Last Minute Gift Ideas from Small Dog Electronics

Way before Barack Obama broke the color barrier to become president of the USA, Thurgood Marshall broke that barrier for another of the most powerful and important positions in the country, that of Supreme Court Justice. After graduating from high school with honors he applied to the University of Maryland law school where he was not accepted because he was black. Instead, he went to Howard University and received his law degree in 1933.

Before being appointed Supreme Court Justice, he had a stellar career from 1934 to 1961 as a lawyer for the NAACP where he won landmark civil rights cases. Beginning in 1940, Marshall won 29 of 323 US Supreme Court cases. One of his first big cases was Smith vs. Allwrite in 1944 which overthrew the South’s “White Primary”. The White Primary was a practice of excluding African Americans from the Democratic Party. It was most common in a state where that party controlled the state government.

In 1954 Marshall achieved a landmark victory with the case of Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka. This Supreme Court decision demolished the legal basis for segregation in the USA. It also made state-enforced racial segregation in public schools invalid.

In 1961 he was appointed the the US Court of Appeals by President Kennedy. He was the first African American on the Court of Appeals and went on to be appointed to the Second Court of Appeals. President Johnson made him the Solicitor General in 1965 and later in 1967 President Johnson nominated him for the Supreme Court.

On the Supreme Court he was a steadfast supporter of positive gender and racial action policies and in his 24 years on the court he became a vocal liberal on a conservative-dominated court. He was an ardent supporter of Constitutional protection of individual rights, in particular the rights of criminal suspect versus the government. Marshall’s backing of Affirmative Action led to his strong dissent in the Regents of the University of California vs. Blake in 1978. Justice William Brennan was Marshall’s most reliable confederate who voted with him against the death penalty.

Citing poor health, Thurgood Marshall stepped down from the court in 1991 and remained a vocal critic of the court until his death in 1993 at the age of 84.

I remember only a couple years ago when drones were new and cutting edge technology. Now, there are huge sections of the show devoted to drones of all sorts: fighting drones, mini drones, paper airplane drones and dancing drones. I don’t know if it is the Star Wars influence but droids were everywhere, including “laundroids” for folding your laundry, grill cleaning droids, window washing droids and all kinds of robots.

3D printers were new and unique and again whole sections of the show were devoted to “replicators” making everything from iPhone cases to clothing to spare body parts. Several companies were there just to show their filaments for these 3D printers.

Scooters were everywhere. You know, the ones in the news that have the batteries that blow up. Well, literally dozens of companies were showing their versions and the original Segway had a booth, too. Some one-wheel scooters were there as well as shoes with wheels that zipped you around.

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Self-driving cars and technology for self driving cars dominated the North Hall and some concept cars were shown, too. My favorite was the Faraday electric car that looked like a single seat batmobile.

USB-C made its debut at the show with hubs, cables and some USB display port displays, too. I think we will see a lot of USB-C stuff coming up!

Less prevalent this year was the huge variety of iPhone and iPad cases. There were huge sections last time but while there were several companies showing cases it was toned way down. In their place, power banks of all sorts were being shown in every imaginable shape and size. The Apple battery case, aka the hump, was universally panned but several companies had slim battery cases for the iPhone.

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I did walk through the TV section but it was not as notable as in past years. The 3D fad has sort of expired and 4K displays are common. I still love the OLED displays, though.

Other areas that were huge were health care and fitness with a lot of wearable fitness devices and health monitors or all sorts from implantable blood glucose devices to blood pressure cuffs, thermometers and scales. The home automation section was larger than previous years and there were some new HomeKit compatible devices. I liked the NoLok offering of bluetooth compatible padlocks and bike locks that work similar to the Kevo system.

It was a quick trip out to Vegas but it was certainly worthwhile. I will follow up next week with a bit more.