Echoes of the Past - the 2000 dot com bust

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Reprint from March 2001

CYBER SPACED OUT

By Jim Putnam

The world of dot coms has seen a rather tumultuous start to the 21st millennium as the after market crashed, reality set in, and options morphed from retirement funds to wallpaper.  Most people believe it was a situation that was overdue.  There was little foundation to support the high flying stock values in the market place.  Seemingly overnight 60-70% of the value of many of these companies vanished.

What insidious dark forces were at work in the high flying tech sector to bring such chaos and devastation to the silver lining?  Well, where do I start?  Perhaps the most obvious can be found in the faces of the new tech Wizards.  Often what is not there is more telling than what is.  Their faces seemed too clean, too unblemished, and too confident.

They lacked the lines and scars of experience found etched in the faces of the Old World masters, meaning those people in business prior to 1999.  When the Wizards were still in diapers and cutting teeth, the old masters were setting in motion a sustained economic growth unparalleled in the history of the US, and the world.

Once e-mails became the staple of American leisure time, and the pc became the Source for all that is, then the Wizards declared the old economy to be a dinosaur and relegated the veterans of American capitalism to be ready for the museums.

That was how we ended the last millennium.  And now that we are halfway through the new year, we can already see the results of the wisdom of the Wizards of technology as stock prices collapse, options evaporate, losses continue to mount and the seemingly endless money pit goes dry.  Yes, the Internet has certainly speeded up everything, including failure.

Where did the e-commerce Wizards go wrong?  If blame is to be assigned at all, it should be assigned to those that bought the hyperbole in the first place.  For a short time all rules of economic logic and reason were suspended.  For a short time greed dominated the marketplace.

Look at what we forgot.  Revenues were no longer important.  Profitability vanished.  Multiples were no longer relevant.  Market caps were established by smoke and mirrors.  Executive experience was no longer considered necessary.  At times being young enough to have zits was an acceptable substitute for training.

So what if there was no market for the new product or service, the "Internet" would fix all that with its vast new market of consumers.  The principle of supply and demand gave way to the concept of creating demand regardless of need and supply.

The same with using traditional media and advertising.  The power of the Internet would fix that too.  Conventional broadcast and print media would soon be obsolete, and certainly weren't needed for the e-commerce high flyers.

As for competition, copycats flourished as the new economists determined that the Internet would create such a massive new consumer market that anything and everything could be sold.  Have faith in the digital revolution and trust the cyber gods.

In one form or another capitalism has existed in this country for about 500 years.  We fled unfair taxes, traded Manhattan for costume jewelry, and beat up the English over tax on tea, all before we even had a country.  Now our capitalist system has been a dominant world force for a couple of hundred years.  Yet in the course of 12-18 months the high-flying Wizards of the new economy were going to change all that and bury tradition in the ashes of the cyber firestorm.

By the 4th quarter of 1999 it seemed the cyber gurus might be right as greed and need sucked the masters of the old economy into the furious world of dot coms.  Suddenly the names attached to the IPOs read like a guest list to a presidential fundraiser or Board meeting of the Metropolitan Museum.  Familiar names.  The backbone of the American financial infrastructure.

Well folks, the fad flopped.  Along the way we discovered the Wizards really didn't know it all.  A lot of people got burned, and a lot of people got hurt.  Many compromised their values for the quick buck.  Those rushing to jump on the e-commerce bandwagon, despite the warnings and suspicions of the old economy warriors, found the wagon missing when they landed.

Less than a year after the spectacular ascent of the cyber gods, came the even more spectacular fall.  In the vernacular of the cyber psychics, the ascension never quite got off the ground.  It will take years for the impact to be realized.  Make no mistake, through it all the cyber revolution has forever changed the American and world landscape.  Even in many positive ways.

So in the spirit of David Letterman, perhaps we should establish the top ten misconceptions from the coming out party for the cyber revolution, sort of a new millennium report card.  Clearly these represent the views of the author and will be far from all-inclusive, but I would hope many contributions will be added by more informed readers.

Lesson #10:

            The rules of capitalism do not apply to the new economy of the cyber world.  Sorry folks, but capitalism is capitalism no matter what the industry or technology.  The same rules apply to capitalism that always applied to capitalism whether we are in the industrial age, the service age, or the cyber age.  A business still needs a product, revenue, customers and profits to succeed.

Lesson #9:

            In the cyber world experience is not necessary for success.  There is still a need for competent and experienced management.  Having Internet access to more choices and information and bigger markets does not automatically result in management knowledge and wisdom.  As always, experience is a process of learning, not declaring.

Lesson #8:

            Acceptance of new technology will happen overnight.  It took 70 years for radio to mature in America.  Fifty years for television to take hold.  Vinyl records were around for 75 years before compact discs really replaced them.  Even eight track recorders died a very slow death.  Phones became accepted in the last half-century.  Computers have been in development since the 1940's.  Cable TV has been in use since the 1950's.  And still not all homes in America have phones, personal computers or even cable television.

Lesson #7:

            Technology breakthroughs will benefit all related technologies.  So as long as the public buys a new technology, they will buy all new technology.  I don't think so.  The market explosion in video games and high tech gadgets was supposed to mean we are adapting to the cyber world.  Yet Sony sold 80 million Playstations (a high tech marvel at the time) but only 20% of the buyers had access to the Internet.

Lesson #6:

            The new economy would render traditional masters of the old economy obsolete.  This is a bold and arrogant perspective with no historical basis.  In our system of capitalism winners and losers are determined by sustained performance, adaptability, access to resources, and staying power.  Often times the traditional economic leaders let others make mistakes before embracing new concepts.  Just watch as retailing giants Wal-Mart, Target, or J.C. Pennys suddenly become the dominant forces in e-commerce.

Lesson #5:

            The millions and millions of new Internet users represent an entire new market for consumer goods and services.  This might sound logical but it is based on an unfounded assumption.  What in the world do we think these millions of new users have been doing before the Internet?  They still bought everything they needed from traditional sources.  The Internet does not represent a new market but an opportunity to shift the market share from traditional consumer sources to cyber sources.  To achieve that, the consumer must be given a reason to change buying habits.  Access to the Internet is not a reason, just an opportunity.

Lesson #4:

            The Internet will foster unlimited new opportunities in audio and video broadcasting including interactive communication.  Well guess what folks, who in the world will ever have time to surf 500 video channels, 10,000 audio broadcasts, not to mention the hundreds of interactive channels for every major retailer and cause in America?  Already the many but still limited choices on cable television have left the public in a quandary.  Interactive tests have failed miserably.  Over 5 million websites exist before the real broadcast benefits of the Internet have been felt.

Lesson #3:

            The Internet itself can provide all the advertising opportunities necessary for the new economy players.  With 80 million users in the US one would think this could be true.  But the truth of the matter is the Internet has resulted in market segmentation and fragmentation on a level never before seen or experienced.  What the technology of the Internet has done is give the consumer the chance to exit or ignore ads like never before.  Our click happy culture has discovered the ability to spend an average of a few seconds looking at a screen before zapping along.  So while we are bombarded by more cyber driven commercial messages than radio or television ever dared throw in our face, reach and frequency no longer have an impact.

Lesson #2:

            The Internet technology will render all current forms of communication technology obsolete.  This statement implies that the Internet, as well as existing communication technology, is good in the first place, which remains to be proven.  However, whether one surfs the web or works the remote, there is a furious competition for your attention.  Demographic analysis is more complex than ever.  The "knowns" of traditional media remain much clearer than the "unknowns" of the Internet.  Don't look for this to change any time soon.

Lesson #1:

            Thanks to the Internet, the world will never be the same.  Instant worldwide communications has indeed given us the opportunity to be better informed, better educated, and easier misled than at any other time in our history.  High technology has given us a new way to communicate.  But communications without morality and standards has created a whole new playing field for purveyors of fraud, deceit and corruption.

I count this as a misconception, but with positive leanings, for the power of information and education will, in time, result in a world with more truth.  In a Biblical sense, the Internet will finally bridge the horrible gaps in communication between people and races and maybe even religions.  Ever since we were cursed with multiple tongues as a lesson in ancient Babylon, we have been separated by language.  The cyber world is at least tearing down those barriers.

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The Facebook IPO - A Billionaires Delight and Forbearer of the Next Internet Stock Collapse

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The culmination of greed in America

Tomorrow the boys of Facebook become billionaires as they cash out just before millions of new stockholders are left holding another Internet stock that lost half it's value.

Make no mistake, the billions to be made over a 48 hour period will be the last profits from the Internet for years to come because there is no business model for pure and simple greed.  This IPO and every other Internet company surviving on revenue from Internet advertising will crash because the truth slipped out of the bag too early.

Yes, the speculators who control the IPO and have purchased all the offering before the public even had access to it, will simply let the value increase since the IPO was over subscribed and that means fewer shares are available for purchase.  In a day or two they will sell into the market, take their billions of cash and walk away.

GM created a huge potential problem for the IPO when it announced just a couple of days before the IPO release that it was stopping all Internet advertising on Facebook and everyone else because after spending billions of dollars on Internet ads over the past few years because the ads have no impact on consumers.

For years the Coltons Point Times has warned of the foundation of quicksand when it comes to valuing Internet stocks and advertising revenues.  In fact a year before the last Dot.com bust in 2000 we published a column outlining why the market was about to collapse.

For those who don't remember, it has now been twelve years since the dot com bubble began to seriously deflate.  The financial climax had its high water mark on March 10, 2000 when the NASDAQ peaked at 5132.52.

The subsequent stock market crash caused the loss of $5 trillion in the market value of companies from March 2000 to October 2002, and those parts of the world which were the epicenters of the dot com boom, such as the San Francisco Bay Area, were plunged into a financial nuclear winter.

More than a decade later we still haven't learned.  Facebook is going public with over 97% of their revenue from Internet ads, ads General Motors, the largest car company in the world, says are worthless.  American's and foreigners driven by greed will purchase the stock, not from Facebook but from the financial institutions who already bought  stock before the people had a chance.

Now that's fair President Obama, our first president to embrace the Internet speculators as economic wonders not to mention huge financial contributors to the President's reelection campaign.  You don't suppose Obama has some of that Facebook stock do you?

There is no financial basis to say Facebook is bigger than Exxon, Proctor & Gamble or GM when the sole basis for revenue is advertising which recent polls indicate 83% of Facebook users never click on.  The other 17% say they occasionally click on one if it is of interest.

Don't be surprised if another five trillion dollars is lost and that most of it comes from Internet stocks, or should I say stockholders.  Of course the Internet executives will cash out starting tomorrow leaving you holding the bag.

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Washington Post & NY Times Deify Obama, Trash Romney and Set Back Gay Rights by a Generation - What Next?

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In one of the most bizarre moves by the lame street media ever undertaken those bastions of liberal socialism, the Washington Post and New York Times, in an apparent desperate effort to steer the election to Barack Obama, sank to the depths of yellow journalism and media distortion with front page stories that brought tears of joy from the gay community that will soon be replaced by tears of despair when they realize they were sold out.

This week began with Vice President Biden supporting gay marriages thus forcing a clearly theatrical performance by Obama worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize performance when he first got elected.

When Obama confessed to ABC that he has now evolved to accepting gay marriage the liberal media shouted with joy, the gay community over flowed with tears of gratitude and the gay community was hoodwinked into pumping $25 million into the Obama campaign.

But when the dust actually settles we find Obama has now adopted the very policy endorsed long ago by Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, even Sarah Palin and countless other opponents of gay rights.  What Obama did was toss the gay community under the bus in the most political expedient move yet by a very politically expedient president.

Did I mention in very small print the liberal media noted Obama now supports state's rights when it comes to deciding the gay marriage issue and so far 32 states have voted AGAINST gay marriage when given a choice.

The only thing historic about the position of the president is how the media distorted the impact by fooling the gay community, yes making total fools of the gay Obama lovers, into believing he stood by them.  Wake up people!  By hiding behind the Reagan - Bush - Republican principle of state's rights Obama has set back the gay rights movement by a generation if not more and insured no national gay rights to marriage will ever be implemented while he is president.

Of course the Washington Post was not content to deify Obama but had to further divert attention from the faltering Obama economic recovery program by a page one story on that most dastardly of all deeds, the pranks Romney played in secondary school some 50 years ago.

Three pages of the second most egotistical paper in the world were devoted to Romney's life in the 1960's and how some pranks might have gotten out of hand.  Three pages were used to imply that childhood pranks should be considered bullying 50 years after the fact.  The next day the second bastion of liberalism, the New York Times, also gave page one coverage to the story.

By the way, ABC fact checked and the family of the supposed victim in the Post and Times said the facts were distorted in the news stories, that there was no bullying.

My how the media has fallen off the cliff when it comes to journalistic standards.  It is one thing when the cable news distort information because that is what they do but the two most famous newspapers in America devoting major page one position and three whole pages to a 50 year old story on the Republican candidate from his secondary school experience back in the days of Elvis, Viet Nam, civil rights and presidential assassinations is almost criminal.

Does that mean the Post and Times, in the interest of fairness, will now do a story on the far more reckless and dangerous high school and youth activities of Obama when he smoked pot and used cocaine?  Fat chance.

By coupling the Obama evolution story with the Romney bullying story in an apparent effort to prove Romney not only opposes gay marriage but supposedly roughed up gays some 50 years ago was the perfect cover to the fact Obama's miraculous awakening actually brought the Chosen One into full agreement with none other than, oops, Mitt Romney.

Character assassination, even using innuendo like our former twin pillars of journalism, has proven the true colors of the Post and Times and they sure aren't soft pink like the papers would like you to think, they are blood red, the color of the victims of such mumbo jumbo.

With Obama now turning gay marriage over to the states where 64% have already rejected gay marriage is like holding a gala on the Titanic knowing the cause is now doomed.

Of course the Obama campaign is laughing all the way to the bank as they just raised about $25 million in blood money from the pro-gay Hollywood community as a result of the president's epiphany, charging the amazing price of $40,000 per person for dinner with the President.

According to charities the one night take from the Hollywood elite would have provided all the needs for a year, not just food or housing, for 85,000 children.  Hundreds of thousands of starving children could have been fed for a year from one night of Obama campaign fundraising.

When the truth be finally told the politicians will once again have conned the do gooders and the new standard for Obama's "transfer of wealth" policy will be from the pockets of Hollywood into the Obama campaign coffers.

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Earth Changes - What do they Mean?

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A world turned upside down

Here I am in Southern Maryland where just 3 days ago it was 88 degrees in mid April. Today I was going to drive to Kentucky but had to postpone the trip a day because of snow in the Appalachia Mountains.

My route was through Beckley, West Virginia and it is snowing in the mountain pass just above Beckley.  So we had almost no snow all winter and now the Northeast gets hit by the most snow of the year.  Hardly seems like April is almost over.

Around here the trees and plants are budding and blooming 3-4 weeks too early because of the unseasonable warm.  Insects are about a month too early as well.  New crops and new buds could get frozen and the snow could wipe out the flowers which would further wipe out the bees.

Before the domino effect of the weird weather is over we could all be wiped out like the Mayans predicted.

I've already reported about how tornadoes are increasing, there is an increase in the number of severe earthquakes, we have experienced exceptional flooding and increased volcanic activity.  Solar storms are another area I have discussed several times and they are now reaching record highs.

Fortunately it is a big Earth so our record warmth is offset by the European and Russian record cold.  None of our extreme weather changes are the most extreme in history, they have all happened before.

Earth has had five Ice Ages, all without the benefit of "civilized humans" and their bad habits like big cars, cosmetics obsessions, plastic water bottles and other stuff.  The last Ice Age started about two million years ago and ended about 10,000 years ago.  Talk about a deep freeze.

Before you start sensing doom remember that an Ice Age is when around 30% of the Earth is covered by ice sheets, not the whole thing.  Still, it sure seems as if we are having quite a time with the weather.

Several photos in this story show the potential consequences of the next meltdown from an Ice Age according to FreakingNews.com.  Others are my idea of more interesting consequences from the crazy weather.

Now don't get me started on the potential for manmade messing around with the weather which earlier stories have detailed including some pretty high tech and quite lethal experiments.  For the moment, give me back my early summer so I can go out and bag some rays.

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Obama Democrat Pit Bulls Called Off - Romney wins Dog World

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I'll be doggone - Axelrod underestimates Obama's taste for dogs

In a shocking political turnaround that could easily swing the rest of the western world into Romney's corner, it seems those Democrat pit bulls Axelrod and Wasserman-Shultz, bit off a little more than they could chew.

For weeks the Obama surrogates have worked the compliant national media into story after story about how Romney drove to Canada with his dog on the roof.  Only a goof ball would think a dog would rather be in the car with five little boys, but that was the Obama campaign strategy.

Well, as always the truth finally comes out in politics and the truth was rather hard to swallow, even to the Chicago boys.

Romney might like his dog on the roof, but Obama seems to have liked his dog for dinner.  It seems the liberal media forgot to check Obama's own best selling book for his own vulnerabilities regarding dogs.

If they had, they would have noticed Obama talked about, well, eating dog in Indonesia which seems to be a bit more extreme than Romney's dog riding in a car carrier on the roof.

As the Obama campaign team continues to fumble the ball on issue after issue and talking point after talking point the Obama White House is beginning to look more like a fraternity party than presidency.

Their attempts to paint Obama as the chosen one or messiah fall apart every time the media takes the time to fact check the White House.  Too bad the lame street media didn't even bother vetting Obama in 2008, they were too busy drooling, or we might have known a lot more about our president.

For example, yes, the same guy (Obama) who says Republicans were the ones who declared war on women does not allow women to golf or play basketball with him.

Maybe the Obama slogan should be "I am what I say, not what I am."  Then truth might prevail.

Leave the dogs alone, they still have a reputation for loyalty and honesty.

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Calipari's Kiddie Corp declares for NBA draft

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By COLIN FLY | The Associated Press

LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) Kentucky's starting lineup of three freshmen and two sophomores did most everything together. Now, they will go their separate ways in the NBA.

Freshmen Anthony Davis, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Marquis Teague, and sophomores Terrence Jones and Doron Lamb declared for the draft in a nationally televised news conference Tuesday night.

''We made it work,'' Jones said. ''We all wanted to be there and do it together like we've done everything else together.''

The group, all clad in similar blue UK golf shirts, came into the season largely untested before ascending to No. 1, winning the Southeastern Conference in dominating fashion and capping an NCAA tournament run with a 67-59 victory over Kansas in the title game for the school's eighth championship.

''It's been a great opportunity playing here, I'll miss this team, the way we played together. We all love each other,'' said Davis, who picked up every major player of the year award and is likely the No. 1 pick in June's draft. ''I'm just going to miss this place. We won an NCAA championship here and did a lot. We all did a lot for this school and I'm going to miss it.''

The five join seniors Darius Miller, who is also projected to be drafted, and Eloy Vargas in leaving the program.

''This is a players' first program. I said it three years ago. During the season, it's about our team. You saw it in this year's team, they were about each other,'' coach John Calipari said. ''When the season is over, it's about moments like this.''

The departures mean only freshman Kyle Wiltjer remains from the rotation with a new class of highly touted recruits joining Calipari next season. Calipari said he had never watched the final game of a season until this one.

Kidd-Gilchrist appeared emotional for a few moments at the podium and later said his mother, Cindy Richardson, wanted him to return to school since he was one of the youngest players in Division I after turning 18 in September. Instead, he has other plans for her.

''I want to spoil my mom. I think I'm going to spoil my mom to death. That's one thing I'm looking forward to,'' said Kidd-Gilchrist, who plans to buy her a watch for starters. ''I'm ready, I think. I'm ready for anything that comes my way now.''

Teague, the point guard, seemed to be the only player who might be a questionable first-round pick in Calipari's effort to match his 2010 draft class that saw five players go in the first round led by the No. 1 overall pick, John Wall. Teague said he felt like he did enough to be drafted in the first round by leading a ''great team that's kind of like an NBA team'' to a national championship.

''This is my lifelong dream to play in the NBA and to be doing it with these guys, we're all just making the decision together just makes it that much more special,'' Teague said. ''I love every day knowing I played with these guys and that not being an option any more is tough to deal with. But we all decided we needed to move on, so this is something we've got to do.''

Lamb said he really had only one goal after both he and Jones were projected first-round picks last season.

''The reason I stayed was to win a national championship,'' Lamb said. ''Me and Terrence we talked together last year and we decided to come back this year to win a national championship and we did that. Our dreams came true.''

Wiltjer, who said earlier this year the thought of his teammates leaving was ''scary,'' and the rest of the bench made up just 6 percent of the total minutes played this season. But the group will quickly be getting help as Calipari closes in on his fourth straight No. 1 recruiting class.

Kentucky already signed Willie Cauley, Alex Poythress and Archie Goodwin in the early period. Top prospect Nerlens Noel committed to the Wildcats on national television last week by shaving the school's initials in the back of his signature flat top hairstyle. Transfer Ryan Harrow is expected to take over as point guard with Wiltjer, giving the Wildcats the same projected starting mix of two sophomores and three freshmen.

The team is in the hunt for a few of the remaining top prospects who have until May 16 to make their final decisions.

All of Kentucky's new players will be thrust into major roles because with the departures, the Wildcats will lose 93.3 percent of their points, 94.5 percent of their individual rebounds and 96.2 percent of their assists.

Meanwhile, this group is about to begin their heady new lifestyle, something Davis couldn't help laughing about when he was reminded of his upcoming payday.

''I actually haven't thought about that yet. That's right, I am going to be rich,'' Davis said. ''You've just got to manage your money well. Good thing is I like math.

So I should be fine.''

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What ever happened to the Great American Hero?

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Babe Ruth greeting beloved kids

Players for the Love of the Game not the Money!

For years, I watched in amazement as one after another of the last of the American heroes died and there was no one left to replace them.  For a long time I wondered why our heroes were disappearing, and where were we turning for inspiration, example, hope, and dreams.

I cannot even imagine growing up in a world today when your heroes might be Avatars or Anime, instead of Gary Cooper or Mickey Mantle.

Actually a few of you may wonder why Cooper is one of my top heroes.

When I was a kid baseball was still America's sport.  By the 1950's America had survived two world wars and the greatest depression in history, all in less than 40 years.  It was a time for the Golden Years when dreams came true and the American Dream could be realized.

By the way, whoever suggested the American dream was owning your own home in the suburbs with a brand new car in the driveway was nuts.

I was a Midwestern Hayseed and our dreams were of being really good at something so others might look up to you.  No one I knew was motivated by the desire for money and material possessions.  We wanted to excel at something and earn the respect from others for what we might achieve.

For the most part, setting new standards, breaking barriers, working harder, and sacrificing more served as an inspiration to others.  Many of our (the guys) heroes were baseball players and back then they played for the love of the game, not the love of the money, a monumental difference from today.

Ruth & Gehrig with kids

Then they used their fame to help inspire others, mostly kids, to do the same.

Thus began the start of my keen interest in actor Gary Cooper.  In the 1950's the two most popular baseball movies were the stories of the two most popular Yankees of all time and the two players whose careers epitomized the best and worst of baseball, Gehrig and Ruth.

The Yankees Babe Ruth, the Bronx Bomber, and Lou Gehrig, the Ironman of baseball, both had helped build the New York Yankees into the most popular and powerful franchise in sports history, including today.

Gehrig's story was first on film in 1942 called The Pride of the Yankees, released just a year after his unexpected death before his 38th birthday.  In America it was too early, too young, and too wrong for a genuine American hero to die that way.

Actor Gary Cooper played the role and had the benefit of the real Yankees and Babe Ruth who played with Lou Gehrig, to help him with the role. More than that, his Oscar winning talent was up to the task and his personal humility captured the essence of Lou Gehrig,  The film was magical and no one left the theater with a dry eye.

In 1948 William Bendix played the Babe in the movie The Babe Ruth Story about the life of the other twin pillar of Yankee history.  The beloved hero of all kids in America, raised in an orphanage in Baltimore, had a hard life struggling with the dark side but never wavered in his efforts to inspire kids.

Bendix, a Manhattan native, had once been bat boy for the New York Yankees and was in the dugout with the Babe as he hit over 100 home runs in Yankee stadium.  The Cooper and Bendix performances were exceptional and the movies remain among the top movies of all time to this day.

Maria Cooper Janis - Gary Cooper's daughter

My second experience with Gary Cooper came over 30 years later when I met a quite gifted woman in New York City trying to generate interest in quality films and documentaries.  At the time I had been working on National Geographic Television projects and was introduced to Maria Cooper Janis, the wife of world famous Classical Pianist Byron Janis.

Maria was Gary Cooper's only child and in the few conversations we were able to have about her father, one of my heroes who also played one if my heroes, I learned a lot more about her father.  Of course I remembered him for winning Oscars in Sergeant York and High Noon and his role as Lou Gehrig.

Father & daughter

But Maria's stories of growing up surrounded by Hollywood legends and listening to her dad's friends like Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Dinah Shore, and Rosemary Clooney sing in her father's home on his grand piano must have been, well, amazing.

Maria and I shared a common interest in American Indians as did her father, and his reverence for the Indians extended to their values and practices.  At the time I was working with Indian nations from throughout North and South America and the world but especially with the Hopi of Arizona.

Gary Cooper was a hero, and many of the film roles he played captured the persona of heroes Americans loved.  His best friends included hero actor James Stewart and writer Ernest Hemingway, and among his co-stars were other heroines like Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, and Marlene Dietrich.

The question is, where have the heroes all gone?

The song Where Have All the Flowers Gone was written by Pete Seeger and Joe Hickerson and performed by Marlene Dietrich, a friend and co-star of Cooper.

Marlene Dietrich performed this song in English, French and German. The song was first performed in French (as "Qui peut dire où vont les fleurs?") by Marlene in 1962 at a UNICEF concert. She also recorded the song in English and in German, the latter titled "Sag' mir, wo die Blumen sind", with lyrics translated by Max Colpet.  She performed the German version on a tour of Israel, where she was warmly received; she was the first person to break the taboo of using German publicly in Israel since WWII.

So you see, heroes can influence heroes, like Ruth, Gehrig and Cooper, but where have they all gone? Perhaps in time we can recapture those values and characteristics out of our past and rekindle them in our future or America may never again have genuine heroes.

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Discovery Last Ride Ends NASA Space Flights

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Spectacular Flight over Nation's Capitol Slams Door into Space

President Obama decided the NASA Space Program was unnecessary and he terminated over 30 years of American dominance in space.  We now have to hitch rides on Russian rockets to even reach the International Space Station.

Today was bittersweet for space enthusiasts as Discovery took it's last flight mounted atop NASA's Shuttle Carrier Aircraft flying from Florida to the nation's capitol where it made a rare flight over the Mall at the Capitol.  It is to be housed forever in the Smithsonian Space exhibit by Dulles Airport.

The Space Shuttle Discovery is the longest-serving orbiter. It was flown 39 times from 1984 through 2011 — more missions than any of its sister ships — spending altogether 365 days in space. Want to know more about the Discovery?

• In 2000, the Discovery flew 100th shuttle mission.

• Discovery launched on its final flight to the International Space Station on the STS-133 mission February 24, 2011.

• Three Hubble Space Telescope flights (1990 deployment and 2 servicing visits, 1997, 1999).

• Two flights were to the Russian space station Mir (1995, 1998).

• Thirteen flights went to the International Space Station (1999-2011).

• It orbited the Earth 5,830 times and traveled 148,221,675 miles.

A bit more trivia about the Space Shuttle Discovery:

The shuttle was named after other famous ships of exploration, such as the HMS Discovery which accompanied English explorer James Cook and Henry Hudson’s ship Discovery, which he used to look for the Northwest Passage.

A rather famous fictional spaceship from Stanley Kubrik’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is named Discovery One. You may not remember that, but I bet you remember the name of the onboard computer: HAL 9000.

In 1998, Discovery carried astronaut (and senator) John Glenn, who was 77 at the time, back in space, giving him the record of oldest person to go into space. Incidentally, this also made him the third seated politician to fly in space.

Utah Senator Jake Garn is the first sitting member of the United States Congress to fly in space. He was the payload specialist onboard Discovery’s STS-51-D mission in 1985. The second seated politician to fly in space is then Florida Representative (now Senator) Bill Nelson, who flew in 1986 onboard the Space Shuttle Columbia.

Jake Garn was also the world’s first space tourist. Actually, was also a guinea pig: his mission was to be subjected to tests designed to increase understanding of space motion sickness. He had motion sickness so severe that NASA named the "Garn scale" of space sickness after him. Upon his return to Congress, his Senate colleagues and promptly called him by his new nickname: "Barfin’ Jake" (bestowed by cartoonist Garry Trudeau in his Doonesbury strip).

After his return, Jake Garn co-authored a fiction called Night Launch (published in 1989), in which terrorists take over the Space Shuttle Discovery during the first NASA-USSR space shuttle flight.

President Bill Clinton watched John Glenn’s return to space from the Kennedy Space Center, making him the first (and only) US President to attend a Shuttle launch.

Discovery also carried the first (and so far only) member of royalty in space: Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, grandson of King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia.

Space Shuttle Discovery was the first shuttle to fly after both the

Challenger and Columbia disasters in 1988 and 2003, respectively.

It’s not all fun and science onboard the Space Shuttle Discovery: it has carried many classified payloads. In one such mission in 1985, the shuttle crew reportedly launched a secret satellite for the Department of Defense and the National Reconnaissance Office called Magnum. Or so we heard.

Discovery was the shuttle that launched the Hubble Space Telescope and the Ulysses probe (designed to study the sun).

In 1999, Mission Specialist Daniel T. Barry brought along his favorite game, the first copy of computer game in space, StarCraft. The game CD now resides in Blizzard’s home office after orbiting the Earth 153 times and traveling 3.5 million nautical miles.

It also was the first shuttle to "recover" communication satellites which orbit went bad because of motor malfunctions. In 1984, Space Shuttle Discover successfully captured Palapa B-2 and Westar 6 satellites. After recovering the satellites, crewmember Dale Gardner then posed for this famous picture:

The external tank of the shuttle had to be repaired in 1995, due to damage done by birds! NASA discovered that Northern Flicker Woodpeckers pecked about 200 holes in the foam insulation on Discovery’s fuel tank.

They promptly installed noisemakers and physical deterrents to scare off the woodpeckers. Also, they added a permanent human "woodpecker spotters" at launch pads around the clock!

In this mission, Discovery also carried Sweden’s first astronaut, Christer Fuglesang.

Farewell old friend...
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Spectacular explosions on the surface of the sun

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Today more spectacular explosions are taking place on the surface of the sun and once again Earth was granted a reprieve as the coronal mass ejection of radiation will miss the Earth.

However, as sun explosions continue to increase in intensity it is only a matter of time before we take a direct hit and our cell phones, IPods, Blackberries, PCs and perhaps even the electrical grid are destroyed.  Are you prepared?

The sun erupted in an amazing solar flare yesterday, unleashing an eruption of magnetic energy that blasted out into space.

The sun storm was captured by NASA's Solar Dynamic Observatory which studies the impact of the sun on the earth.

The flare was accompanied by a 'coronal mass ejection' (CME) - a massive burst of solar wind that blows huge quantities of electromagnetic radiation into space.

The solar flare began yesterday afternoon, and is still in progress. NASA captured the flare from their satellite.

The series of flares took place on the left side of the sun. NASA's Solar Dynamic Observatory described the CME:

A beautiful prominence eruption shot of the east limb of the sun. Such eruptions are often associated with solar flares, and in this case an M1 class (medium-sized) flare did occur at the same time, though it was not aimed toward Earth. This event, which is still in progress, was seen by NASA’s SDO satellite.

When aimed at Earth, strong solar flares can supercharge the planet's auroras, or northern and southern lights.

Extremely powerful solar flares can pose a danger to astronauts and satellites in space and can even disrupt power grids and communications systems on earth.

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