The Spanish blog “Pasa la vida” shared these wonderful pictures of Earth in high resolution (11500 x11500) As mentioned by them, the pictures were taken by the satellite Suomi NPP with the instrument Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS).
Picture 1
Picture 2
by by NASA Goddard Photo and Video in Flickr.com
Today we are commemorating the birth of Ayn Rand. Ms. rand was a wonderful romantic realist novel writer that choose America as her home after fleeing from the USSR in the 1920s. Ms. Rand was the philosopher who made the first defense of the morality of Capitalist and who elaborated a complete philosophical system that she later called Objectivism.
Ms. Rand was the greatest advocate for individual rights and she is my heroine. It is in her ideas that I find daily inspiration to pursue happiness and objectivity in my life!
Today I share with you the audio to one of her most powerful lectures. “In March 1974, Ayn Rand faced the improbable task of lecturing on the crucial importance of philosophy—to the graduating class of West Point. She succeeded magnificently: she attracted three times the expected attendance, she elicited an enthusiastic ovation, and her lecture was reprinted in a new philosophy textbook published by the U.S. Military Academy. Relive this memorable occasion, and rediscover the irresistible intellectual power of Ayn Rand.”
Here is the link to Ms. Rand’s fabulous lecture in West Point
On December 05, 1933 the Prohibition on the production and commercialization of Alcohol was finally over in the United States when Utah became the 36th U.S. state to ratify the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution. Thus establishing the required 75% of states needed to enact the amendment (this overturned the 18th Amendment which had made the manufacturing, transportation, import, export, sale, and consumption of alcohol and alcoholic beverages illegal in the United States).
Since then, the alcohol industry (widely hated and considered evil before 1933) started developing into one of the most successful industries of the modern world. The access to competition ignited an immense diversification of marketing, production and commercialization strategies that improved the quality, safety, additives and capabilities of the previous distilled liquors.
By 2010 The world’s five biggest alcohol companies by market cap had their hubs in Beligum Anheuser-Busch Inbev (BUD), Brazil (Companhia de Bebidas das Américas (AMBEV) (ABV); United Kingdom (Diageo plc (DEO), The Netherlands (Heineken (HINKY.PK) and France (Pernod-Ricard (PDRDF.PK). And the industry gives provides with jobs to millions of workers around the globe.
Today, in 2011 we face a different but at the same time similar Prohibition of a product. I refer to the research, production, industrialization and commercialization of controlled drugs (marihuana, cocaine, etc.) that has been condemned by world government with the same irrational argument once used with alcohol.
Because of this Prohibition on Drugs; the world is facing a Trillionaire war leaded by the United States politicians who profit from it. More so, millions of jobs are lost every day and in the countries in which it is produced and stored before reaching the final markets the chaos reigns (for just one story of how this chaos come into being check: The Drug War in Guatemala: A Conversation with Giancarlo Ibarguen).
Let us learn from history and save our children and future generations from committing the same mistakes.
Thanksgiving is a typically American holiday. In spite of its religious form (giving thanks to God for a good harvest), its essential, secular meaning is a celebration of successful production. It is a producers’ holiday. The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production. Abundance is (or was and ought to be) America’s pride—just as it is the pride of American parents that their children need never know starvation. Ayn Rand
Thanksgiving is the perfect time to recognize what we are truly grateful for, to appreciate and celebrate the fruits of our labor: our wealth, health, relationships and material things–all the values we most selfishly cherish. Debi Ghate
Today I finished reading the Kindle book In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa’s Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World by Judith Carney and Richard Nicholas Rosomoff; and I have confirmed that the work of any historian cannot be done without the help of Geography and a Globalized view of the power behind migrations. In her book, the author made very clear the effects of this forced migration of black slaves to America and how they changed the botanical future of the whole American Continent. Reading this also was a great way of remembering when I worked as Collection Developer of the Wilson Popenoe Library (2,300 items) at the Ludwig von Mises Library. His was a fantastic bibliography and you could see in his books how he managed to be the first exporter of Avocados to The United States.
Now, I invite you to check the book review via Project MUSE® prepared by Brian Grabbatin,
Many geographers know Judith Carney from her award-winning book Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas (2001). There she explored the development of rice growing techniques in Africa and subsequent role of enslaved Africans in transferring those techniques to North American plantations, particularly in the South Carolina low-country. In the Shadow of Slavery, a new book coauthored by Carney and independent researcher Richard Nicholas Rosomoff, builds on these findings, examining how enslaved Africans participated in botanical exchanges that have shaped foodways in the Atlantic world. In contrast to Black Rice, this book focuses on a variety of subsistence crops instead of a single cash … Read More
Globalization & Capitalism 