I heard from my young marine friend in Iraq today. He is safely back in Al Asad after going to a place near the border with Syria and Jordan called the Korean Village...a former Korean migrant community in Iraq (who wudda thunk...???). My respect and gratitude for our soldiers is enormous. While Holly and I vacationed at Disney World and Cape Canaveral, our soldiers over in Iraq were putting their lives on the line.

If, as Bush suggests, we are in an epic battle for the future of western civilization, why have we not been asked to sacrifice more as a country, and not just our military families?

A few weeks ago I asked our young marine friend in Iraq if he needed anything (Flak jacket? Up-armored Humvee?) but he is pretty good as far as equipment goes. He said that he and his buddies would really appreciate a box of books and DVD's, etc.

Regardless of your opinion of the war and the administration, it seems that no one should be opposed to supporting our troops by sending over a care package. I was underwhelmed by the response from my colleagues to my note asking for book donations, so now I will open it up to blog readers...if you have anything you would like me to include, send it to me (let me know if you are sending so I can wait to ship the crate), bring it by my house if you are local, or just ask me for this marine's address and I will send it to you by e-mail.

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Totally separate note on horsepower...on a "Horsepower" show on the Discovery Channel recently, they first explained what horsepower actually is (hint: I am talking about something much more specific than, "Jay, duh, it's the power of one horse.") Well, I will give it away--I didn't know it before the show--it's 33,000 foot pounds per minute; i.e., the power required to move 33,000 pounds one foot in one minute...of course, it's based on what one typical horse can do. But the main point here is that they also showed that the Space Shuttle generates 37 million horsepower...and incredibly, the most powerful engines ever built, for the Saturn V rockets a generation ago, generated 160 million horsepower.

Holly and I just saw a Saturn V at Cape Canaveral, it was unbelievable; spectacular. and btw, can you imagine what 160 million horses looks like? At three feet of width per horse, that's a row of horses about 90,900 miles long...or you could have over 30 rows of horses, with each row stretching across the entire United States. Think of the carriage that could be pulled with the 160 million horses....