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Ask Slashdot: Robotics or Electronic Kits For Wounded Veterans?
An anonymous reader writes I am currently a combat veteran in the care of the VA Hospital. A lot of veterans here suffer from PTSD and other injuries related to combat and trauma. As part of the healing process, the VA finds it good that we take up hobbies such as art or music, and they supply us kits and stuff to put together and paint. This is great, but many of us younger veterans have an interest in robotics and electronics. Do you know of some good and basic robotic and electronic kits that can be ordered or donated to Veterans out there? Any information would be appreciated.
Yeah, arduino type hardwares, breadboards, and a host of related parts like actuators and leds would provide an endless set of options, and be re-useable.
A great idea, one that could probably find a lot of funding support.
These are WOUNDED veterans.
That means they were injured trying to help preserve your right to be a complete asshole.
A bullet may have your name on it, but artillery is addressed to " Whom It May concern"
Perhaps. More likely wounded trying to implement American foreign policy abroad.
Or they were lied to by a "true believer" recruiter, weren't raised to think independently, were ill-informed about their choices, wanted to stick it to mommy and daddy, or got in before 9/11 and suddenly got ordered to a shithole country, on pain of criminal charges or military imprisonment.
See? It's really easy to paint a diverse group of people in a positive or negative light, such that it promotes your own viewpoint, and the reality is always more varied than anyone with an agenda wants to admit.
They were mostly wounded while killing, trying to kill, or assissting in killing other people (you know... combat).
It is kind of a moot point discussing who the 'good guys' are in a war. However usually it is soldiers on both sides. A soldiers saving grace may be, that they are acting under orders and have limited choice in the matter.
However for the same reason I do not see a point why they should have a priviliged status.
All things conssidered they rank pretty low on my sympathy list.
Certainly much lower than a wounded cop for example, who was fighting actual criminals and certainly lower than people who were simply the victim of an accident or violence.
It's possible that they thought that was what they were doing, but it wasn't what they were really doing, at least not if they got hurt in Iraq or Afghanistan after 2002. Nevertheless, I have sympathy for them because they got seriously screwed over the the government.