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Billionaire entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson announced on CNBC's "Squawk Box" Friday that his commercial space flight venture will accept bitcoin as payment. He called it "a new exciting currency."

Virgin Galactic accepted its first purchase with bitcoin from a flight attendant in Hawaii. Branson—an early bitcoin investor himself—said the woman made "quite lot of money getting into bitcoin early on."

He said she paid in bitcoin, which was transferred into actual dollars "so there's a fixed price ... [and] we can actually pay her money back, if she changes her mind about going to space in a few months."

If Virgin Galactic didn't have a refund policy, it might be willing to take the risk on a pure bitcoin transaction, he said. The cost in U.S. dollars to book a space flight is $250,000.

(Read more: Bitcoin accepted by university in Cyprus)

Branson did the interview from his private island in the Caribbean, Necker Island, where the rebuilding project of his luxury home is now complete. The previous one burned down two years ago. "It's rebuilt. It's beautiful," he said. "We've actually got 30 astronauts who signed up to go to space here at the moment."


Before the CNBC interview, Branson tweeted:


Many bitcoin users are the type of people who will buy tickets for space travel, Branson told CNBC via a Skype video connection with a cellphone for audio pressed to his ear. "Virgin Galactic is a bold entrepreneurial technology. It's driving a revolution. And bitcoin is doing just the same when it comes to inventing a new currency."
"I think the fact that there's going to be a limited number of bitcoins out there and it will ultimately be capped—unlike normal currencies where governments can print more currencies—gives it a sense of security," he said, but acknowledged the risk. "There have been spikes and lows. But I think one day it will settle at a price that, I personally believe, is higher than the price today."

For bitcoin's latest price, (click here.)

(Read more: Winklevosses: Bitcoin worth at least 100 times more)


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Branson: Likely to have 'talking cabins' on flights
Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Group founder and Chairman discusses when airlines may allow passengers to speak on their phones.
The future of conventional flights

With the Federal Communications Commission thinking about lifting its longtime prohibition on making cellphone calls and texting during flights, Branson said: "I think that what's likely to happen is you'll have 'talking cabins' like you used to have 'smoking only cabins' where people can talk, and you'll have 'quiet cabins' where people can sleep and not talk."

But he said that type of seating structure—if implemented on Virgin Airlines—would not cost passengers any more money. "On the Virgin, you pay the same good price on every seat."

Branson also sees Virgin Galatic eventually competing against long-haul international airline routes. He said that a flight from New York to Singapore could take an hour "travelling orbitally around the world at 26,000 miles per hour." He hopes to see that in his lifetime, but said it will "definitely happen in my children's lifetime."

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http://www.cnbc.com/id/101220710

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According to GLAAD, this is the first Super Bowl ad to feature a gay family. GLAAD President and
CEO Sarah Kate Ellis responded to the ad: “Including a gay family in this ad is not only a step forward
for the advertising industry, but a reflection of the growing majority of Americans from all walks of
life who proudly support their LGBT friends, family and neighbors as integral parts of ‘America the Beautiful.’”

Quoted from CICERO

I'm GLAAD to hear that corporate advertisements help validate the LGBT community. Man, those leftists love the evil corporate branding when if fits their ideological agenda.

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There are few brands more global, and more American, than Coca-Cola.
Its red-and-white label and glass curves are a universal symbol, an American beachhead on
every inhabited inch of the Earth.
Like the sugary stuff or hate it, its advertising has long been about a certain ideal–the
idea that people are many and one, united by simple things like a smile, a song, and a Coke.
It was Coke, after all, that brought us “I’d like to teach the world to sing”–not
“I’d like to teach the contiguous 48 states plus Alaska and Hawaii to sing.”

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The xenophobic protesters had one thing right: we do speak English in America.
We speak it on official business and in Super Bowl broadcasts; we use it in publications
like this one.

But that’s not all we do. People like my immigrant mother and her immigrant sisters learn
English as adults and raise their kids to speak it, and also speak French and Arabic at family
get-togethers and on phone calls. We speak English in school and Spanish with grandparents
and Spanglish with friends. We speak Creole and Chinese and Tagalog sitting down to family
dinners–maybe with a bottle or two of Coke around the table, which is why Coke is smart to
recognize this.

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THEY ARE F'EN COMMERCIALS....who cares...they are nothing more than over the top mini-movies....

Quoted from CICERO

I'm GLAAD to hear that corporate advertisements help validate the LGBT community. Man, those leftists love the evil corporate branding when if fits their ideological agenda.

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ATLANTA (The Borowitz Report)—The Coca-Cola Company ignited a firestorm of
controversy on Sunday with a Super Bowl ad that appeared to make the inflammatory
claim that other languages besides English exist.

From coast to coast, viewers reacted with outrage and horror to what many were calling
the most incendiary Super Bowl ad in history.

“I was enjoying the Super Bowl with my family, and suddenly, out of nowhere, comes this
ad suggesting that there are other languages that aren’t English,” said Carol Foyler, a mother
of three from Akron, Ohio. “I grabbed the remote and turned it off. My kids shouldn’t be
exposed to garbage that’s just going to confuse them.”

The Alliance for Responsible Advertising, a conservative watchdog group that monitors
advertising it considers offensive and unfit for family viewing, issued a statement demanding
that Coke apologize for the controversial ad and promise never to air it again.

“Last night, Coke assaulted millions of Americans with its misguided and inappropriate view
that other languages exist,” the statement said. “In the future, we strongly hope that Coke
will keep its crazy theories to itself.”

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Red, White, and Jew

Claim:   Coca-Cola was once considered anti-Semitic for refusing to do business in Israel.

Origins:   The last forty-odd years have seen allegations of anti-Semitism hurled at both Coca-Cola and Pepsi, and for both companies the charges stemmed from their one-time reluctance to do business with Israel.

Successfully Israel flag doing business in the Middle East often depended upon not doing business in Israel. The Arab League was quick to boycott, and multinational concerns were forced to choose between the smaller market of Israel and the much larger market of the combined Arab states. For firms caught in the middle, it was a "no win" situation.

Coca-Cola's turn in the harsh spotlight of public opinion came in 1966.

April 1 1966: At a press conference in Tel Aviv, businessman Moshe Bornstein accused Coca-Cola of refusing to do business in Israel out of fear of reprisals and loss of profits in the Arab soft drink market. A week later in New York, the Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith released a statement backing up the charges, triggering headlines across the U.S.A. Coca-Cola was in hot water, and the American public was demanding answers. It was also rejecting the answers it was getting.

In 1949 Coca-Cola had attempted to open a bottling plant in Israel, but its efforts had been blocked by the Israeli government. As long as no one questioned the company too closely, the failure of this one stab at the Israeli market appeared to provide a satisfactory answer for Coca-Cola's conspicuous absence from the Israeli market. In the meanwhile, Coca-Cola was content to continue quietly serving the much larger Arab market, a market it was likely to lose if it began operating in Israel.

In 1961 an incident in Cairo involving civil servant Mohammad Abu Shadi momentarily shattered the quiet. Shadi had come into possession of a Coca-Cola bottle manufactured in Ethiopia, mistaken the Amharic lettering on its label for Hebrew, and publicly accused Coca-Cola of doing business with Israel.

The manager of Coca-Cola's Egyptian bottling operations wasted no time (and little thought) in assuring the press that Coca-Cola would never allow the Israelis a franchise. With their hands forced by their bottler's impolitic statement, company officials quickly invented the explanation that Israel was too small to support a franchise and gave their reasons for staying away as purely economic, not political. For the time being, this seemed to keep a lid on the brewing  storm.

It wasn't until 1966 that people began to wonder openly why it was that nearby Cyprus had no difficulty supporting its Coca-Cola franchise despite their having only one-tenth the population of Israel. The comfortable aura of quiet was shattered by Bornstein's charges and the subsequent uproar they raised in the U.S.A.

When these issues came to light in 1966, they proved highly embarrassing to Coca-Cola. The administrators of Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan announced they would stop serving Coke, and the owners of Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Emporium on Coney Island followed suit. Faced with the prospect of a Jewish boycott in America, the company attempted to right the tipped canoe by announcing it would open a bottling plant in Tel Aviv. (Such is the price of business: Israel with the fury of America behind it became a much more attractive market than it ever had been all on its own.) The Arab League struck back by placing Coca-Cola on its boycott list. The boycott began in August 1968 and lasted until May 1991 (or until 1979 in Egypt, where they made their own rules).

Pepsi's entry into Israel in 1992 did not go smoothly: the evolution theme of its "Choice of a New Generation" ad campaign (in which man was portrayed as evolving from a monkey into a Pepsi drinker) angered the strictly observant haredi community. Though Pepsi pulled the campaign from Israel, it found itself in more hot water over a 1993 Michael Jackson tour. Jackson's unthinking flashbulb-popping arrival on a Sabbath was viewed by many observant Jews as a desecration. For a time Pepsi lost its kashrut (kosher) certificate because it was deemed to be promoting a culture that would corrupt the nation's youth through rock music concerts and advertisements featuring scantily-clad women.

Prior to 1992, Pepsi had backed the other horse, choosing to service the lucrative Coke-less Arab markets in the boycott days. For its decision to stay out of Israel (and thus itself avoid being placed on the Arab League's blacklist), Pepsi faced continued criticism in the United States. In certain circles it was considered politically incorrect to be seen drinking Pepsi.

The Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith investigated claims that Pepsi was participating in the boycott of Israel. U.S. law prohibited American companies from taking part in this boycott, but the law was vague, and outright violations were hard to pin down. Nothing ever came of the investigations, and Pepsi was never placed on the American government's list of violators.

Pepsi always denied it was the fear of losing their Arab markets that kept them out of Israel. Like Coca-Cola in 1961, Pepsi fell back upon the claim of Israel's being too small to support a franchise. At least this time the excuse was a bit more believable; Coca-Cola's already holding down the lion's share of the Israeli soft drink market gave this claim a bit more plausibility. Even so, Pepsi was doing business in many other small markets and much more often than not competing head-to-head against Coca-Cola. If these conditions were keeping them out of Israel, then why weren't they equally keeping them out of these other markets?

Many people in the United States believed Pepsi was going along with the boycott, whether it was proveable in the eyes of U.S. law or not. Those lucrative Arab markets did not come without a price, and Pepsi paid it in loss of goodwill in the U.S. A significant number of American cola drinkers grew up suspecting Pepsi of being anti-Israel and refrained from buying their product. By contrast, Coca-Cola appeared heroic.

This appearance failed to take into account Coca-Cola's fast stepping to shake off similar charges in the 1960s. Pepsi's mud-spattered skirts were but Coca-Cola's hand-me-downs — same skirt, just a bit older.

Today you can get either Coke or Pepsi in anywhere in the Middle East, and the days of the boycott have faded into memory. Even so, there are still those who observe the stricture of "Coke is for Jews; Pepsi is for Arabs." Old wounds are not necessarily healed wounds.

Read more at http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/israel.asp#bthEaS7xrUFW2tVk.99