growing political power of the mega-rich and the big corporations, and
  
• The diminishing ability of the mega-rich to empathize with ordinary people.

• Permanent stagnation vs.
  
• "Flawed Realization.

NASA Remembers Cmdr. Neil Armstrong - One Year After His Death

• The X-15 (1960),
  
• Gemini 8 (1965),
  
• Apollo 11 (1969)

About that 'no warp drives' thing..........

There are some quite serious people willing to debate that with you. Last week's Starship Congress for the Icarus Interstellar Project included talks by Dr. Harold 'Sonny' White, who's working on a laboratory demonstration of warp bubbles and Marc Millis, head of NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics project in the '90s / early '00s.

There were also some interesting talks on SETI. Just as with warp drives, not everyone is willing to be pessimistic about the possibility of contact. One really interesting talk had the long-winded title: Dr. Thomas Hair: Provocative radio transients and base rate bias: A Bayesian argument for conservatism. The abstract for the talk:

Neil deGrasse Tyson -- The Most Astounding Fact

Rachel Maddow: Sequestration devastates US science, as well as education

Here's a recent post from the Maddowblog: The slow-motion disaster on auto-pilot just keeps getting worse. Here's what she says about sequestration's impact on US science:

Mention 'Obama' and the internet trolls will be on you like a cheap suit. Here's why....

The paid trolls aren't just people sitting in their parents' basements typing on cheap laptops; many of them work in offices with million-dollar computer systems and expensive software 'bots.'

From The Knowledge Movement's Facebook page:

Pictures from the Good Jobs for All Rallies in KC

There were rallies across the nation Monday and Tuesday, in solidarity with fast food workers asking merely for a decent, living wage for their families. We had events here in KC. These first images are from the Communities Creating Opportunities Facebook page. Communities Creating Opportunities is a local branch of the PICO network (People Improving Communities through Organizing).




This young man is working two jobs at minimum wage, and still struggling to take care of his family.


We had a number of people from faith communities at both rallies; this is Rev. C.T. Vivian


Representative Emanuel Cleaver addressed the rally Monday.


These images are from the Stand Up KC facebook page.







I was at the Tuesday rally in Gilham Park. We heard from union leaders (UAW and SEIU), people from the faith community and fast food workers sharing their own stories. One young man, who had been working in fast food for 10 years talked of his problems keeping food on the table; sometimes he had to go to his father's house for food. He has painful, broken molars that he cannot afford to have fixed.

Our local firefighters provided the food for the rally, showing solidarity with fellow workers trying to organize unions.

Templeton Rye Whiskey

Yesterday, I found a bottle of Templeton Rye Whiskey on my local supermarket's shelf (Missouri is one of the states where supermarkets are allowed to sell liquor.). I really had to try this stuff, since a co-worker at my old company was from Templeton, Iowa and told tales of Templeton Rye.

It all started back in Prohibition and Great Depression days. Nobody was making money legitimately, so some local farmers began converting some of their grain into whiskey. The fun part of this, according to my friend, was that the whole town was in on the gag, and covered for each other when the 'revenuers' came round. They didn't see any sin in making whiskey and they took some pride in their product, which soon became known as "the good stuff," as opposed to most of the rotgut available during Prohibition.

Templeton Rye was supposed to be Al Capone's favorite whiskey, the whiskey he drank and served to his guests. Supposedly, he even had bottles of the 'good stuff' smuggled into prison.

Anyway, the good people of Templeton kept making their whiskey, even after the end of Prohibition because people loved it. According to my friend, they resisted getting a license and making it legal, because it had a 'forbidden fruit' mystique when it was illegal. Finally, they gave in and licensed the recipe to a distillery in Indiana. The stuff that's available today is supposed to be made from the original, Prohibition-era recipe!

Templeton Rye does have its own website, a Facebook page and a YouTube channel, where you can find out more of the history behind it and get some good cocktail recipes.