Bob's Gift Baskets Blog

Brought to you by Bob’s Gift Baskets

Today is when many of us enjoy a much needed day off from work. It is another paid holiday that we all enjoy, but what is it? Memorial Day is just another holiday to so many, yet we do not even give a second thought to what it is. Memorial Day is a holiday to remember those brave men an women who fell fighting for what they believed in – their country – our freedom – and so much more. Perhaps they lived and have since fallen, but they deserve to be remembered.

Flag raising at Iwo Jima

This Memorial Day is even more special to this Web Master because this year I have lost a father. A veteran of World War II, my father was there on Iwo Jima as a marine sniper. He watched as his fellow combatants climbed Mount Suribachi and placed the American flag on top of the mountain. That famous photo by Joe Rosenthal that has inspired so many monuments around the country. My father placed his own small flag there too. Just a small flag patch stuck to a rock with a piece of chewing gum – now long gone. He watched a lot more too. He watched as 6,821 of his fellow marines and other combatants were killed. He watched as almost twenty thousand were wounded. He also watched as over 18,000 Japanese were killed. There were only 216 Japanese taken prisoner. The rest died in heroic determination to defend the island. He often told me that he could not understand the determination of the Japanese on the island.

Those images were so etched in his mind that it bothered him until his death just this year. He shared those images with very few, often trying to hide them and his true horrors from those around him by telling bullshit stories of that event. But he shared with me because I too have my own images for I too have seen the horrors..

So this Memorial Day I ask you to remember. Remember those that are over there in Iraq or Afghanistan and the images they are seeing right now as you sit in your home enjoying a quiet meal a perhaps a beer.

This Web Masters asks only that you remember them. All of them on this Memorial Day.

One last thing. Enjoy your beer. That simple pleasure has been paid for with the lives of thousands.

Brought to you by Bob’s Gift Baskets

Apollo 11 Patch

In an earlier posting I told you about how the space race was important in the miniaturization of the modern devices we all take for granted today. This miniaturization was a necessity because of the cost of putting something in orbit around the earth. Every pound saved also saved money or allowed for more of another type payload. We have John F. Kennedy, L. B. J, NASA and many more to thank for the devices we now have.

Cancelled

And now we have Barack Obama to thank for destroying all of that. Yes you heard me. Our new President has destroyed our future by canceling NASA’s Constellation Project. This is what was supposed to replace our aging shuttles which even now are making their last flights into space.

Obama wants NASA to get out of the manned space flight business and concentrate instead on other space exploration projects.

What this means is that we are now going to be paying the Russians to supply and take our men and women up to the International Space Station. It means that in a few very short years, the multibillion dollar International Space Station will be abandoned rather the upgraded. It means the end of manned space flight! It is the end of an Era!

Man's First Step

No one pays much attention when NASA lands an unmanned rover on Mars, but the entire world would watch and cheer if NASA were to land a man on Mars. Just like they did when Neil Armstrong said as he stepped onto the surface of the moon. “That’s one small step for man – One giant leap for mankind.”

Thank you Obama for destroying all of that.

The "Eagle" on the Moon

Obama wants the commercial sector to take over manned space flight and that is a joke. The commercial sector has so far only achieved a sub orbital flight. A flight intended to show that they can take paying customers on the ride of a lifetime. They have no interest at all in the exploration of space. Their interests lie along the same line as the cruise ship industry. Paying customers.

This article may be continued in further postings by Bob’s Gift Baskets.

Brought to you by Bob’s Gift Baskets

Mobile phone 1973

Did you know that the first cell phones were large and bulky weighing several pounds? You pick up any modern cell phone and you are holding more computing power then the computer on the lunar lander that landed man on the moon. You can talk to anyone in the world from just about anywhere. You can surf the Internet, you can view live video streams from just about anywhere. This is just one small example of what has come about because of the Space Race in the early days of space flight.

BlackBerry Bold 9700

The need for miniaturization. It costs several thousand dollars to orbit even a one pound object and millions to orbit a modern communication satellite. We would not have the satellites we do if it were not because of the need for miniaturization. The Space Race demanded smaller sized everything and the nation and NASA responded.

And that need by NASA has spilled over to commercial devices. Because of this need and response we have the modern tools and devices we have today. It made the possibility of home computers a reality. It made cell phone technology possible. The Internet would not work or exist if NASA didn’t have satellites in orbit. Even your old home telephones connected to a land line would not work as clear as they do now. Nor would the millions of calls made world wide every minute even be possible.

All of this happened because of President John Kennedy’s commitment to landing a man on the moon before the end of the decade speech in 1962. It forced the nation and NASA to respond and we reaped the benefits of that endeavor and continue to do so today.

This article may be continued in further postings by Bob’s Gift Baskets.