Standoff for Stupidity

N.H. tax evaders taken into custody after standoff

You know how I feel about this from the title! Just pay your taxes! Get over it! The couple in the above article, Ed and Elaine Brown, did not evade taxes on "Christian" principles .. they are just egregious scofflaws (I love that word: "scofflaw" ... to scoff at the law)!

Ken Hovind is a Christian minister who is now blogging away while serving a ten-year term in Federal Correctional Institution, Edgefield in Edgefield, South Carolina, for 58 tax offenses, obstructing federal agents and related charges.

I don't feel sorry for any of the tax scofflaws! Just pay your taxes like the rest of us!

Update: (They were not only stubborn ... but stupid!)

Feds tricked holed-up tax evaders

Excerpt:

U.S. marshals posing as supporters talked their way into the fortress-like New Hampshire home of convicted tax evaders Ed and Elaine Brown, then calmly took them into custody, authorities said.

"They invited us in, and we escorted them out," U.S. Marshal Stephen Monier said at a news conference on Friday.

Pastor appreciation

Appreciate Your Pastors This Month

Excerpt:

Congregations across the country are encouraged to honor their pastors in celebration of Clergy Appreciation Month.

Every year, October is set aside to show gratitude for the hard work, sacrificial dedication and blessings provided year round by ministers and pastors.

"As a pastor myself for over three decades, I know firsthand both how difficult and how rewarding it can be to serve a congregation," said H.B. London, vice president of church and clergy ministries at Focus on the Family. "I've discovered that one of the most important things a pastor needs is encouragement and affirmation from his congregation."

Pastors and their families live under constant pressure especially as their congregation watch their every move and expect them to be close-to-perfect people. Clergy are expected to always be available, on call 24/7 with all the answers and never down.

"Those are unrealistic expectations to place on anyone, yet most of us are disappointed when a pastor becomes overwhelmed, seems depressed, lets us down or completely burns out," according to The Parsonage, the pastoral ministries of Focus on the Family.

Clergy Appreciation Month calls congregants to recognize their pastors – leaders who have been entrusted to tend to the spiritual well-being of believers.


Comments:

1. Having been there (I pastored for 16 years), I know how hard the Pastorate is! And sadly how little positive feedback one receives!
   
2. The best way to appreiciate a Pastor is to:
   
   
   
   1. Support the ministry by faithful attendance and service
      
   2. Daily prayer for your Pastor(s)
      
   3. Really listening to the message with an eye on personal application
      
   4. A kind word and warm greeting
      
   
   
3. It doesn't hurt to do something special for your Pastor as well. More below.
   

When I was a Pastor at Haddon Heights Baptist, a business man in the church gave each Pastor a turkey at Thanksgiving and a ham at Christmas. This really ministered to Kathee and me!

2 Tablets of Truth or 2 Patties of Meat?

Survey: More Americans Familiar with Big Mac Ingredients than 10 Commandments

Excerpt:

Despite living in a country with a rich and still prevalent Christian heritage – as evident from the Pledge of Allegiance to the nation’s motto, “In God We Trust” – Americans were found to be more familiar with the ingredients of the McDonald’s Big Mac hamburger than some of the Ten Commandments.

In a new study conducted by Kelton research in conjunction with the upcoming release of the animated feature film, The Ten Commandments, 80 percent of respondents knew "two all beef patties" were among the ingredients of the Big Mac but only six out of ten could identify "Thou shalt not kill” as one of the Ten Commandments. Also, while 43 percent of respondents – including those who regularly attend worship – could recall Bobby and Peter, two of the least-recalled names from the Brady Bunch, they were less familiar with two of the least recalled commandments – "Remember the Sabbath" (34 percent) and "Do not make any false idols" (29 percent).

“This gradual erosion of our knowledge of the Ten Commandments is a pretty serious issue,” said Paul Lauer, founder and president of Motive Entertainment, the group marketing the Ten Commandments film. He adds that he was shocked because these were statistics coming from a country that is known as “a Christian nation.”

Lauer, along with makers of the Ten Commandments movie, say they hope the film will inspire Americans to improve their literacy of the Ten Commandments and the Bible. The film, produced by Promenade Pictures, is slated to hit theaters Oct. 19.


Two all beef patties Slogan

"Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun." is a trademarked slogan first used by McDonald's in 1975

Comments:

1. The Ten Commandments: Exodus 20:2-17
   
2. Big Mac image from ABCNews.
   
3. Ten Commandments image from Wikipedia.
   

Minnesota meteorite

Fireball seen in sky across Minnesota was meteorite

Excerpts:

The blazing orange and yellow fireball that Minnesotans reported seeing flash through Wednesday afternoon's clear blue sky was probably a meteor.
....
Though sightings were reported from southwestern Minnesota to western Wisconsin around after 2 p.m., it's unlikely that there could be any definitive ruling that the object was a meteor, experts said. "There are a couple hundred tons of stuff that fall on the Earth every day," said Bob Gehrz, who heads the university's Astronomy Department. Because there are so many meteors regularly breaking into the atmosphere -- often unnoticed given that some are the size of grains of sand -- the activity is not comprehensively tracked, Gehrz said.
....
If the object was indeed a meteor, given how bright it appeared in the middle of the day, it probably was at least the size of a pea, Gehrz said.

Those who saw the object included a man in Chanhassen who was looking out his dentist’s window, a downtown Minneapolis law firm employee who followed the object until it was obscured by a nearby skyscraper and an oil refinery worker in Rosemount who had a hard time convincing his co-workers that he saw what he saw.

It's possible the meteor disintegrated above a field a mile or so west of Hudson, according to DJ Vail of St. Paul. After a visit to her St. Croix River-side home, she was driving back into Minnesota along Interstate 94 after 2 p.m. when she spotted the fireball , she said. As it fell closer to the ground near a highway rest stop, it suddenly flamed out. Her sighting lasted just seconds.

Comment: I found it interesting that something so small ("probably was at least the size of a pea") could be so bright in mid-day!

Triumphant elephant

'Triumphant elephant' adorns convention logo

Excerpt:

Organizers of next year's Republican National Convention unveiled a logo Wednesday that will adorn everything from the Xcel Center in downtown St. Paul to commemorative t-shirts.

The logo, which identifies the site of the four-day convention as Minneapolis-St. Paul, features what the organizers describe as "a triumphant elephant," the party's symbol that dates back to 1874.

Comment: Image from Kare11.com

Roland S. Martin: Black-brown coalitions

Commentary: Black-brown coalitions are tough to sustain

Excerpt:

In America, the nation's largest minority group carries significant weight. It's sort of like being the daddy at the dinner table -- you get the biggest piece of chicken or the largest slice of cake.

Political power means jobs and resources. And the one group with the most power wants to benefit their own, and sacrifice everyone else.

For years, African-Americans have argued that their sheer size in terms of numbers requires that they get a seat at the table. Coupled with African- Americans leading the civil rights movement, they say Hispanics shouldn't easily benefit from their hard work and that blacks should primarily reap the benefits.

But that all changed when Hispanics became the largest minority, often exceeding African-Americans in terms of the number of students in the school system, the primary battleground in many cities.

Today, we see that spilling over into every area, even business. African-American ad agencies, and media outlets, complain that the dollars set aside for blacks has been savagely reduced and shifted to Hispanic media.

So what you find is African-Americans and Hispanics fighting it out over a piece of the pie, while the larger ethnic group -- whites -- remains the same.

Is it possible to see a true black-brown coalition that greatly benefits both minority groups? Maybe. But it's going to take a helluva lot of work between the leading organizations such as the NAACP, National Urban League, La Raza and the League of United Latin American Citizens.

Instead of seeing one as taking from the other, what leaders in both camps should be exercising is a broader view. Blacks are not the enemy of Hispanics, and vice versa. The enemy is a lack of quality of education, being shut out of the economic levers, as well as poor health care. The resources of this nation should go where the need is. And if that means a larger portion going to one group over the other, fine. But we can't sacrifice one for the other.

Comment: Good read!

Ryan Martin on Corporate Worship (# 2)

The church assembles for worship, part 2

Excerpt (Be sure to read the entire article!):

As I said, the application of the phrase “house of God” to the church means that the church is the “new temple,” the place for public worship. I believe this becomes even more explicit in the clear New Testament teaching that gathered believers are together a “new temple” in this era of God’s work.

This is most clearly taught in 1 Corinthians 3:16-17.

"Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple."

The teaching that the assembled church is the temple of God should not be confused with the teaching in 1 Cor 6:19 that our individual bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. This is an important separate teaching with the implication that we should live holy lives lest we make the Holy Spirit a partaker of sin. The teaching that the church also is the “new temple” has the implications that the church must be holy and that God dwells in the midst of assembled believers. Because the Spirit of God dwells in the midst of assembled believers, that group of assembled believers is holy. The church is owned by God, completely devoted to him and his worship


Comments:

1. Previous post: Part 1: "The House of God"
   
2. Note the important distinction between Temple in 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 (corporate) and 1 Cor 6:19 (individual)
   

Thanks Ryan. These are ministering to me!

Dr. Charles Wood: Bible Study

Basic to Bible study. I am deeply interested in accurate Biblical interpretation and work with certain basic assumptions. In the light of some recent events, I think it is time to review some of the basics that form the platform from which I operate when dealing with God’s Word.

1. I believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. That means that I believe that the Bible means what it obviously says. Metaphor, hyperbole, anthropomorphism, figurative language, etc., are almost always evident to even a casual reader and should be taken as such.
   
2. The Bible was written to real people in a real time frame. Certainly it applies to us, but it was initially written to real people in real time. Before doing any further work on translation or interpretation, I think it essential to consider what those who originally received the sacred text would have understood it to mean. Surely, especially in the Old Testament, there are passages that reveal truth for future generations that would not be completely clear to the original readers, but these portions are normally restricted to prophetic themes, they are not incredibly frequent, and they are much rarer in the New Testament outside Revelation.
   
3. No passage of Scripture can be properly interpreted to be in contradiction to any other passage of Scripture or to the general tenor of Scripture as a whole. Accepting the full, verbal inspiration of Scripture by the Holy Spirit, to allow for contradictions between passages, etc., would raise the issue of contradictions within the perfection of the God-head. It was called the “analogy of faith” in Seminary, and I consider it to be incredibly important. Consistent application of this rule of interpretation - in my opinion - would clarify much confusion.
   
4. The “history of doctrine” is very important. It is not impossible for a new interpretation, etc., to be found by careful scholars; it is highly unlikely such would take place given 2,000 years of intensive Bible study with the results of much of it readily available to us. If you have found a new and striking interpretation of a passage but can’t find any support for it in historic theology, you are likely wrong!
   
5. Direct Biblical precepts are binding and not subject to negotiation. There are many matters in Scripture which are clearly stated to be right or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable, and permissible or impermissible. We are simply not faced with any options regarding those matters. We can ignore them, dismiss them with the “findings of modern Biblical scholarship,” or otherwise seek to negate or rescind them in practice, but “the Word of God stands sure.” End of argument!
   
6. There is surely a place for deduced principles in our thinking and even in our belief systems. Human logic is a gift from God, and there is no reason for it to be suspended. Many have made very strong cases for or against certain beliefs or practices based on logical deduction, and many of those deductions appear to be a proper and wise use of logic and reason. There is, however, never the same degree of validity for deductive reasoning that there is for specific Biblical statement. The Baptist distinctive of individual soul liberty comes into play at this point also. Biblical precepts are binding and determinative among God’s people, but I believe that no one has the Biblical right to impose the results of his deductive reasoning as binding and determinative on any other believer or group of believers. Without meaning to be unkind, could I suggest that the fact that you are satisfied with the results of your deductive reasoning does not necessarily place those results on the same level as Scripture or make those results binding on me (in other words, the fact that you are convinced you are right does not necessarily make it so). Personally, I find it rather hypocritical that many who would impose their deducted conclusions on others are often very careless in identifying and heeding Biblical precepts themselves.
   
7. This last principle springs out of principles #2 and #6. Believing as I do that Scripture was originally written to common people and designed to be understood by them, I am always a bit suspicious when it takes four or five single-spaced pages to explicate the position one takes on a specific passage. I do not necessarily reject such out-of-hand, but I must admit that my skepticism grows proportionately with the amount of logic it takes to demonstrate its validity. The question that always comes to my mind is: would the people who originally received this message (or any other person simply coming to the Bible and taking it to mean what it says it means) come to this conclusion? If not, then it would appear that there is reason for some skepticism regarding the interpretation.
   

Now, I am not a theologian or even what I would call a Bible scholar, but for the past fifty-one years I have sought to interpret the Scriptures in such a way that I could give the people to whom I was preaching or teaching an accurate picture of what the passage actually taught so that my applications would have genuine relationship to its real meaning. I have found this a safe approach. – Dr. Charles Wood

Comment: through the courtesy of Cogitations which is a free email distribution from Dr. Warren Vanhetloo, a retired seminary professor

Bearcats nationally ranked

My brother said that this is the first time in XXX years (I forgot .... but many many years) that the Cincinnati Bearcats (University of Cincinnati is my alma mater!) are nationally ranked in football. I'm not sure how long this will last but for now they are undefeated!

2007 NCAA Football Rankings - Week 5 (Sept. 30)

gobearcats.com

UPDATE: Bearcats ranked in Top 25 for first time since 1976

Excerpt:

Cincinnati moved into the rankings at No. 24 in latest Associated Press Top 25 poll released Sunday. It marks the first time since 1976 the Bearcats have been in the poll. The Bearcats are at 4-0 for the first time since 1954.

From the Lord's Day to Christian Sunday

The Son's Day to Sunday

Excerpts:

... Another sure sign of formalized worship was the increase in complaints from clergymen about casualness during services among the flock. John Chrysostom, lamenting—even then—that churches were filled on Easter and Christmas but empty on the Lord's Day, urged his audience to compel friends and enemies and wives and children alike to come to services weekly, even forcibly drag them along, as part of their Christian obligation to love their neighbor. And it wasn't enough that people merely show up to church: he complained about young men who giggled or laughed aloud during prayer or sermons, declaring it a wonder that thunderbolts were not cast down upon them. If such indifference was suffered by Chrysostom, whose name means "the golden mouth," then one may safely assume that other preachers suffered it as well.
...
Some early Christians had already used, with mixed results, the Sun's imagery to speak of Christ. But such imagery became more acceptable during the fourth century, when far more Christians began calling the first day "Sunday" rather than exclusively the Lord's Day—despite even the condemnations of an Augustine or a Chrysostom. Saint Jerome himself defended the practice, saying, why shouldn't we call it Sunday, since Christ is the Sun of justice and has filled the world with his light? Jerome even claimed that Sunday took its name from Christ the Sun rather than from the physical Sun. This was a classic example of reading present desires into the past, but Jerome demonstrated perfectly the ability to take something previously seen as Roman and make it Christian.

Sunday: A History of the First Day from Babylonia to the Super Bowl

Comment: Quotes above are from the CT article not the book itself. The book looks interesting.

Happenings:

1. Kathee out getting her hair cut
   
2. Tomorrow is my first night teaching the singles study at 4th this month.
   
3. Rainy day
   

Seven forgotten Presidents

Seven presidents nobody remembers

The list:

1. Herbert Hoover (President #31, 1929--1933)
   
2. Martin Van Buren (President #8, 1837--1841)
   
3. Warren Harding (President #29, 1921--1923)
   
4. Chester Arthur (President #21, 1881--1885)
   
5. Millard Fillmore (President #13, 1850--1853)
   
6. Rutherford B. Hayes (President #19, 1877--1881)
   
7. John Tyler (President #10, 1841--1845)
   

Comment: Image from CNN article. All names linked to Wikipedia articles. My Brother and his wife have been to Hoover's home, library, and museum in West Branch, Iowa.

Amazing Rockies

Colorado wins NL wild card

I'm not a huge baseball fan but I watched this game last night up into the 13th inning. When San Diego scored 2 runs with an HR in the top of the 13th, I went to bed. So I was surprised when I woke up to this news!

Colorado rallies in 13th inning to seize playoff berth

Excerpt:

... the most jaw-dropping, elimination-defying win in Rockies history? Four innings after the end of regulation play, the Rockies reversed a two-run deficit to beat the San Diego Padres and make the playoffs. The fans had just witnessed a resurrection.

McCain takes heat

Groups criticize McCain for calling U.S. 'Christian nation'

Excerpts:

Muslim and Jewish groups on Monday sharply criticized Sen. John McCain's comments that he would prefer a Christian president to lead the United States.
....
Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said McCain's comments failed to recognize that Christianity is not the only faith with beliefs that support the concept of human rights.

"Sorry, Islam and other faiths have their basis in human dignity," Hooper said.
....
he National Jewish Democratic Council, an advocacy group representing Jewish Democrats, also called on the Republican Party to denounce the remarks formally.

"Former maverick John McCain's statements were repugnant," the group's executive director, Ira N. Forman, said in a statement. "It's been sad watching him transform from political maverick to religious right mouthpiece."

Forman added, "Someone running for president ought to understand the Constitution a little better. Nowhere does it say the United States is a 'Christian' nation. How can we trust someone to uphold the Constitution who doesn't even know what is in it?"


Comments: See yesterday's CFG comments. Human rights and Islamic fundamentalism are mutually exclusive concepts.

Dan Miller of SharperIron

Dan Miller and his wife were in Minneapolis for the Desiring God conference and Dan kind enough to connect up with me downtown today. He joined me for lunch at the ING cafeteria in my building (100 Washington).

Thanks Dan for the fellowship today.

Rush on Clinton's $ 5000 for every baby

Comment: Images from Rush Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh: Mrs. Clinton: $5,000 for Every Baby

Comment: The proposal is so preposterous. It simply defies any economic common sense or logic!

Excerpt:

By the way, this $5,000 for every baby born in America, can you imagine the kind of power trip you have to be on to make this kind of statement? Can you also imagine the flood of illegal immigration that this is going to spawn? You tell the impoverished and the poor, not just in Mexico but around the world, all they gotta do is get in here and their kid is born, five grand, start making babies! We don't know the details of the plan. I'm sure she'll say it doesn't apply to illegals, but you wait. Everything applies to them now. They get health care. They get public education. They get tuition breaks when they go to college that in-state students don't get or out-of-state students don't get. You think that Mrs. Clinton's going to actively keep $5,000 away from illegal immigrant babies born in this country? They are citizens born in this country. You're a citizen, you get it. Hello the swarm that would take place if this ever happened. Of course, Mrs. Clinton likes that, because those are all future Democrat voters.

"Prosteishiy Sputnik" — the Simplest Satellite

Russians tell the real story behind spur-of-the-moment Sputnik

Excerpts:


... 50 years later, it emerges that the momentous launch was far from being part of a well-planned strategy to demonstrate communist superiority over the West. Instead, the first artificial satellite in space was a spur-of-the-moment gamble driven by the dream of one scientist, whose team scrounged a rocket, slapped together a satellite and persuaded a dubious Kremlin to open the space age.
....
As described by the former scientists, the world's first orbiter was born out of a very different Soviet program: the frantic development of a rocket capable of striking the United States with a hydrogen bomb.

Because there was no telling how heavy the warhead would be, its R-7 ballistic missile was built with thrust to spare _ "much more powerful than anything the Americans had," Georgy Grechko, a rocket engineer and cosmonaut, told AP.
....
The Soviet Union already had a full-fledged scientific satellite in development, but it would take too long to complete, Korolyov knew. So he ordered his team to quickly sketch a primitive orbiter. It was called PS-1, for "Prosteishiy Sputnik" — the Simplest Satellite.
....
The satellite, weighing just 184 pounds (84 kilograms), was built in less than three months. Soviet designers built a pressurized sphere of polished aluminum alloy with two radio transmitters and four antennas. An earlier satellite project envisaged a cone shape, but Korolyov preferred the sphere. "Earth is a sphere, and its first satellite also must have a spherical shape," Chertok, a longtime deputy of Korolyov, recalled him saying.
....
The first official Soviet report of Sputnik's launch was brief and buried deep in Pravda, the Communist Party daily. Only two days later did it offer a banner headline, quoting the avalanche of foreign praise. Pravda also published a description of Sputnik's orbit to help people watch it pass. The article failed to mention that the light seen moving across the sky was the spent booster rocket's second stage, which was in roughly same orbit, Chertok said.


Comments: Image from Allposters.com. Kathee and I discussed this on the way into work. She was in the 1st grade. Sputnik is one of her earliest memories!

Lake Superior - record low

Record low water levels reported for Lake Superior

Excerpt:

Drought and mild temperatures have pushed Lake Superior's water level to its lowest point on record for this time of year, continuing a downward spiral across the Great Lakes.

Preliminary data show Superior's average water level in September dipped 1.6 inches beneath the previous low for that month reached in 1926, Cynthia Sellinger, deputy director of NOAA's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, said Sunday.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which uses a different measuring technique, calculated the September level at 4 inches below the record, said Scott Thieme, chief of hydraulics and hydrology for the Detroit district office.

It's the first time in 81 years that the biggest and deepest of the lakes has reached a new monthly low, Sellinger said. The Army Corps recorded Superior as also setting a record by a half-inch in August. But the NOAA lab had the lake at slightly above its record level then.

Either way, the lake has plummeted over the past year and has dipped beneath its long-term average level for a decade — the longest such period in its known history.


Earlier CFG posting on Lake Superior

Wiki: Lake Superior

Comment: Image is from Wikipedia article.

Ethanol, schmethanol

Ethanol, schmethanol: Everyone seems to think that ethanol is a good way to make cars greener. Everyone is wrong

Excerpt:

SOMETIMES you do things simply because you know how to. People have known how to make ethanol since the dawn of civilisation, if not before. Take some sugary liquid. Add yeast. Wait. They have also known for a thousand years how to get that ethanol out of the formerly sugary liquid and into a more or less pure form. You heat it up, catch the vapour that emanates, and cool that vapour down until it liquefies.

The result burns. And when Henry Ford was experimenting with car engines a century ago, he tried ethanol out as a fuel. But he rejected it—and for good reason. The amount of heat you get from burning a litre of ethanol is a third less than that from a litre of petrol. What is more, it absorbs water from the atmosphere. Unless it is mixed with some other fuel, such as petrol, the result is corrosion that can wreck an engine's seals in a couple of years. So why is ethanol suddenly back in fashion? That is the question many biotechnologists in America have recently asked themselves.

The obvious answer is that, being derived from plants, ethanol is “green”. The carbon dioxide produced by burning it was recently in the atmosphere. Putting that CO2 back into the air can therefore have no adverse effect on the climate. But although that is true, the real reason ethanol has become the preferred green substitute for petrol is that people know how to make it—that, and the subsidies now available to America's maize farmers to produce the necessary feedstock. Yet such things do not stop ethanol from being a lousy fuel. To solve that, the biotechnologists argue, you need to make a better fuel that is equally green. Which is what they are trying to do.

------------------- [Read full article!] -------------------

Ethanol's inherent flaws:

1. Less energy than gasoline
   
2. Engine corrosion
   
3. Water absorption
   

Summary: "the political rush to back ethanol, just because it is green and people have heard of it, is a mistake."

Comment: Good read! More from NYTimes below:

Ethanol’s Boom Stalling as Glut Depresses Price

Business
Ethanol’s Boom Stalling as Glut Depresses Price
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
Published: September 30, 2007
An oversupply of ethanol is suddenly plaguing farmers, in part because distribution of the fuel has not kept pace with new distilleries.

Comment: Image from The Truth About Cars

1873: Miss Webber solves stagecoach robbery

You Can't Make This Stuff Up ...

Excerpt:

The stagecoach was on its way from Colfax, Calif., to Grass Valley in 1873. Aboard were 11 male passengers and one Miss E. Webber. Miss Webber was on her way to marry a wealthy miner, sight unseen, she met through a lonely hearts column in the newspaper.

On that trip, the Wells Fargo stagecoach had a strongbox aboard that contained $7,078 in gold coin. After crossing the Bear River, the stagecoach was stopped by five masked bandits who removed the passengers and placed explosive charges on the treasure box.

In the gentlewomanly ways of those times, Miss Webber engaged the scoundrels in conversation. She nicely asked the robbers to spare her luggage. It contained all her possessions, and the crooks had no immediate interest in it. One thief gallantly agreed to bring it down for her. As he pulled the trunk from atop the coach, Miss Webber caught a glimpse of his face. She told Hume later that conversation with the perpetrators might help identify them by voice. Under duress, Miss Webber was outthinking everyone at the scene.

...

Comment: Read the surprising conclusion!

Sputnik: 50th annivesary

Newsweek: The Real Sputnik Story

Excerpt:

Far from being a bitter blow, Sputnik furthered one of Eisenhower's cherished military goals. Called "open skies," the policy would allow any nation to undertake aerial reconnaissance of any other. "The administration welcomed Sputnik," says McDougall. "The Soviets could hardly deny the right to launch satellites over the territory of other countries if they did it first."

Wikipedia: Sputnik 1

Comment: I am dating myself, but I was in the 3rd grade. I remember the event clearly!