- Thanks to the folks at Xerox, with help from Layer 8 Group, you can send a postcard, with original artwork by a child, to a member of the armed forces serving abroad: Let’s Say Thanks. I sent one, how about you?
[Via Susan via e-mail.]
- About.com has some good advice in its Back to School section concerning backpack selection for students. The first tip they offer, to get a bag with two straps instead of just one, to help balance the load across the body better, is why I’m a dedicated backpack guy.
- My new addiction is Armagetron Advanced, an open source 3D game of the lightcycle contest from Tron.
Tag: armed forces
Photo mosaics have become popular; I have one of Darth Vader, made up of different scenes from Episodes 4-6.
There are many tutorials online for making your own photo mosaics, but John Tolva has one where you create your mosaic with LEGOs. You’ll need Photoshop, and a healthy bank account for all those LEGO pieces you’ll be buying.
[Via Photojojo.]
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How close to you and yours does a convicted sex offender live? Find out, thanks to Family Watchdog.
[Via Daily Dose.]
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Happy Birthday to the United States Coast Guard, which turns 216 years old today.
At journalism conferences, the question is often brought up whether a journalist should see himself as an American first or a journalist first. Often the consensus is that they are journalists first.
I wonder how many of them would report a story if it would mean the death of their own child. And would any of those reporters who would be journalists first in even that appalling instant cheerfully mis-report a story in order to cause the death of their child? I suspect virtually none would.
If only they loved their country’s young and willing warriors as much as they loved their own children.
But the journalists today are too swept up in their own dance macabre to even notice the murderous consequences of their own malfeasance — or to hear the demands of simple decency.
“Abu Musab al-Zarqawi Killed in Bombing Raid”
I wonder if the F-16 pilot who dropped the Zarqawi-killing bombs gets to collect the $25 million bounty. That would be a nice retirement package.
I don’t need anything else special to remember my wedding anniversary. Circumstances of life dictated that forever shall the day of our wedding be shared with that of the invasion of Normandy, and the enormous sacrifice made there by so many. Yesterday marked the second anniversary of President Reagan’s passing, I can think of no better words to remember D-Day, than those spoken by him on the fortieth anniversary of the invasion:
Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young that day and you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet, you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here?
We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief; it was loyalty and love. The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge–and pray God we have not lost it–that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force of liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer… You all knew that some things are worth dying for.
It says a lot about our nation in that too few of us think about those who have given their lives in military service, much less participate in events to commemorate them, on Memorial Day. This was what ran through my head as we drove the Maine coastline today, noting the hundreds, perhaps thousands, on the beaches of York.
To honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, I humbly offer these words from one of our greatest Presidents:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion–that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
[With thanks to KnowledgeNews for the text of the Gettysburg Address.]
The iPatch.
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This likely has made its rounds through the blogosphere already, but I just read in the latest dead-tree edition of Wired that Choose Your Own Adventure books are getting republished, updated for the 21st century.
Though he’s not old enough yet to read on his own and appreciate them, I may have to pick up these titles for my little phisch. I had a great time with them when I was eleven, though I don’t believe I was ever able to successfully navigate The Abominable Snowman without “cheating”.
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What happened to all that wreckage from the Twin Towers after 9/11? Twenty-four tons of steel girders ended up in one of the Navy’s latest ships.
There have been many acts of heroism in the Iraq War and continuing liberation that have gone under- or unreported by the media. One such underreported act is that of Paul Ray Smith, the only Medal of Honor winner of the conflict. Sergeant First Class Smith gave his life near the Saddam Hussein International Airport on 4 April 2003, defending his comrades and the wounded in a nearby aid station. Ralph Kinney Bennett has the story.
Vietnam-era traitor Jeffry House, now a “prominent human-rights lawyer” in Toronto, is helping current-day traitors flee from the service they voluntarily enlisted for. (I feel it worth noting that Mr. House is not performing this work pro bono.)
As a father, I can certainly feel for Jeremy Hinzman in that he doesn’t want to go to Iraq, get killed, and leave his son fatherless. I so totally get that.
The fact remains, however, that Mr. Hinzman voluntarily enlisted in the United States Army. Therefore, during the terms of his enlistment, he is to go where the Army tells him to go, even if it is to a place he doesn’t want to go because he thinks the United States, vis-a-vis its armed services, shouldn’t be there.
Mr. Hinzman had a chance to legally leave the Army, and he chose to stay. He should be returned to the United States to stand trial for desertion, and be sent to prison. It would appear the maximum sentence is only five years; still plenty of life to spend with his son.
William Blair was recently outed as the secret benefactor to a group of World War II Pacific Theater former POWs, who get together for a monthly breakfast at Bunny’s Restaurant in Suffolk, Virginia.
I’ve met a good number of WWII vets in my time, and a few of them were POWs. Mr. Blair is correct in his noting that the Pacific Theater POWs usually get little mention compared to their European Theater brethren. I had the privilege in college of meeting a group of former POWs, including a Bataan Death March survivor. Those men have borne heavy burdens, and still do to this day. Mr. Blair, we salute you for your generosity and patriotism.