While today's time and date offer the potential for some light hearted fun with binary I'm more inclined to stick with the altered background theme of the blog this week (unfortunately I don't think this is visible on mobile devices and if either of my readers use a mobile device to view the blog they may not have noticed the slight change in the right hand margin) and go with something a bit more reflective.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Lt Colonel John McCrae,
Canadian Army Medical Corps,
Dec 1915
And I'd say that if the Allied dead of two world wars were indeed fighting for freedom then to its great shame my generation has largely failed to hold that torch high and has occasionally dropped it altogether. We broke faith, and by rights it should cause as many sleepless nights among the living as among those who died nearly a century ago on the Western Front.
