Cross-cultural Communication, Books that Changed my Life

I saw discussion about a book that changed your life. There's a series of books that changed my life, relevant to this week's discussion on culture, history, and decolonizing STEM:

• StarBridge (StarBridge #1) (Starbridge Series)
• Silent Dances (StarBridge #2)
• Shadow World (StarBridge #3) (StarBridge Series)
• Serpent's Gift (StarBridge #4) (StarBridge Series)
• Silent Songs (StarBridge #5) (StarBridge Series)

There are two more in the series, that I haven't read:

• Ancestor's World (StarBridge #6)
• Voices of Chaos (StarBridge #7)

The stories are about interstellar space travel, contact between and among alien races. There's a school, called "StarBridge," with three learning tracks: Translator/Interpreter, Telepath, and Interrelator. From "Silent Dances":

Political culture and the military-industrial complex

Throughout my childhood, I heard references to the Military-Industrial complex. Growing up military, I usually heard them from the Left, from environmentalists and pacifists. Imagine my surprise when I took International Space Politics & Technology, and discovered that the phrase came from a Republican. President Eisenhower, in fact, and a World War II General.  (Everything seems to come back to World War II.)