Way in advance of Memorial Day...

For once it seems like of all the current disasters in the world, none of the headlines are focused on the military. Which I suppose is a round about way of looking for good news. Over the last two weeks I found some actual, straight-up good news stories out of the US Armed Forces.

I wanted to use this first one last week since it came out on my blog day, but I didn't have anything related, so I held it.

The Boston Globe reported the US Navy has quietly allowed women to begin serving in the submarine forces. Recently I've been reading Tom Brokaw's "The Greatest Generation," which honors folks who fought in World War II. Several of the chapters in that book focus on the women who wrought quite an upheaval on the policy of females in the military. Now, there weren't any women in subs then (or officially recognized as in combat for that matter), but women in the submarine service is one of the last barriers to be broken.

According to the Globe, "the Navy plans to start by assigning three female officers each in eight different crews of guided-missile attack submarines and ballistic missile submarines." The reasoning being these types of subs are the easiest (read: cheapest) to retro-fit to accommodate living quarters for women. I'm a little claustrophobic, so I would never want to do this, but good luck to 'em!

One thing the members of the Greatest Generation and today's military have in common is the call to serve. I mean, you'd really need a strong sense of duty to put yourself in the line of fire for others. And as you read profiles of soldiers and sailors and such, you find out exactly how many of the people who answered that call are genuinely good and decent human beings. One such good Samaritan found himself in the headlines a week or so back. The New York Daily News posted a story on Army medic and Iraq vet John Stone, who performed the Heimlich maneuver on Toby Weiss at a Yankees game and saved the rabbi's wife's life.

Clearly these men and women who do so much for us at home and abroad deserve as much as we can give them when they're done serving. The Houston Chronicle has a story on Meredith Iler, a fundraising superwoman who is contributing in a major way to easing those vets' transitions back to civilian life. She founded Helping a Hero, a company that raises money and collects land and work donations to build handicap-accessible homes for severely injured war veterans. The veterans end up being responsible for $50,000 of the purchase price. President of her own public relations firm, Iler donates 50 hours a week to Helping a Hero and has built 18 homes since 2005 and raised money for eight more.

(Photo courtesy of the New York Daily News)

Protect and Serve...

Today's title is the motto of police departments pretty much everywhere. And even though each branch of the military has its own tagline - "Be all that you can be;" "The few, The proud, The Marines;" etc. - I feel like "Protect and Serve" pretty much sums it up regardless.

The Philadelphia Daily News spotlights one of NJ's finest and his rather excellent sense of smell. Monroe Township officer Thomas Lucasiewicz was on patrol when he thought he detected the smell of marijuana. He followed his nose to a smoking chimney, called for back-up and uncovered the biggest marijuana-growing operation in New Jersey history. A ring of six homes contained over $10 million of cannabis growing indoors under artificial lights.

Going by the number of puns in the article, I'm sure Officer Lucasiewicz has since endured his fair share of jokes. Lance Corporal Katrina Hodge is no stranger to the British media's humor as well. Nicknamed Combat Barbie, Hodge has served in the British army for six years while competing in the Miss England pageant. According to CBS News, Hodge is one of only 10 women in her unit to be posted in Iraq, where she detained and disarmed a suspected militant with her bare hands. Her latest opponent is decidedly less formidable. With the backing of the pageant organizers, Hodge has succeeded in having the swimwear portion of the contest replaced by an athletic challenge.

Lately there has been a push to replace well-traveled fruits and veggies with their locally grown and organic, if possible, counterparts. Apparently this extends, in some measure, to the Indian army. Yahoo! News reported on development of a new non-toxic weapon against terrorism - spiciness. After field tests, the Indian military has decided to debut its ghost chili grenade. Made from The Guinness Book of World Records' world's spiciest chili, the grenades are supposed to smoke out militants from their hiding places by means of pungency.

Lastly, I found a quirky story/blog post from The Washington Post on how US military mission names are chosen. I suppose this came about after the recent release of the name of the end of the Iraq War - Operation New Dawn. Christian Davenport's post shows that thought does go into it, beyond "What sounds really, really cool?" Well, most of the time.

Mankind's continual leaps forward...

Living with three physicists (and spending time with their equally science-y friends) definitely left a mark.

As outlined in a previous post, I am just not a left-brain person. I rely on gut feelings and intuition and have very little patience for having to examine every little fact before reaching a conclusion. Yes, occasionally this gets me into trouble (hello, my first apartment in Boston), but usually I make out okay.
Still, I suppose daily exposure to the squiggles and letters that make up physics has left with me a lingering attraction for the more technical side of life.

MSNBC reports on the MIT PhDs who created robotic fish, which can look for pollutants and inspect submerged things like pipelines by mimicking the swimming motions of real fish. These fake fish are sleek and easy to maneuver with just 10 parts and one motor; they are much more likely to be able to go places other, more bulky underwater vehicles can't.

Technological advances in healthcare are reported on both MSNBC and CNET; the US and Japan have created robot doctors and nurses, respectively. Last night, I saw a preview for a movie called "Surrogates" where robots take over and seem to basically replace humans in every day living. In the case of Robo-ER here, thankfully only the Japanese seem bent on professional domination.

The "Chungbot," named after Brooke Army Medical Center's Dr. Kevin Chung, has allowed the doctor to check on patients from as far away as Iraq. The doc-bot is a five-foot tall, motorized robot is controlled by a joystick and laptop and wirelessly transmits images between the screen mounted on its "body" and Chung's laptop. This technology allows Chung to be able to see his patients and instruct another medical staff member who is there with the patient to do the hands-on care.

The Japanese have created a robot nurse to lift elderly patients from wheelchairs and beds, and, as CNet's opening paragraph says best, "naturally, it looks like a teddy bear." The bear can lift up to 134 pounds and apparently has a cuddly face to make it look less scary to the patients. It was created to help combat the problem of the workforce shrinking in proportion to the population aging.

The story on Switched.com makes me chuckle just at the premise - six mice boarding the international space station as invited guests. The tone of the Switched blog post is so perfect, I'm not even going to try to compete.

Lastly, Newsweek's website has a photo gallery nearly 100 years in the making. Court photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii traveled all over Mother Russia taking photographs at Czar Nicholas II's behest. Prokudin-Gorskii took three consecutive photos of every subject - one each with separate red, green and blue filters - and melded them through a process of his own devising in a specially fitted railway car. The result were a wide range of photos of Russia's people, architecture, technology and environment in living color. But it took the advent of digital imaging to be able to restore them.

(Photo courtesy of CNET)

Best weekend in recent history...

This past weekend I had Memorial Day off for the first time since I graduated college. I decided to go home and surprise my mom for her birthday. It was a total success, helped along by the fact her birthday is not until next weekend. : ) 

Memorial Day itself isn't necessarily a happy day since it is set aside to remember both the surviving veterans and the soldiers who sacrificed their lives during war. Even though it has come to signify a day of leisure, all the stories I found on the day's celebrations, including the one I cite from the San Francisco Chronicle just below, served to remind me there are still people out there who remember the true meaning of the day and are grateful for what the men and women in the military give up on a daily basis. 

On a similarly patriotic note, I saw a story in the LA Times about the upcoming reopening of the crown of the Statue of Liberty. Closed since the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the crown viewing station will reopen on July 4, 2009 to small groups. The rest of the lower viewing platforms have already reopened. 

Not all war news is unhappy. NJ.com had a story posted this morning on a reunion of Army National Guard troops and their families at Fort Dix yesterday. These men and women were the first wave of returning soldiers in New Jersey's largest National Guard deployment since World War II. All in all, nearly 3000 NJ National Guard soldiers were deployed. The remaining 2500 will be returning in the next two weeks. 

(Photo credit: San Francisco Chronicle)

Other people's happy thoughts...

When I was little and my mom and I traded happy thoughts at bedtime, we would always start with "MY happy thought...", putting the emphasis on what was important to us. Looking through the stories today, I saw a lot of what other people were grateful for and decided to feature that.

Helenair.com posted a story about two University of Montana graduates who formed Grateful Nation, a fund that sounds the children of fallen soldiers to college in the UM system for free. Once a child who is enrolled in the program turns 12, he or she is matched with a UM professor/mentor who helps ready the child for college. The founders of the program were stunned to learn how little federal assistance the families of those killed in action receive and wanted to do something to show the American people's support and appreciation for the nation's defenders.

The Synapse, the student paper of UC-San Francisco, recently published a story about a wellness program the university is running to get its students to focus on their physical, emotional and mental well-being. Part of the "Passport to Wellness" requires the students to write down three things they are grateful for, and the story in the paper lists a sample of the responses.

This last one isn't exactly an explication of what someone is grateful for, but I had to include it. I'm still a little leery of YouTube unless someone sends me a direct link to something I HAVE to see, so apparently I missed the phenomenon that is the GratiDudes. These guys promote people finding their "inner Super Powers" and how embracing gratitude can change your life. They are so gungho about it, they've created a dance and posted a video on YouTube. My favorite part is near the middle when two guys doing the dance nearly fall out of a tree... And by the way, I found the reference to this on a NASCAR blog...