Web Blah Garza

First I want to start with saying God Bless the souls that were lost today. The tragedy of 9/11 is one we should never forget. I also want to voice some concerns. Today I saw some reports that disturbed me, I saw the usual tolling of the bells and the reading of names, this will always be a moving thing to see. I also saw people commemorating the First responders who lost there lives and this is as it should be. What I objected to was the introduction of memorializing the lost souls of Military personal on this day. Please understand I have great respect for people who feel a strong need to defend this country and the people they love in it and the sacrifices they make. But we already have Memorial Day for that, and every day should be a memorial to them.

9/11 is about the people who fell out of the buildings, the people who were trapped in the rubble, the people who ran from the crashing debris and dust and the people who stood in shock as they watched the crashing down of not only two buildings but the belief that we were safe in our homeland, our country. 9/11 should only be a memorial to the souls that were lost that day and the introduction of anything else, in my opinion, only lessens the impact of this horrible event in our history.

Another thing I want to get off my chest is this. I actually don’t blame the terrorists, or whoever did it, I blame our government for there inaction that led to the tragedy, the fact that so many signs were there early on and that people in our intelligence community ( i use the term losely) had intell on the possibility of this tragedy occuring and did nothing to prevent it. Our government failed us, our so called leaders failed us and no New President or Legislature will ever take that away. We have been let down by our government and since then it has been nothing but charades and finger pointing. We have stretched our military out accross the world and we are actually very vulnerable here in our home and we have become the incarcerated in our own land. It’s time to bring our soldiers home to protect us here. I don’t care if there are ten Bin Ladens out there. The job of our government is to keep us safe here. If we are left wide open, then what chance do we stand.

I hope that this never happens and I hope that our leaders realize how foolish they have become thinking that protecting us by sending the majority of our military overseas is good. Bring the troops home if for only the reason that it makes good strategic sense, damn the economics of the MIC we are more important than the Military Budget and Industrial connections to the military. OUr soldiers deserve better our country deserves better, God bless the souls lost on 9/11 and may they remain a symbol of our vulnerability and the fact that we are the leaders of our country and the government must remember to serve us, and to protect us here at home, not in the deserts of some far away land.

I am a child of the 50’s/60’s and most people are unaware of the fact that without Bo Diddley the Rolling Stones wouldn’t have their sound. Many famous rockers of the sixties copied Bo and to tell the truth there wasn’t anyone like him before he came around. A cantankarous but humourous man, He will be missed!! His passing marks the end of an era in the Music World.

The end of an era is upon us once again. Arthur C Clarke changed the way I looked at life early on and lent his imagination to the creation of a world of wonder and contemplation of all things scientific. Along with HG Wells and Jules Verne he gave me much meat for thought and offerd up the wine of perspective. Here is the story from the BBC News:

British science fiction writer Sir Arthur C Clarke has died in his adopted home of Sri Lanka at the age of 90.
The Somerset-born author came to fame in 1968 when short story The Sentinel was made into the film 2001: A Space Odyssey by director Stanley Kubrick.

His visions of space travel and computing sparked the imagination of readers and scientists alike.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse paid tribute, hailing the writer as a “great visionary”.
Since 1995, the author had been largely confined to a wheelchair by post-polio syndrome.
He died at 0130 local time (2000 GMT) of respiratory complications and heart failure, according to his aide, Rohan De Silva.

Far-seeing scientist

“Sir Arthur has left written instructions that his funeral be strictly secular,” his secretary, Nalaka Gunawardene, was quoted as saying by news agency AFP.
She said the author had requested “absolutely no religious rites of any kind”.
A farmer’s son, Sir Arthur was educated at Huish’s Grammar School in Taunton before joining the civil service.

He served in the Royal Air Force during World War II, and foresaw the concept of communication satellites.
Sir Arthur’s detailed descriptions of space shuttles, super-computers and rapid communications systems inspired millions of readers.

When asked why he never patented his idea for communication satellites, he said: “I did not get a patent because I never thought it will happen in my lifetime.”
In the 1940s, he maintained man would reach the moon by the year 2000, an idea dismissed at the time.

He was the author of more than 100 fiction and non-fiction books, and his writings are credited by many observers with giving science fiction a human and practical face. He collaborated on the screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey with Kubrick

‘Great prophet’

British astronomer Sir Patrick Moore had known Sir Arthur since they met as teenagers at the British Interplanetary Society.
Sir Patrick paid tribute to his friend, remembering him as “a very sincere person” with “a strong sense of humour”.

Tributes have also come from George Whitesides, the executive director of the National Space Society, where Sir Arthur served on the board of governors, and fellow science fiction writer Terry Pratchett.

The author married in 1953, and was divorced in 1964. He had no children.
He moved to the Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka in 1956 after embarking on a study of the Great Barrier Reef.
There, he pursued his interest in scuba diving, even setting up a diving school at Hikkaduwa, near the capital, Colombo.

“Sometimes I am asked how I would like to be remembered,” he recalled recently.

“I have had a diverse career as a writer, underwater explorer and space promoter. Of all these, I would like to be remembered as a writer.”
A statement from Sir Arthur’s office said he had recently reviewed the final manuscript of his latest novel.
The Last Theorem, co-written with Frederik Pohl, will be published later this year, it said.