"...The 11th Day Of The 11th Month..."

As we take time today to honor all of our nation's Veterans, it's a good time to reflect on the nature of service, and what we as a country owe those who have honorably served. In my opinion, the most important thing to a Veteran is his or her dignity -- we must ensure that one thing is never taken away from anyone who served faithfully.

Boise had a Veterans Day Parade yesterday that featured a float from the local Submarine Veterans Base. Lots of pictures can be found here, including this one of their model of the USS Boise (SSN 764) going by the Capitol Building:

Good job, Submariners and Sea Cadets!

The local NBC affiliate ran a story on the Parade that included the required story on homeless Veterans. While it's important to realize that Veterans are overrepresented in the homeless population, it doesn't do anyone any good to completely mess up the statistic like the anchor did when she said, "With Veterans Day approaching, it's a time to remember and honor our military men and women, but for some it's a difficult time with recent news that 25 percent of veterans around the country are homeless." [Emphasis mine]

I'm sure it was just an unintentional mistake by some writer and editor who doesn't understand that such a "statistic" is completely ridiculous -- they've probably been brought up to believe that Veterans are all kind of crazy people, or they're just unable to understand the difference between "25% of the homeless are Veterans" and "25% of Veterans are homeless". I guess if you don't do well in the Logic portion of the SAT, you go into broadcast journalism.

Enough ranting. I hope everyone has a safe and meaningful Veterans Day. I know that fans of the Naval Academy football team are off to a good start on the weekend, even if the score of the game that made them bowl-eligible (74-62) looked more like it was associated with a basketball game.