February 2004

Download Music

Beverage companies are partnering strong alliances with download music companies. Pepsi and iTunes, Coca Cola (Sprite brand) and MusicMatch, SoBe (enhanced beverages) and BuyMusic. A good article on the subject from Detroit News.

So far, the number of music fans quenching their thirst for tunes through legitimate online vendors like MusicMatch has been a tiny fraction of the millions using file-sharing networks. Only recently have industry-authorized outlets like Apple Computer Inc iTunes Music Store started to draw audiences large enough to attract the interest of Coke and other top-tier advertisers.

Fedgate

Fedgate.org is in its 6th year of providing U.S. Government Information on the Web--at no cost to anyone that visits. I am somewhat skeptical of nonaffiliated government info sites. Who sponsors the website (special interest or lobby group)?? At the bottom of page you will see "Federal Gateway is a Trademark of the SBCC". Site is a valid noninterest gateway, info I found on SBCC.

8. NAVIGATE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT INFO MORE EASILY
(Columbia, MD) A 1996 Washington Post survey of federal computing activity reported 42 departments and agencies spent $490 million on 4,300 separate Web sites and 215 bulletin boards. Federal Gateway is a new, free Web site produced by the Small Business Contract Council, Inc. (SBCC) that consolidates all the federal agency public Internet resources at one location, simplifying the task of acquiring federal government information. According to SBCC, the two traditional difficulties in finding federal information are locating the agency that has the information you need and then searching through what can be a massive site to find your data. Federal Gateway offers an overview of the entire federal government with a listing of key links and topic outlines of the agency queried.

Search Engines

This is more for people who have websites. Neutralize is a tool for checking how optimized you site is with search engines, enter your site addy in orange box. Graph seems to change, with how recently search engines have indexed your pages. Click on the red number in graph and it will show you which pages have been indexed for that search engine. Even clicking zero will show previously indexed pages. Covers four engines; google, looksmart, inktomi, and alta vista. Yahoo, MSN, DMOZ and AOL are portals, not search engines - they use google, looksmart and inktomi.. If you have a noncommercial website, get listed on looksmart via Zeal (I have flunked the test for membership twice). For information on search engines, I would visit highrankings (Jill Whalan) and the forums at ihelpyouservices. I believe searchenginewatch is too commercial, just want you to become a subscribing member.

Southern Humor

Southernhumorists.com is a collection of southern writers with a strong sense of regional heritage who laugh at their own shortcomings and make diversity into an asset. Their signature is "We cover the Country like Kudzu". (kudzu and ecological threat) Kinda pitiful, when I have to explain the humor in slogan to Yanks. Parents with children can relate to this members column "A tale of sick kiddies". Another good humor site is thenetwits.com, which is a collection of 160 humorist writers on the net. I found this page quite inspirational "Things I have learned from fireflies".

Things don't have to be understood to be enjoyed.
Ask why ... but don't expect an easy answer.
Hold things you love loosely, and learn to let them go.
If people don't understand you, it doesn't really matter.
Take time to celebrate life.
If your light goes out, wait a minute.
The best things in life are still free.

Chauffeur - Word Origin

Came upon the site takeourword.com looking up the origin of the word "chauffeur". How in the world did we ever get driver out of the root verb "chafe" (to heat). Each week they spotlight a word.

Hopefully this etymology won’t chafe your hide, as we say in Texas, but a chafing dish is in fact related to the chafing one gets from riding in the saddle too long, or having one’s skin rubbed raw in general. Before 1300 it was chaufen "inflame, warm, heat", from Old French chaufer (yep, source of chauffeur, the fellow who stoked the fire of a steam engine). The Old French form arose from Vulgar Latin calefare, an alteration of Latin calefacere "make hot" (from calere "hot" + facere "make").

Brawnyman

Little over a week left to enter your man in the Brawnyman contest. Contesthound is a contest and sweepstake directory, may be a good starting point if you are into contests.

To enter the "Make Over My Brawny Man" contest, submit a brief essay (no more than 100 words) explaining what makes him so well-rounded. describe how a man with whom you are personally acquainted is 'versatile'; both soft through sensitivity and compassion and strong with rugged good looks and strength of character, and why he deserves to win a Brawny Man make over.

Time / Date

Timeanddate.com is a great reference site for world time. You can configure and bookmark the world time menu to your time zone (I am on CST and used Birmingham AL). Check the time before you make that long distance call.

Iran

I know nothing about the author, Sam Ghanchi (editor of iranscope.com), but here is an article entitled "Futurist Party And Political Coalitions". Another article that caught my eye was "Iran & Saudi Arabia: Monarchies & Islamism", written in 2002. C'mon, this guy can not be living in Iran.

A united front, whether that of traditional Jebhe Melli or the newly formed unions for a secular republic in Iran, may achieve a secular republic by ending the Islamic Republic, and may even prevent the return of monarchy and stop formation of another despotic and religious republic.  Nonetheless would such united fronts, by themselves, be able to ensure the building of a post-industrial 21st Century society in Iran, without the active presence of a Futurist Party in these coalitions, whether during the change of IRI (Islamic Republic of Iran) or afterwards?  Certainly not!  In Iran, for decades, the political leadership of the country has been pushing it backwards to the Medieval world, and a new political leadership, focused on a post-industrial plan, will have to fundamentally change course, to form the Futurist Iran.

Legacies

The BBC has an interesting area of their website. It's called Legacies, each month visit a different local UK legend.

This month's theme is Local Legends - throughout UK history, certain men and women have left such an indelible mark on their locality that they pass into the realm of legend, where history blends with folklore and balladry, and the truth is blinded by fantasy.

Enter the site to find over 60 such legends; for example Mother Shipton, from North Yorkshire, an old seer who predicted, amongst other things the Plague of 1666. Or from Scotland comes Sawney Bean, their answer to Hannibal Lecter. From Northern Ireland we look at the mystery and popularity of St Patrick, and from Wales you can find a Welsh Robin Hood. Our characters come from every corner of the country so click on the map to find your Local Legend.

Glossary

Glossarist.com is the best glossary/dictionary portal I have seen on the net! Looking for the definition of a term in a particular subject can be difficult and time consuming. That's where the Glossarist can help you look. Just choose subject or search for the industry you are interested in at the top. Let's start off with card games.

Art

Artcyclopedia is a guide to museum-quality art on the Internet, start off with the "art history" page for simplicity and content. You can browse artists by movement, media and subject. Here is the page on Baroque Art. First gives a brief history of the art movement or era, then lists artists. Clicking the artist will bring you to a page where museums around the world exhibit digital photographs of artists work. Basically, the site is a museum quality artist exhibit search engine. It is very commercialized, nothing wrong with paying the bills and making a profit. If you believe you have an antique painting, here is some tips on storage and display. Chris Whitcombe, a professor at Sweet Briar College, has an excellent site of art history, a guide to resources on the net. Both sites are similar and different, the latter being a more indepth study categorized by time periods. Getting off the subject (as usual), but two graffiti glossaries; graffiti.org and 149st.com.

New Amsterdam

Library of Congress has added an exhibit in the global gateway portal: America and the Netherlands. A link to the page on New Netherland. The Dutch colonists often name their settlements in New Netherland after towns in their native country. I didn't know Theodore Roosevelt was of Dutch descent.

Although they were mainly interested in trade, the directors of the WIC, the Lords Nineteen, decided to start a permanent colony in the region where the New Netherland Company had held its charter. In March 1624, the ship New Netherland left the Dutch Republic with thirty emigrant families aboard, mainly Walloon refugees from present-day Belgium. These colonists formed the nucleus of the future Dutch presence in the area. Some settled at present-day Albany and along the Delaware and Connecticut Rivers. Others settled at the southern tip of present-day Manhattan, where they built simple houses and Fort Amsterdam. The settlement of five farms (bouwerijen) and a few warehouses was later christened New Amsterdam. The next year, many more Dutch settlers followed the Walloon pioneers.

Law for All

Nolo.com has a large law encyclopedia index, very easy to navigate. Went looking at an apartment and office said security deposit was $200, of which $100 was non-refundable. They use it for painting, cleaning carpets, etc. Mind you, we live in Alabama - but I thought that was illegal in all states. That comes under the "normal wear and tear" clause. On the index page, I scrolled down and clicked rent and security deposits. Next, security FAQ's which led me to landlord-tenant statutes. Excellent resource page, bottoms has the code of all the states. Copy it somewhere and go to the Legal Research Center, which leads you to all 50 state statute pages. I looked up Alabama statutes and found nothing, you have to be a lawyer to understand the legalese.

Womens Buttons

I never knew why women's buttons are on the left side and mens are on the right side. Zipper covers for both sexes are on the right side. Why are buttons different? Have to go back a few centuries for the answer.

At least during the Regency (first decades of the 19th century in England) the direction in which men's clothes buttoned was not yet fully standardized, although it had begun to settle into the way we know it now. There is a book aimed at tailors from this period (1814, I think?) that advises its readers to put real buttonholes on both sides of a double-breasted waistcoat so that if the front is stained, the wearer could button it the other way. Modern buttoning conventins begin to appear during the late Victorian era. We are not sure, but this may have been assiociated with the rise of mass produced ready to wear garments in the later part of the century.

Many of our contemporary clothing styles have their origins in the 19th century Victorian period as do our buttoning conventions. Some authors suggest that fashionable women at the time were dressed by others (and most people were right-handed). Thus women's clothing was designed to be fastened by a right-handed person FACING them, while men were assumed to dress themselves. Women were more likely to have maids to help them dress. To button a shirt or blouse, a right-handed person (most people are right handed) finds it more convenient to hold the button with the right hand and then push it through the buttonhole, which is held in the left hand. To make it easier for the maid, the buttons were changed on garments made for ladies of high society. Since the maid faced the lady while dressing her, buttons on the left simplified the matter. Thus left buttoning buttons and buttons in back made it easier for a maid to help with the dressing. Wealthy men also had servants such as valets. However, while they might lay out the clothes, they would not dress the man in the same way a ladies maid would dress a woman, such as buttoning his buttons.

Transgenderism

Karen Anne Taylor provides education, enlightenment and useful sources of information about transgender. A good resource for those who do not practise "contempt prior to investigation" in living. I provide this link without expressing my opinion on the subject.

The term Gender identity refers to how one thinks of one's own gender: whether one thinks of oneself as a man (masculine) or as a woman (feminine). Society prescribes arbitrary rules or gender roles (how one is supposed to and not supposed to dress, act, think, feel, relate to others, think of oneself, etc.) based on one's sex (whether one has a vagina or a penis). These gender roles are called feminine and masculine. Anyone who does not abide by these arbitrary rules may be targeted for mistreatment ranging from not being included in people's circle of friends, through the cold shoulder, snide comments, verbal harassment, assault, rape, and murder based on one's (perceived) gender identity.

bendover

"and take it like a man" No... wait, thats a joke. This is about Ben Dover, a common-sense advice columnist with the Dallas Morning News. His website is chock full of info, just have to search thru it to find what you want. Think you have a cheating spouse, here are his strategies.

Yes, yes, yes...I know we've gotta pay our bills-so don't waste your time blistering me with e-mails and lectures about today's column. But when life happens-and sooner or later it will to all of us-you've got to not only know how to prioritize your debts, but how to stretch your available remaining cash. Perhaps even more important is knowing that you've got incredibly potent rights (under both federal debtor protection and state bankruptcy laws) that will protect you during this financially dark time of your life-and you can't be afraid to play hardball, if necessary. From inside scoop on the credit counseling industry-to the pros and cons of bankruptcy-to knowing how to fire bill collectors (invoking federal law's as simple as firing off a certified letter to these thugs), I've assembled a heckuva resource page, loaded with information that I wish I'd had 18 years ago: www.bendover.com/control.asp

Adult Entertainment

I try to cover the web as a whole entity. Let's face it, adult entertainment is the biggest business conducted on the net! Here is a couple of objective articles that cover the industry. First article is an overall view that covers consolidation (blockquote from page 2) and the second covers a few interesting difficulties (patent and website crackdown).

Part 2: Problems on the Horizon

Due to charge-backs among other reasons, American Express has refused to handle Adult transactions since 2000. PayPal, under new management with eBay, has followed suit. And now, with our darkest days still to come, Visa appears to have jumped on the 'Anti-Adult' bandwagon.

Forbes.com - Visa's Porn Crackdown
"Visa U.S.A. imposed (new rules) late last year requiring adult content Web sites to pay a $750 fee and register intimate financial details about their operations. Little noticed outside the freewheeling online sex trade, the rules have created a firestorm among porn peddlers who complain that Visa is taking a pound of flesh out of their business."

Charge-backs are the nemesis of the credit companies and the nightmare of membership sites. Charge-backs are virtually assured, when one spouse finds the charge on the credit receipt. Rather than confessing that yes, they were indeed staring at an Internet sex site, the anxious spouse tells the credit-card company that he's scandalized! Someone else was purchasing porn with his card, and he simply must have the charges removed. Never mind that no other mysterious purchases have appeared on said credit card.

Geeksquad

Best Buy is reinventing itself as the high end digital provider, competing against Gateway, Circuit City and Walmart. Best Buy's super weapon of tech support is the geek squad, those foot soldiers in white shirts and skinny black ties or skirts and black tights. On their website, they have a cool photo album - aiding celebrities in distress.

May, 2003 - When we showed up, The Blue Man Group was red in the face with computer rage. When we left, they were back to...uh....normal? The Blue Man Group was in town recently performing on tour and their laptop went down. We made a late night house call and got them back up and running. They were kind enough to pose for this photo near the back loading dock of the Target Center. One truly wonders who is more odd?

Brand Marketing

An article that covers partnership promotions between rock music and brands. Another article on biblical archaeology.

Experts in brand marketing say such promotions are a logical evolution of the enduring partnership between rock music and brands courting young consumers. Music confers a hip, cool image on a product -- be it beer, burgers or bonus air miles. Budding online services, such as Apple's iTunes Music Store, get to promote their wares on another company's advertising budget. Plus the promotions underwrite the cost of giving away free music.

American Candidate

Could this unkown person be the next President of the United States? Running as a write in candidate? Another reality show (10 episodes) - give me a break!! It will run this summer, probably in July. A bi-partisan panel will pick 12 contestants. Viewers will vote each week, via the Internet and telephone, to eliminate at least one candidate until one remains. Here are the eligibility requirements. Below are what I found to be amusing. Should I request an application or call 877-RUN-2004 (877-786-2004)?

8. If selected as a participant, you will be supplied with a stipend and must be willing and able to live on the road for up to 12 weeks and to be filmed whenever Producer deems necessary. You must also be willing to appear live on the Program whenever requested.

9. If requested, you must be willing to undergo physical and psychological examinations and testing by medical personnel selected by Producer.

10. If requested, you must complete and timely return all participant application materials (to be furnished by Producer) which shall include, among other things, liability and other release forms for you and your immediate family, waivers, authorizations (including background check authorization forms), a medical history form, confidentiality agreement, questionnaire and any additional application materials requested by Producer.

11. You may not appear in the Program if you have appeared as a contestant on more than one game or contest show within this past year or if you have appeared as a contestant on more than two game or contest shows within the past 5 years. If you are currently being considered to be a participant on any other reality or game show, you agree that if selected as a participant in the Program, you will immediately withdraw your application and/or inform any other show considering you as a participant that you can no longer be or be considered as a participant on such show.

12. By applying to participate in the Program you authorize Producer and its agents to conduct civil, criminal, financial, credit, medical, driver-history and any other type of background checks deemed necessary by Producer.

Denial of Service

Good webpage of a DOS attack by hackers on the GRC (Gibson Research Corporation) website a few years ago. Explains in detail his research in what and how it happened. Bottom of page talks some about firewalls.

The Birth of the IRC Bot c(Windows Attack Zombie)

The computer press calls them "Zombies", but they are known as "Bots" or "IRC Bots" within the hacker community. The particular strain of IRC Bot that attacked us calls itself an "evilbot".

"IRC Bots" are among the newer breed of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) agents deployed by the Internet's most active hackers. Whenever an IRC Bot hosting Windows PC is started, the Bot waits for the system to finish booting, then connects to a previously designated IRC server. Using a private password key, it joins a secret IRC channel that is not visible to other users of the IRC server . . . and awaits commands.

Motivation

A great way to start the day.

Spyware article

Intranetjournal has a good article on spyware. It relates mainly to corporate intranets, but is a good review for home computers. The right side has an outline of the five pages. Another balanced article is on the corporate outsourcing of IT jobs. Last month I had referred to this article on India.

Adware: Caught in a Marketing Nightmare

Adware is software that displays advertisements to computer users. Some of the most strict definitions of adware include applications that are sponsored for their free use. One of the most popular examples is WeatherBug, which offers a free version of weather software and comes wrapped in a skin that displays advertising. While older versions of WeatherBug had rather significant privacy issues, newer versions are pretty straight forward: you see the ad, but you get the weather. Is this adware? In the most strict sense, many people say it is. But to some computer users, the tradeoff seems fair.

As for adware that reports personally identifiable information, once again tolerance varies. Some people don't want any information, such as tracking the sites you visit, revealed. Others draw the line at logging IP addresses.

Eating Utensils

The Anthropology Department at the California Academy of Sciences houses the Rietz Food Technology Collection. Containing approximately 1,300 items, this collection was assembled by Carl Austin Rietz, an inventor and businessman in the food industry. A large portion of this collection consists of eating utensils, including tableware and portable eating sets. The variety of forms displayed by many items in the Rietz Collection document the history and evolution of such common utensils as forks, knives, spoons, and chopsticks. Start with the page on forks.

Kitchen forks trace their origins back to the time of the Greeks. These forks were fairly large with two tines that aided in the carving and serving of meat. The tines prevented meat from twisting or moving during carving and allowed food to slide off more easily than it would with a knife.

By the 7th Century CE, royal courts of the Middle East began to use forks at the table for dining. From the 10th through the 13th Centuries, forks were fairly common among the wealthy in Byzantium, and in the 11th Century, a Byzantine wife of a Doge of Venice brought forks to Italy. The Italians, however, were slow to adopt their use. It was not until the 16th Century that forks were widely adopted in Italy.

Words

Merriam-Webster is the sponsor of Word for the Wise, a popular radio program broadcast on public radio stations nationwide. The show offers a daily glimpse into the intriguing world of words and language. In addition to the transcripts, the audio recordings of the program are available. After catching up on "wisdom words", check out the "Word Games" for some challenging word fun. Not to be outdone, the "Word of the Day" section has equally neat definitions.

Urbane and boorish
Consider the adjective urbane. Urbane implies high cultivation and poise based on wide social experience; it is applied to someone polished, someone whose manner is notably polite or finished. And where does urbane come from? From the Latin urbs meaning "city" or "city of Rome".

Now compare urbane to boorish. Boor is related to an Old English verb meaning "to dwell", and the original boor (from the Dutch word for "peasant") referred to any small farmer. But by the middle of the 16th century, city folks had seen fit to allow the supposedly rude manners of their country cousins to develop into the adjective boorish, which implies an insensitivity to others' feeling and an unwillingness to be agreeable.

Movies

MovieTarget lists the official web site of the movie. Also links to many movie studio websites.

Civilization

The Canadian Museum of Civilization is having an exhibit of Ancient Treasures and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Exhibit runs thru April 12, 2004. Sitemap shows the vastness of the website. This page on Canadian newspapers and WWII is one I found interesting, the rules of war and news has sure changed!

Ancient Treasures and the Dead Sea Scrolls is a major exhibition of a hundred exceptionally rare artifacts from the Biblical period in Israel, including three of the original Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in a cave in 1947. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see these unparalleled archaeological discoveries outside Israel.

Beer

Beerhunter is tales of beers and breweries from all the continents, including products from both new and older generations of small brewers, as well as stories about other "traditional beers" made in out-of-the-way places from millet, cassava root and other raw materials that happen to be available. Beerculture is a good page to start the journey. Site doesn't look like its been updated in a year or so, but is still great.

It can be argued that beer was the cause of civilization. When humans ceased to be nomads and settled down to grow grain and make bread they did this often just so they could use that bread to make beer. Beer has played a part in many other cultural revolutions, and most of the traditional brewing countries have developed their own beer culture.

Talk Show Hosts

Talkers.com made a list a year ago of the 25 greatest radio and 25 greatest television talk show hosts. Dr. Laura Schlessinger surprised me at seven, thought she would be higher. For television, Larry King acing out Johnny Carson for number one - I don't think so. Clicking the host name will give you a short bio page, never heard of some of the names.

We decided to open it up to a broad interpretation that covers everything in radio from traditional issues-oriented telephone talk to the so-called shock jock genre, including specialty talkers of any number of ilks.

In television, we included today’s cable news-talkers, morning news/chat show interview hosts, serious news program interviewers, roundtable conversation show hosts and even the late night entertainment/variety style of personality.

During these debates, many names that arguably deserve to be on these lists will come up and be examined. Names like Les Crane, Bryant Gumbel, Dr. Dean Edell, Bob Collins, Conan O’ Brien, David Frost, Irv Homer, Tom Joyner, Jim Rome and so many more. Perhaps, 10 years from now, we’ll make it the greatest “50.”

Lobster

A webpage on the history of lobstering. Did you say trivia?

Long ago, lobsters were so plentiful that Native Americans used them to fertilize their fields and to bait their hooks for fishing. In colonial times, lobsters were considered "poverty food." They were harvested from tidal pools and served to children, to prisoners, and to indentured servants, who exchanged their passage to America for seven years of service to their sponsors. In Massachusetts, some of the servants finally rebelled. They had it put into their contracts that they would not be forced to eat lobster more than three times a week.

Detroit

Detnews.com has a large archive of Detroit history articles. Here is one on soda fountains and another on Defoe Shipyards.

Ellyce Field, a Detroit News writer, described one of her visits: "Nineteen stools surround the fountain service area. Neon lights highlight colorful painted graphics of hot fudge bottles, strawberries and cherries. Hanging over the far end of the counter is an old fashioned clock with the inscription 'Always Time For Ice Cream', the true Sanders aficionado's creed. Here a child (or one at heart) can dangle his legs, twirl on the stools, make faces in the mirrored walls, watch other customers across the counter dribble hot fudge on their shirts, take deep breaths of the hot fudge in large containers just inches away and best of all, watch those great sundaes and sodas being made.."

Jim Berry of the Richmond Times remembers working as a soda jerk: "When the girls from Holy Family, a Catholic school across the street, piled in, things got pretty frantic for a while. The girls all dressed alike but they didn't all look alike. Some of them got extra syrup in their cherry Cokes. And if Doc Cramer (the owner) wasn't looking, some extra ice cream went into certain milkshakes. Being a soda jerk was a wonderful work experience. You had to deal directly with people and you had to make change from an old cash register that made a great clanging, ringing noise whenever you rang up a sale. And woe to the person whose drawer failed to balance out after the store closed."

---

During Prohibition Harry got a contract for 15 wooden, 400-horsepower speed boats used by racers like Detroit's Gar Wood, not to mention local rumrunners. Charles Kettering wanted his with self-starters. When DeFoe declined, Kettering said, "Give me two men and I'll make it self-starting tonight". DeFoe got the message and began making his boats with starters.

DeFoe invented the "upside down and rollover" method of shipbuilding. In the "roll over" a big cradle, the exact size and shape of the ship, was built bottom side up. Welders attached the steel to the skeleton eliminating difficult overhead welding and reducing man-hours by 90 percent. Then the vessel was flipped upright for its completion.

President

This would be a different way to visit presidential historic locations. Go to presidentialmuseums and top bar indexes presidents by dates. Click the time period link and next the locations link of your presidential choice. Kind of nifty! Here is George Washington historic locations and for modern day presidents, you have to go back to Lyndon Johnson for any variety.

Columnist

Elizabeth Schuett is a columnist with Cox News, a small chain of newspapers. She is down to earth, writing about family and cultural values in life. This article on reality is one you may want to start with.

Last time I looked, Vinnie had driven his fire engine to the edge of the bird feeder clearing and was kicked back waiting for something to happen. I didn't have the heart to tell him that birds are seldom attracted by a chatty little boy in a bright red fire engine.

Reality has no place in the life of a three-year-old and I have no intention of springing it on him.

MEMRI

A good site for middle east news would be memri.org.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) explores the Middle East through the region's media. MEMRI bridges the language gap which exists between the West and the Middle East, providing timely translations of Arabic, Farsi, and Hebrew media, as well as original analysis of political, ideological, intellectual, social, cultural, and religious trends in the Middle East.

Coast Guard

The US Coast Guard was established in August of 1790 to enforce tariff and trade laws. A brief page on the Coast Guard Medal. This medal is awarded by heroism not involving actual conflict with an enemy. PBS has a page titled Pyramid of Honor, which list medals below the Medal of Honor. A page elsewhere that explains more non combat military awards. Home of Heros is a clearinghouse of military heroism.

The service received its present name in 1915 under an act of Congress when the Revenue Cutter Service merged with the Life-Saving Service.  The nation now had a single maritime service dedicated to saving life at sea and enforcing the nation's maritime laws.  We began to maintain the country's aids to maritime navigation, including operating the nation's lighthouses, when the Lighthouse Service was transferred to the Coast Guard in 1939.  Later, in 1946, Congress permanently transferred the Bureau of Marine Inspection an Navigation to the Coast Guard, thereby placing merchant marine licensing and merchant vessel safety under our purview.