News: December 2005 Archives
My brother pointed me to a set of poll questions by the Pew Research Center about Wal-Mart and Christmas and the some of the results are pretty interesting.
I work in a technology company, so it's strange to me to see Microsoft rated so highly. I'm curious as to whether or not these are the only companies they asked about, because I'd like to know what other companies would be rated at less than 50% favorability. It's not surprising that people aren't too pleased with an oil company like Exxon/Mobil at the moment, considering recent gas prices, but Halliburton? Come on, that low rating is purely due to political persecution. Most people had never even heard of the company five years ago.
Despite the constant furor both ways over political correctness, many people prefer "Merry Christmas" and a plurality don't care. An earlier table showed that when people weren't explicitly given the "don't care" option, 60% said they preferred "Merry Christmas".
And despite the constant harping by the ACLU, a good majority of people think religious Christmas displays should be allowed on public property. Doesn't the ACLU's focus on this issue constitute an admission that there just aren't many legitimate threats to our civil liberties? I suppose I should be thankful that the biggest threat the ACLU can come up with is so innocuous.
My brother Nick has started posting again at Nick No Nihon, and I think his post answering the question "is King Kong racist?" is a great place to start. He also knows a lot about Japan, and I think his take on Japan's inevitable militarization is quite worth reading.
PM Koizumi knows that if Japan is to become a world super power, it will need a full blown military, not just a Self-Defense Force. To the extent that Koizumi can make the war in Iraq a good thing for Japan, politically and economically, he will also be able to undermine domestic opposition to the eventual creation of a Japanese military. Article IX of the Japanese Constitution (promulgated in 1946) prevents the creation of such a military, but Constitutions can be amended, and some in Japan think it is time to revise or repeal Article IX. Pacifism is not deep-seeded in Japanese culture, after all... In a culture characterized by more than fifteen centuries of isolation, homogeneity, and civil war, sixty years of outward-facing pacifism is not enough to establish a tradition. Article IX is going to go. And Koizumi is showing it the door.With respect to the more immediate issue of the joint missile development project undertaken by the U.S. and Japan, well, that's just another sign that Japan is beginning to recognize the potential collateral benefits of having a well-funded military-industrial complex.
As Nick says, America stands to benefit a great deal from Japanese cooperation. Looks like the investment we put into Japan at the end of WW2 is still paying dividends.... Just imagine how great an ally Iraq might be in 50 years.
I hope my heirs take notes and design my sepulchre in a similar manner.
Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris has fenced off a famous tomb to prevent lewd acts being performed on a statue.The effigy of 19th Century journalist known as Victor Noir has long been popular with women visitors. ...
Officials concerned about damage to the icon's groin area have erected a fence around the grave, and a sign prohibiting indecent rubbing. ...
The statue shows Noir in a frock coat and trousers lying flat on his back, with a distinct enlargement in the groin.
The effigy has been held as an aid to love or fertility.
It is said that a woman who kisses the lips of the prostrate statue and slips a flower into the upturned top hat will find a husband by the end of the year.
An American Airlines pilot claims that a missile was shot at his plane while he was taking off from LAX.
Sources tell ABC News the pilot of American Airlines Flight 621, en route to Chicago, radioed air traffic controllers after takeoff from LAX. He told them a missile had been fired at the aircraft and missed.The plane was over water when the pilot said he saw a smoke trail pass by the cockpit.
FBI agents believe it was a flare or a bottle rocket, but say they may never know if that's what it actually was.
I live near LAX and I'm familiar with the flight paths of the airplanes around the airport, and by the time the planes are over water they're a good 1000 feet up. You can use the LAX Airport Monitor to track the exact altitudes of flights around the airport if you want to see for yourself. It seems unlikely that a bottle rocket would reach that altitude... I don't know much about flares.
Wizbang points to a series of articles in the New Orleans Times-Picayune full of apparently damning evidence that New Orleans' canal levees were built completely below standard by the Army Corps of Engineers.
The floodwall on the 17th Street Canal levee was destined to fail long before it reached its maximum design load of 14 feet of water because the Army Corps of Engineers underestimated the weak soil layers 10 to 25 feet below the levee, the state's forensic levee investigation team concluded in a report to be released this week.That miscalculation was so obvious and fundamental, investigators said, they "could not fathom" how the design team of engineers from the corps, local firm Eustis Engineering and the national firm Modjeski and Masters could have missed what is being termed the costliest engineering mistake in American history. ...
"It's simply beyond me," said Billy Prochaska, a consulting engineer in the forensic group known as Team Louisiana. "This wasn't a complicated problem. This is something the corps, Eustis, and Modjeski and Masters do all the time. Yet everyone missed it -- everyone from the local offices all the way up to Washington."
Perhaps most incriminating, the forensic group did their own calculations, using data from the Army Corps of Engineers, and came to the right conclusions.
"Using the data we have available from the corps, we did our own calculations on how much water that design could take in these soils before failure," said LSU professor Ivor van Heerden, a team member. "Our research shows it would fail at water levels between 11 and 12 feet -- which is just what happened" in Katrina.
As Paul at Wizbang points out, there are a slew of journalism awards just waiting to be handed out, but the MSM doesn't appear interested in covering the story. The Army Corps of Engineers is part of the federal government, but these levees were desgined and built long before President Bush was in office so the media may not see much point in attacking... especially since all the local government officials are Democrats.... But really, is this a political failure at all, or just plain incompetence? Hopefully we find out.
"This is the largest civil engineering disaster in the history of the United States. Nothing has come close to the $300 billion in damages and half-million people out of their homes and the lives lost," he said. "Nothing this big has ever happened before in civil engineering."
(HT: Ben Bateman.)
