Month: May 2005

Keeping Up Memorial Day

Tomb of the Unknowns, Arlington National Cemetery Not long ago I heard a young man ask why people still kept up Memorial Day, and it set me thinking of the answer. Not the answer that you and I should give to each other-not the expression of those feelings that, so long as you live, will make this day sacred to memories of love and grief and heroic youth–but an answer which should command the assent of those who do not share our memories …

[…snip…]

… So to the indifferent inquirer who asks why Memorial Day is still kept up we may answer, it celebrates and solemnly reaffirms from year to year a national act of enthusiasm and faith. It embodies in the most impressive form our belief that to act with enthusiam and faith is the condition of acting greatly. To fight out a war, you must believe something and want something with all your might. So must you do to carry anything else to an end worth reaching. More than that, you must be willing to commit yourself to a course, perhpas a long and hard one, without being able to foresee exactly where you will come out. All that is required of you is that you should go somewhither as hard as ever you can. The rest belongs to fate. One may fall-at the beginning of the charge or at the top of the earthworks; but in no other way can he reach the rewards of victory.

[An excerpt of a Memorial Day address delivered by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., May 30, 1884, at Keene, N.H., before John Sedgwick Post No. 4, Grand Army of the Republic.]

May’s Between the Cracks Picks

Between the CracksIn an attempt to capture stories that didn’t receive much face time on most news sites, here are this month’s “Between the Cracks” picks:

Fortune Cookie Payout (via AZ Central)
One hundred ten people from 26 states won from $100,000 to $500,000 each in the U.S. powerball lottery (totaling $19 million) by betting on a series of numbers they found in a fortune cookie. It made for an expensive night for Powerball, with winners beating the odds in a game with a 1 in 3 million winning combination.

‘Ginormous’ Tops Non-Dictionary Word List (via Yahoo!)
The editors of Merriam-Webster dictionaries got more than 3,000 entries when, in a lighthearted moment, they asked visitors to their Web site to submit their favorite words that aren’t in the dictionary. First place went to “ginormous” — bigger than gigantic and bigger than enormous — followed by “confuzzled” for confused and puzzled simultaneously, and “whoot,” an exclamation of joy. A “lingweenie” — a person incapable of making up new words — placed 10th. I’m guilty of using ginormous as often as humanly possible.

Xbox 360 Demos Running on Macs (via CNet)
Yup, just a week after Microsoft’s Bill Gates blasted Apple’s iPod as being “toward the end of its life” (among other anti-Apple statements), Microsoft released a statement saying that they, in fact, were using Apple G5 desktop computers to power their demonstration video illustrating the powers of the new XBox 360. The statement read, “We purchased a number of Apple G5’s because very specific hardware components of the G5 allow developers to emulate some of the technology behind future Xbox products and services.” What the heck does that even mean?

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