The following is brought to you by The Fireside Post:

I was eight years old when the Soviet Union launched the first orbiting Satellite, sputnik. The space race began as a competition of pride between two countries determined to prove them selves as more advanced than the other. It became something of much greater importance.

Our space exploration has produced, energized, and accelerated some of the most innovative and important technology of the 20th Century. Batteries and computers have become smaller. Heating and air conditioning are more efficient. The seal on my refrigerator door is improved by the technology of human space exploration. Global Positioning systems in our automobiles and cell phones are products of the research on space. Weather satellites make lives safer for all citizens of the world.

The greatest accomplishment of residual technology is in health care. In order to send a man into space the scientists had to figure out how to monitor human life function from a distance – to put it mildly. This technology led to the advent of the modern ambulance. Much of the advanced technology serving American medical care has come directly from NASA. We need more.

Read the rest of the article HERE.

The following is brought to you by Washington Interns Gone Bad:

It’s that day again. The day that the retail branch of corporate America wants you to go out and buy shit. It’s like the high holy day in the church of consumerism. You always hear about how every year in some other part of the world, some pilgrims of some other religion trample each other to death while racing to some holy thingamagiggy or other. Well it’s no surprise that it’s finally happened here, and it’s no surprise that the place it happened was in one of the grand cathedrals of everything that is wrong with American consumerist society.

A worker died after being trampled and a woman miscarried when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island Wal-Mart Friday morning, witnesses said. [full story]

Wake up, America! It’s just the mall, not a Who concert in Cincinnati. Was one day at home with your family so much to bear that you need to ditch them to go shove through throngs of strangers the very next day, devolving into wild animals on the hunt for your consumable prey?

Read the rest of the article HERE.