In March of this year, the Foundation for Enterprise Development sponsored the first Beyster Fellowship symposium on shared capitalism and employee ownership. It took place here in La Jolla and was attended by roughly 40 people with 15 formal presentations and much informal discussion. The proceedings of the meeting are now available to anyone who is interested in reading them on the FED website. I think you’ll find that the meeting was an important one. We all learned a lot.

On Thursday I received a letter from Harry Lonsdale. Harry made many important advances in reverse osmosis technology and was working at General Atomics at the same time I was running the linear accelerator there. Reverse osmosis is one of the most important discoveries of our time. Many millions of people depend on it for their drinking water. Harry sent me two books which I greatly appreciated. He’s now president of his own company in Phoenix, Arizona, and is doing well.

Speaking of GA, the chief force behind the Predator drone — Admiral Thomas Cassidy — recently retired as president of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems. In my opinion, the Predator is one of the most important military tools in existence today. I say this because it gives us a halfway decent chance of intercepting terrorists attempting to plant and explode IEDs before they can be used against our troops.

Last week we took the boat to the Jolly Roger in Oceanside. Dennis Campbell from SAIC joined Ron Arnold and me. I have included a photo from this trip, and a photo from the previous week’s trip to Catalina. That trip included Robert Craig. It was a beautiful day on the island.

– Bob