10 Things to Remember About Memorial Day

Some facts about today that you may not have known.

Memorial Day was a response to the unprecedented carnage of the Civil War, in which some 620,000 soldiers on both sides died. The loss of life and its effect on communities throughout the North and South led to spontaneous commemorations of the dead

...From the practice of decorating graves with flowers, wreaths and flags, the holiday was long known as Decoration Day. The name Memorial Day goes back to 1882, but the older name didn't disappear until after World War II. Federal law declared "Memorial Day" the official name in 1967.

General Orders No. 11 stated that "in this observance no form of ceremony is prescribed," but over time several customs and symbols became associated with the holiday.
It is customary on Memorial Day to fly the flag at half staff until noon, and then raise it to the top of the staff until sunset.

...And in 2000, Congress established a National Moment of Remembrance, which asks Americans to pause for one minute at 3pm in an act of national unity. The time was chosen because 3pm "is the time when most Americans are enjoying their freedoms on the national holiday."

13 Hall of Famers Who Served

Sometimes at the cost of several of their prime playing years.

2. Ted Williams
Branch Of Military: Marines
Year Enlisted: 1942
Conflict: World War II and Korean War
Notable Facts: Enlisted immediately following his first triple crown season. Served as a flight instructor during World War II. Was recalled in 1952 for Korea where he flew combat missions.
Baseball Seasons Lost: 5

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:31 PM | Comments (445)
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From the title of David Halberstam's book on the Korean War. You have to read through his politics but it's worth the slog, seriously, he does a good job with the rest.

This one was called the forgotten war. A "police action". We did the men who fought in it a diservice with that expression. It was a hot war in the cold war, and good men fought and bled. And died.

If you have Netflix, I recommend "Chosin" which was recommended to me today on twitter by @jimmiebr It's a hard thing to watch, but it is well worth your time.

My father was a veteran of Korea. Navy. He didn't fight and suffer like the Marines at Chosin or the soldiers of IX Corps but he didn't sit on his ass either.

Many of us know about the Korean war from watching M*A*S*H. Well, some of us do. Three years, June 1950 to July 1953. 36,940 American dead. 92,134 American wounded. 3,737 MIA, over four thousand POWs.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 04:29 PM | Comments (146)
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Top Gear: Bugatti Veyron vs. Jet Fighter. more...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 04:07 PM | Comments (84)
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Recall Google's claims that it didn't harvest information deliberately. They said they didn't know their software was doing that. (Heh.) From the MailOnline.

They downloaded emails, text messages, photographs and documents from wi-fi networks as they photographed virtually every British road.

It is two years since Google first admitted stealing fragments of personal data, but claimed it was a ‘mistake’.

Now the full scale of its activities has emerged amid accusations of a cover-up after US regulators found a senior manager was warned as early as 2007 that the information was being captured as its cars trawled the country but did nothing.

Around one in four home networks in the UK is thought to be unsecured – lacking password protection – allowing personal data to be collected. Technology websites and bloggers have suggested that Google harvested the information simply because it was able to do so and would later work out a way to use it to make money.

(Emphasis added.) Marius Milner, a software engineer who now lives in California wrote the Google Street View software "repeatedly warned that it collected personal data, and called for a legal and privacy review." He has pleaded the Fifth Amendment and will not answer investigators questions.

Whoops, we scooped up your pictures! Oh, no, we got your emails! How did that happen?! Oopsie-daisy, we got your texts, documents, and passwords! We didn't mean to. Hey, it's no biggie. Don't worry; our motto is "Don't be evil!" more...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 10:20 AM | Comments (342)
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God bless America. Open thread.

Let freedom ring, yo.

ALSO, if you have Netflix, look up "Chosin". This is a goos day to watch that.

thanks @jimmiebr on Twitter

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 10:00 AM | Comments (87)
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This memorial stands in a farm in Croix Rouge, France, in honor of the sacrifice of the soldiers of the 42nd Infantry Division's 167th Alabama and 168th Iowa Regiments, of WWI. The 42nd was nicknamed "Rainbow" by then Col. Douglas MacArthur, who described the 26 National Guard units within the division as "stretching across America like a rainbow."

The 42nd Infantry Division is a New York National Guard unit today, and served in Iraq.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 05:56 AM | Comments (92)
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Just like last year ...

Posted by: andy at 05:50 AM | Comments (82)
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If you missed it, Dave had a good post on the Tomb of the Unknowns and the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment yesterday.

Like Dave, I've seen the changing of the guards ceremony several times, and it's one of those things that you really can't describe and do it justice. If you get the chance, go and see it for yourself. more...

Posted by: andy at 05:28 AM | Comments (36)
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Is anyone in the media going to cover this, or are they all going to continue giving the leftwing the Green Light for terrorizing people?

Even though Erick Erickson is a CNN contributor, I think there's a good chance they won't cover the story. If they do, you can bet your bottom dollar it will be a "balanced" piece including lots of supposed harassments of liberals.

They'll reach back ten years for "balance."

There are only two media storylines: Conservatives are doing bad things, and "a broken system permits both sides to do bad things."

There is never the third type of story: Leftists are doing bad things.

Incidentally, I'm okay, nothing to report.

Posted by: Ace at 07:03 PM | Comments (401)
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Well since the cobloggers have already done such a good job covering Memorial Day topics  and I'm kinda tired after cleaning all day, tonight's going to be mostly a movie night.

And tonight's feature is The Andromeda Strain (1971). The original good one - not that POS that appeared a few years ago.

After a US government satellite crashes near the town of Piedmont, New Mexico, a microbe attached to the satellite kills all but two of the town's inhabitants - a sixty-two-year-old man and an infant. Some of those who died show signs of having first gone mad. The mechanism of death is massive clotting and granulation of every drop of blood in their bodies. An elite scientific team takes the satellite into a secret underground laboratory in the Nevada desert, known as the Wildfire Complex, in order to study it. The new life form is assigned the code name Andromeda. Within a couple of days the microbe mutates into a form that degrades synthetic rubber gaskets and thus escapes containment.

This was based on the excellent book, The Andromeda Strain, which was Michael Crichton's first novel which he wrote while in Harvard medical school. Even though though the movie and book are now over 40 years old other than a some dated technology and references it still holds up quite well. Crichton knew his science and really did have a good vision of where technology was going.

One thing I liked about the book was that it included graphs, print outs, and even had footnotes. I tried one time to track down the footnoted references but either they were old enough that the university library no longer kept them or they were just made up as part of the book itself.

The film is very well done and stays very faithful to the book. In particular the editing is very tight so the story moves right along, never drags, and doesn't waste time doing needless exposition. I also liked the fact that the scientists were actually smart (as opposed to movie-smart where they act like jerks and spout gibberish) but also made mistakes and went down blind-alleys at times.

It's also a refreshing change from modern movies to see the military characters treated as smart and competent as well and not lazily made out to be the enemy e.g. Outbreak. Here the real enemy is the bug itself and it's a race to see whether the humans can find its weakness using the two survivors in time to prevent annihilation.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:40 PM | Comments (309)
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