The Fox News folks are upset over the unflattering photo of Sarah Palin on the cover of Newsweek. But what interested me the most in this week’s issue is the story of why the Titanic sank faster than McCain’s campaign is sinking now.
“It was negligence: the ship’s builders suspected that the ship’s hull was too flimsy, but they overrode the concerns of their engineer in a bid to get the Titanic on the seas in time.”
Joan,
I too am inclined to become a bit worked up over politics. I am not easily influenced, it took me many years to form my view of the world, and how I want to live my life, so my opinions aren’t handed to me. Just be glad Monte Schulz, who sometimes makes me feel like a centrist, hasn’t jumped in on any of these recent discussions or things may have gotten very intense!
Hi! Paul, I know we’ll never agree on each other’s politics, and I’m giving up posting on politics because I make myself sound like too much of a ding-dong, so I’d like to start at a point we both agree on and start over again with you. You seem like a cool guy and could teach me alot about the comic book world. One thing we agreed on is “A Night To Remember” and even though it’s not full of special effects that’s what makes it a great film. That it’s in black and white helps it feel more realistic in the outdoor parts on the water. The actors are more emotive and the actor playing Capt. Smith made me feel he was the real one in how he looked like the pictures I’ve seen of the captain. My dad said that young men would not have been as crude to young women as they were in James Cameron’s “Titanic”. I just like “A Night To Remember” better overall and have seen it quite a few times.
Speaking of events long ago, and movies about them, I refer you to one of my first blog posts, with the superb 1932 Frank Capra movie about a bank during the Great Depression, American Madness. The video uses an embedded Windows Media Player, before I got wise to the ways of Flash. If it doesn’t work right, wait a day or two, because I should be able to convert it.
I also prefer “A Night To Remember”…I thought the human emotions were much stronger than in James Cameron’s Titanic.
Great “bad” picture of Sara, by the way. It’s “okey-dokey” with me! I think it was Newsweek that did the horrible side-view mug shot of Michelle Obama in its pages.
They just had a special about this exact finding on the History Channel, I think. Tom loved all the old photos of the huge rooms with the draftsman’s tables. In the special, they said that in engineering, the point in boat engineering had become not how to make the strongest seams, but the lightest, to cut costs, and get the project done on time. To be fair, they DID depict the main architect of the Titanic, as played by Victor Garber in the movie, as seeming to harbor a horrific sense of foreboding or guilt. He gladly went down with the ship, while one of the less scrupulous designers did not.
Hi Doug! On either the National Geographic or Science Channel they had a documentary on earlier this year showing the forensic testing being done. It was a very interesting program. Some of the rivets were made at the plant where the Titanic was being built and they had too much of a percentage of the silt that naturally is in them which weakened them. Other pre-manufactured rivets held strong in the ship. They did strength testing in the lab by using an instrument to recreate the force of the collision and with a slow-motion shot you see the rivet explode from the power of the crash. Poor Captain Smith not only went down with the ship, but was blamed for something doomed from the get-go. Miscommunication and missed messages about ice didn’t help. A good film about the Titanic is the 1958 “A Night To Remember”. James Cameron’s effects are like “You Are There”, but I like the 1958 film better. Survivors advised the filmmakers, and it deals more with the operation of the ship’s crew.