Sunday, May 16, 2010

SPACE SHUTTLE ATLANTIS

The Final Voyage
On Friday, May 14, 2010 the space shuttle Atlantis blasted off on its 32nd and final flight into space with a crew of six and tons of gear and supplies. The commander of this final flight is Kenneth Ham, an experienced astronaut, who along with all the men in his crew have been in space on previous flights. A huge crowd of more than 40,000 were on hand to see this near picture perfect launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral Florida. We hope a few thousand brought their Skwoosh stadium gel seats and bleacher seats along to watch the final liftoff of Atlantis. Officials called the Atlantis launch day audience the largest ever. It’s only fitting that so many came to participate in this galactic retirement party. At Skwoosh we like all travel and travel related activities that’s why we built the Skwoosh Travel Gel cushion. Even astronauts could use the of TekPad pressure relieving gel on their flights. A Skwoosh gel cushion is perfect for space flight. It takes up no space, folds into a thin compact size and is not affected by temperature and normal altitude changes. We haven’t tested any of our Skwoosh gel cushions (like the Therapy cushion, the Motorcycle gel cushion or the EZ Swivel cushion) in space yet but we think the day is not too far away when we’ll get the chance. While the shuttle is on its way to hook up with and resupply the International Space Station we will be following its progress on the web keeping comfortable in front of our computer and sitting on a Skwoosh gel cushion.
The six orbiting space station residents will welcome the Atlantis crew sometime on Sunday morning. Shortly after their arrival Commander Ham and his crew will begin unloading food, lap top computers, other supplies and a Russian built compartment for the space station. All this “stuff” was crammed into a 20 foot long module in the space shuttle. The Atlantis crew will install the new compartment on the space station and conduct three space walks to replace batteries, hook up an antenna and replace a number of other parts on the station. Here’s another Skwoosh thought: since all Skwoosh gel cushions are so light weight that many of them float right here on earth can you imagine a Skwoosh gel cushion in space tethered to an Astronaut during a spacewalk? That’s what I call floating.
The final mission of Atlantis will last 12 days and will be followed by the last two remaining flights of the shuttle program. The final flights will be flown by Discovery and Endeavour and will bring to an end NASA’s 30 year space shuttle program. We’re truly sorry to see the end of one of man’s greatest endeavors.

Sunday, May 9, 2010

MOTHER’S DAY

From the American Civil War to the end of war

In 1868, Ann Jarvis created a committee to establish a "Mother's Friendship Day". The purpose was "to reunite families that had been divided during the Civil War". She wanted to expand her committee into an annual memorial for mothers, but she died in 1905 before the celebration became popular. It was left to her daughter, Anna Jarvis, to continue her mother's efforts to establish the annual holiday that we all know as “Mother’s Day”. Mother’s Day is celebrated in the USA on the second Sunday in May to recognize mothers and motherhood and the positive contributions they make to society. In the 1870’s and the 1880’s Mother’s Day was celebrated by woman’s peace groups who met at local levels to bring together groups of mothers whose sons fought or died on opposite sides of the American Civil War. Famous women like Julia Ward Howe of New York City and Juliet Calhoun Blakely of Albion Michigan carried on the promotion of Mother’s Day. It was Blakely who somehow got the Mother’s Day movement involved with the temperance movement, another huge woman’s issue of the time.
On the first celebration of Mother’s Day, in 1908, Anna Jarvis delivered 500 carnations to the Andrew's Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, West Virginia, thereby creating the symbol of Mother’s Day, the carnation. This practice of wearing a carnation on Mother’s Day soon lead to a broader commercial promotion of the holiday resulting in the giving of all types of flowers, floral bouquets and gifts. Today it is common for an active mother to receive a white carnation along with the new Skwoosh gel fishing seat or the classic kayak gel paddling seat. For Mom’s who travel, the Skwoosh Travel gel cushion might show up or she might find the Skwoosh EZ Swivel auto gel cushion for extra comfort when she drives around town. We’ve heard that there are many mothers who cruise or tour behind dad on their Harley, Gold Wing or BMW motorcycles. These bike moms get front seat comfort when their Mother’s Day gift is a new Skwoosh Pillion gel pad or Motorcycle ICS Gel cushion for their special motorcycle passenger seat.
Enough of this self promotion and back to more of the history of Mother’s Day. West Virginia was the first state to officially declare Mother’s Day a holiday in 1910. The rest of the states quickly followed and on May 8, 1914 the U.S. Congress passed a law designating the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day. On May 9, 1914 President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation declaring the first national Mother’s Day as a day for Americans to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war. In 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt approved a stamp commemorating the holiday and in May 2008, the House of Representatives voted twice on a resolution commemorating Mother’s Day so that all Congressmen would be on record showing support for the holiday.
At Skwoosh we support Mother’s Day and want to let everyone know that we thank mothers around the world for their unending sacrifices, hard work, love and understanding. We also know that it will be the mothers of the world who will unite to end wars and put an end to the loss of their children and husbands and bring a lasting peace for us all.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

RAIN, MUD AND GEOMETRY – THE 136th KENTUCK DERBY

The strategy of the shortest distance between two points

To cheers of “Bo-rail” the fastest two minutes in sports concluded the festivities of “Super Saturday” the running of the 136th Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky. All the post race hoopla about the jockey and not the colt is understandable. The name is Borel, Calvin Borel. He just rode to his third Kentucky Derby victory in four years (the first jockey to do so) using simple geometry, the shortest distance between two points. He took his favorite winning position along the rail and rode Super Saver to the winner’s circle. Borel used a different strategy in this race on his home track. In almost all of his past races Super Saver was never farther back than second in the early stages of the race. On this grueling, mud puddle of a track he decided to hug the rail allowing many of the other horses to squander t heir energy well off the rail in the muddy center of the track. A winning strategy as the 8 -1 second choice won and paid $18.00 $8.80 and $6.00. A $2.00 bet on Super Saver would more than pay for the cost of a Skwoosh Stadium gel seat. Better yet, all the rain and muck wouldn’t touch any of the super comfortable, super waterproof, maintenance free gel cushions by Skwoosh. So while the name of the winner of the this year’s Derby outing sounds more like a special airline fare than the winner of the first leg of the Triple Crown everyone at Churchill Downs who carried their compact, convenient, light weight stadium gel cushion was a winner. Now it’s off to Baltimore for the Preakness on May 15. Can “Bo-rail” and the “FARE” Super Saver, keep it up and equal the feat of Affirmed, the Last Triple crown winner who did it 32 years ago?

Saturday, May 1, 2010

THE GREAT TRAIN ADVENTURE PART II

When a NON STOP is really a NON STOP

Here’s a sequel to an article that appeared in this shameless blog of self interest and promotion a few weeks ago. On Friday, April 16, 2001 Skwoosh posted the “THE GREAT TRAIN ADVENTURE - SKWOOSH READIES FOR MASSIVE TRAVEL GEL CUSHION BUSINESS. We all thought this was a very interesting piece of information about China’s new and proposed high speed train system. and one in which we could shamelessly promote the Skwoosh gel Travel Cushion, the EZ Swivel and the Skwoosh Office gel cushion. Well the blog was interesting and the promotion of Skwoosh gel cushions fit very well, so off went the post. A few days after our posting an article appeared on the internet asking a very good question. If a high speed train travels at 200 miles per hour between Beijing and Guangzhou, a route that could have as many as 30 stations, doesn’t stopping and accelerating at each station waste a lot of energy and time. If you dug deep into your academic pas and dust off your arithmetic skills you would calculate that a 5 minute stop per station results in a loss of ( 5 minutes X 30 stations) 2.5 hours. Just think what would happen to this 2.5 hours as the Chinese population ages and these elderly folks need more time ( and hopefully more Skwoosh EZ Swivels gel cushions, wheelchair gel pads and the great new Gel Therapy cushion). Fear not, for while sitting comfortably on their Skwoosh office gel cushions Chinese engineers came up with a simple performance solution to the high speed train problem – DON’T STOP. You got it. Send the train from point A to point B without stopping to disembark or take on passengers. That’s exactly what the Chinese engineers did. They developed a train that never has to stop at a station.
You read it correctly- get on and off the high speed train without the train stopping. No time is wasted. The train is moving all the time. Here’s how it works:
1. For those who are boarding the train: The passengers at a station embark onto to a connector cabin (a pod type vehicle suspended over the high speed train tracks) before the train even arrives at the station. When the train reaches the station it will not stop. It just slows down, the connector pod attaches itself to the roof at the front of the train (it piggy backs or hitches a ride on the roof of the fast moving train). As the train is moving out of the station the newly boarded passengers find their way down into the main cabin, take out their compact Skwoosh travel gel cushions and sit in heavenly comfort as the train speeds on to the next station. Once all the passengers who just boarded are comfortably seated the empty connector cabin or pod is moved from the front of the train’s roof to the rear of the train.
2. For those who are getting off: Those passengers who wish to get off the train at the next station are advised to move to the rear of the train and to seat themselves in the connector cabin which is now affixed to the roof at the rear of the train. When the train arrives at the next station, it will simply pick up another full passenger pod and drop off the pod containing the passengers (without stopping of course) who wish to get off at that station. Simple and ingenious. Pick up in the front, get off in the rear and it all happens at the same time with no need for the train to stop and wait for passengers to get on or off. Do you think Skwoosh should build a special travel gel cushion for high speed comfort specifically designed and engineered for use in the “connector cabin” or “pod”?