Last vet of WW 1

Frank Buckles, the last Doughboy, has died at age 110.  The New York Times article is the best of the ones that I've read.

American Cronyism expand to US Mint

Since around the late 1990s, the US Mint had minted commemorative medals in bronze or silver for collectors.  The subjects for commemoration are usually important past events, people, and places.   For example, there is a medal commemorating the Navajo Indians who were used for communicating encoded messages in  World War 2. Because their language is highly complex in grammar and sound and spoken only in America, the Navajo codes were never broken by the Japanese.  Most people would agree that this is truly worth commemorating.

Now I find this:  medals for former treasury secretaries Henry Paulson and John Snow.  I mean what the heck have they done that is worth commemorating?  They were treasury secretaries only in the past 10 years!  Not even last century!  They have the same stature as Yosemite National Park?  Unbelievable.

Here we go again

Hedge funds borrowing record amounts to gamble invest in stocks:   http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a.zOaZV1dx10&pos=5

Sunset of the West

Interesting radio segment entitled Sunset of the West on the Brian Lehrer Show which is an interview with author Dambisa Moyo.  I had always thought that

1. democracy is not necessary for a thriving society,
2. democracy can not survive unless the masses are educated, and
3. the US has been pushing democracy as a way to allow US companies to enter foreign countries and exploit their resources.

Some notes:

• Numerous failed and failing democracies in South America and Africa and Eastern Europe and even India proves the point that democracy can not work overnight and can not be supported when the masses are uneducated.  The fact that the US continues to push democracy down the throats of other countries can only be explained by their need to get US companies into the country to exploit their resources.

• For thousands of years until the United States was formed, societies around the world advanced without democracy at all.  Thankfully democracy is not as incoherent and ruinous as Karl  Marx's communism and no one has taken an equally narrow-minded and ruinous "philosophy" of Ayn Rand's objectivism on a large scale (well unless you count Alan Greenspan).  But is it the only type of government that works?  You hear the phrase "democracy is not perfect but there is nothing better".  Although as a kid I accepted this statement, it seems to me now that it is plain rhetoric with  no substance.

Food for Black History Month

Fried chicken, collard greens, and "whipped" potatoes.  Nice. Is it offensive to honor Black History Month with fried chicken?

power

An extremely interesting article on power entitled "Could You Become a Dictator?".  Those experiments were quite clever.

capitalism

Want to know what kind of monster would be freely roaming the American food landscape if an effective FDA did not exist (an occasional Republican wet dream)?  Read about the notorious and unethical but highly profit driven Monsanto company in Missouri.  Two especially disturbing facts are (1) the idea that Monsanto believed that they (Monsanto) are not responsible for determining if their own food stuff (eg, GMO products) are safe, that is the FDA's job and (2) they tried to ban milk coming from cows NOT injected with growth hormones (that Monsanto produces).