At 11:40 PM while sailing south of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, lookouts Fredrick Fleet and Reginald Lee spotted a large iceberg directly ahead of the ship. Fleet sounded the ship's bell three times and telephoned the bridge exclaiming, "Iceberg, right ahead!" First Officer Murdoch ordered an abrupt turn to port and full speed astern, which stopped and then reversed the ship's engines. A collision was inevitable and the iceberg brushed the ship's starboard side, buckling the hull in several places and popping out rivets below the waterline over a length of 300 ft. As seawater filled the forward compartments, watertight doors shut. However, while the ship could stay afloat with four flooded compartments, five were filling with water. . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
04/15/2008 08:42 ||
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#2
A few years ago I took a tour of Millionaire's Row at Newport, Rhode Island. They cited three causes for the decline of Newport as the playground of NYC's wealthiest families: 1. the income tax, 2. WWI, 3. the loss of most of the heads of those families on the Titanic.
#6
Interesting question TW; maybe this will explain. Millionaires row was a product of the Gilded Age or Age of the Moguls which began in the 1880s and ended in the first third of the 20th century.
"Some cite the 15th of April 1912, the night when the ocean liner Titanic sank. Others mention World War I or the stock market crash of October 24, 1929. All these events certainly had an impact on the factors which put an end to the age of moguls in America.
The Titanic disaster taught mankind that there were still limits to where it could go. World War I started a process in which the power of the federal government was increased against the power of the tycoons, a process which would be furthered by the depression which followed the stock market crash of 1929.
But what really put an end to the Gilded Age or the age of the moguls, was the introduction of income and estate taxes during the Wilson administration. Corporate and income taxes rendered wealth accumulation slower and more difficult, whereas the estate taxes prevented the perpetuation of wealth in the hands of the founding families." Source
#7
Icerigger: before you toss too many darts at the NASA QA dept, i suggest you read the Challenger accident investigation: the QA guys tried to stop the launch, based on what they saw of the orings properties in the cold weather. it was the OPS guys who pushed for schedule compliance, much like the story you quoted from that the White Star board was scrounging for rivets from anybody. its a fair bat that there was no inspection department in 1912, and the properties of metals not as well understood as they are now.
i cannot help but wonder if this story is a back handed slap at Boeing for their fastener crisis on the 787......
(disclosure, I am a QA manager and ISO 9001/AS9100 auditor)
#8
A few years ago, I visited my son who was living in Belfast, where the Titanic was built. We took a tour which included the shipyard where Titanic and her sister ship the Olympic were built. Apparently while the Titanic was being built, it was set aside while they did some repairs on the Olympic. As a result, the maiden voyage was delayed for several months. Thus, the Titanic sailed later in the season. If she had left as originally scheduled, she probably would have not collided with the iceberg, we would have never heard of the Titanic (unless you were a shipping historian), and Leonardo DiCaprio would have one less movie to star in.
Posted by: Rambler in California ||
04/15/2008 15:17 Comments ||
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#9
USN Ret.
Respectfully the White Star Line didn't build the Titanic. Harland & Wolff knew they were putting in type 2 rivets not the required type 3. Simply put (if I understood the study description) Harland & Wolff put iron rivets which would crack in place of the required steel rivets. I find it hard to believe that in 1912 the builder's didn't know the property differences between iron and steel.
As of NASA I wasn't thinking about one incident and I apologize for such a broad remark. I remember being with one aeronautic engineer watching the testing of a Mars rover computer.
They tested it by hitting it with a kind of hammer. Then they put that same computer into the Rover and sent it on the mission. The engineer just shook it head, "welcome to NASA".
We later watched dumbfounded as NASA engineers solved the Mars Rover Balloon parachute test failure by reducing the number of jagged surfaces in the test impact room.
If I recall it was filmed by NOVA.
Fascinating story about the decline of the Tycoons around WWI. Now a days they have been replace by corporations and I don't think there is a boat big enough to take care of that problem. At least the Tycoons had, a touch of class.
#10
I'm not an economist, but I've thought for a while that the Depression was caused by the income tax.
The income tax took vast sums of capital that was circulating freely through the country and throughout the global economy, and locked it up in Fort Knox, where it provided no value to anyone, except its security staff.
Removing all that capital from the system crippled it, and left the New Dealers in the catbird seat, when they could crack open Fort Knox and allow all that money to flow again for their own purposes.
#11
I would add the passage of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution in 1913 authorizing the Income Tax (via the Revenue Act of 1913) to the list of disasters leading to the decline of Millionaires Row. Most of those fortunes were built prior to the income tax.
By the way, Woodrow Wilson was President and the Dems had both Houses of Congress in 1913 when the Income Tax became the law of the land.
These are the same guys who are warning us about global warming ...
SAN FRANCISCO -- A strong and potentially deadly earthquake is virtually certain to strike on one of California's major seismic faults with a magnitude of at least 6.7 within the next 30 years, scientists said Monday in releasing the first official forecast of statewide earthquake probabilities. By their calculations the probability of such a strong and damaging quake hitting somewhere the Golden state is now more than 99 percent.
A much more damaging quake of magnitude of 7.5 or greater is at least 46 percent likely to hit on one of California's restless web of active fault systems within the same three decades, but probably in the southern part of the state, the team of federal and state earthquake scientists warned.
The new report by the team of federal and state geologists, seismologists and geophysicists does not significantly change the current probability estimates for future large quakes on the Bay Area's major faults that were calculated five years ago, but it does provide the first detailed forecasts for the odds of future quakes on faults in the Los Angeles area: on the southern San Andreas, on the San Jacinto and on the Elsinore faults specifically. "In our two major metropolitan areas where odds are high that a large quake is coming, people think a lot about quakes whenever even a smaller one shakes ... but ten days later most folks forget them, and they shouldn't," said David Schwartz, an earthquake geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park who served on the scientific review panel that evaluated the new probability estimates.
The analysis was requested by the California Earthquake Authority, a public agency created by the state Legislature in 1996 and funded by companies throughout the state that offer limited quake insurance to all comers. The scientists used complex analytical tools that they have developed over many years and new computer programs to arrive at their new forecasts of earthquake magnitudes and the faults they may rupture.
By their calculations, the probability that a 6.7 magnitude quake will hit on any one of the faults in the Bay Area is now set at 63 percent, only a tiny bit higher than the 62 percent estimated in 2003. But the probability for that kind of severely damaging quake on the Hayward-Rodgers Creek fault was increased in the new forecast from 27 percent to 31 percent.
The analysis was the first the scientists done of probabilities for quakes on several Southern California faults. They calculated the odds of a 6.7 magnitude quake striking within 30 years somewhere in the greater Los Angeles at two-to-one, a probability of 67 percent, according to the report. The single fault in all California with the highest probability of a large quake occurring within the next 30 years is the Southern San Andreas, and the seismic odds-makers set the number for it at 59 percent.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/15/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
OTOH, BLOGGER > argues that the recent "Earthquake Swarm" off OREGON, iff proven to be linked to San Andreas activity, may actually DELAY California's "Big One" as the Oregon swarm can also potentially work to ALLEVIATE PRESSURE/ENERGY???
#2
I worked for USGS in earthquake research in the early 1970s. We were measuring regional movements across the San Andreas Fault of about 30 mm/year.
At Roberta Drive in Woodside, across the San Andreas fault trace there was an old redwood stump that straddled the fault line of the 1906 earthquake. The west side of the stump was 12-ft further north than the east side of the stump.
Applying freshman logic, the time interval to the next earthquake would be:
T = (12 ft x 304.8 mm/ft)/30 mm/yr = 122 years
Estimated year when Big One hits:
1906+122 = Year 2028 AD > 2012 AD, so we will never see it
QED
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/15/2008 2:00 Comments ||
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#3
Stump Logic, can't argue that
at least, not gonna try...
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/15/2008 7:45 Comments ||
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#4
A big quake in the Bay area is 'due' or near-due on a long-term statistical basis. Southern California would seem past-due. Quakes we CALL big, like the one that messed up the World Series in Oakland and the one outside LA in ?1994 were an order of magnitude less than the devastating ones that seem to have a frequency of 100-250 years. We do not know the hour or the day (or year), but we can be very sure it is coming.
#6
Are they talking about a physical, geologic quake or an economic one as their economy circles the toilet with the liberals pushing it down with the plunger as hard as they can?
#7
Quakes although potentially dangerous are just momentary events, it's volcanoes that can screw us badly.
And, I love the thirty year window. Just about everything will happen within thirty years.
I'll file this under "Local" only under protest! :-)
A Yemeni court on Tuesday granted a divorce to an eight-year-old girl whose unemployed father forced her into an arranged marriage this year, saying he feared she might be kidnapped. "I am happy that I am divorced now. I will be able to go back to school," Nojud Mohammed Ali said, after a public hearing in Sanaa's court of first instance.
Her former husband, 28-year-old Faez Ali Thameur, said he married the child "with her consent and that of her parents" but that he did not object to her divorce petition. In response to a question from Judge Mohammed al-Qadhi, he acknowledged that the "marriage was consummated, but I did not beat her." OMFG. Emphasis added, of course.
Yemen, one of the world's poorest countries, has no law governing the minimum age of marriage. Never saw a need up 'til now? Probably still wonder what all the fuss is about.
Nojud was a second grader in primary school when the marriage took place two and a half months ago. "They asked me to sign the marriage contract and remain in my father's house until I was 18. But a week after signing, my father and my mother forced me to go live with him." For my own good, of course.
Nojud's father, Mohammad Ali Al-Ahdal, said he had felt obliged to marry off his daughter, an act he claims she consented to. Uh, yeah. An eight-year-old doesn't know squat. They'll believe anything you tell them. That's the reason and the only reason why there are muslims today.
He said he was frightened after his oldest daughter had been kidnapped several years ago and later married to her abductor. He said the same man then kidnapped another of his daughters who was already married and had four children, resulting in him being jailed.
Dressed in traditional black, Nojud said she would now go to live in the home of her maternal uncle and did not want to see her father.
The girl's lawyer, Shadha Nasser, said Nojud's case was not unique. "I believe there are millions thousands of similar cases," she said, adding that civil society groups are pressing parliament to set the minimum age for marriage at 12 18.
#1
The girl's family had to pay compensation to the "husband".
The TV reports didn't mention the "marriage" had been "consummated".
Posted by: john frum ||
04/15/2008 21:33 Comments ||
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#2
A certain man already kidnapped two of her older sisters, one of whom was married to someone else? Clearly Papa is an incompetent protector. Hopefully Mama's brother does a better job.
* Bombing planned for 2005 AFL grand final
* Plan axed after police, ASIO raids
* Bombing difficult after September 11, said leader
THE 2005 AFL Grand Final was the original bombing target of an alleged home-grown terror cell by the man described as its leader or "sheik", a court has been told.
A jury in the supreme Court in Victoria was told today that in conversation with a witness at the terror trial, Abdul Nacer Benbrika, 48, said the MCG bombing had been cancelled because of police and ASIO raids on members of the group in July 2005.
Izzydeen Atik told the Supreme Court that Mr Benbrika nominated two other targets, the NAB Cup and Crown Casino during the 2006 Melbourne Grand Prix weekend.
Mr Atik, 27, has admitted he had discussions about bombings with Mr Benbrika as a follow up to two earlier secretly taped conversations heard by the jury today.
While they were driving together Mr Atik said they had a conversation about terrorist attacks.
"The original target was supposed to be the Grand Final of 2005," Mr Atik said he was told by Mr Benbrika.
Mr Atik said Mr Benbrika told him the raids on group members had disrupted funding.
On trial before Justice Bernard Bongiorno are: Mr Benbrika of Dallas, Shane Kent, 31, Meadow Heights, Majed Raad, 23, Coburg, Abdullah Merhi, 22, Fawkner, Mr Joud, 23, Hoppers Crossing, Ahmed Raad, 24, Fawkner, Fadl Sayadi, 28, Coburg, Ezzit Raad, 26, Preston, Hany Taha, 33, Hadfield, Shoue Hammoud, 28, Hadfield, Bassam Raad, 26, Brunswick and Amer Haddara, 28, Yarraville.
The jury was played two bugged conversations in Mr Benbrika's Dallas home on March 4, 2005 between him and Mr Atik.
In the conversations Mr Benbrika talks of members of the group being under surveillance and their phones being bugged.
At one point Mr Benbrika says to Mr Atik "we'll damage buildings. Blast things."
Mr Benbrika continues: "It has to be proper because it's very difficult to get them. I mean, especially the product. After 11 September it's not easy."
An advertisement attacking the Muslim Student Association ran on the fifth page of the Daily Nexus yesterday, prompting the organization to call upon the UCSB administration and others for support.
The half-page ad, purchased by the David Horowitz Freedom Centers Terrorism Awareness Project, alleges the student organization serves as a campus front group for Muslim holy struggle, or jihad. In its nearly 600 chapters at colleges across the country, the Muslim Student Association postures as just another campus religious and cultural organization, read the advertisement. In fact, the MSA is a radical political group that was founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the godfather of Al Qaeda and Hamas, to bring the jihad into the heart of American higher education.
In reaction to the allegations, the MSA took several immediate steps to repudiate the claims. President Faheem Ahmad, a fourth-year history and biology major, said the charges were entirely inaccurate. We are obviously not a jihad organization, Ahmad said. We are not funded by the Muslim Brotherhood, we receive all of our funding transparently through Finance Board and we are against violence in any form.
MSA leadership and concerned students also met with Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Michael Young yesterday evening to discuss drafting a statement denying the claims printed in the ad. Additionally the group called an emergency meeting last night in the Student Resource Building to inform members of possible repercussions and to plan educational events clarifying the position of the organization. We called a meeting to let people know MSA is clearing their name and brainstorming ways to respond to the attack, Ahmad said.
David Horowitz, an occasional Fox News analyst and conservative writer responsible for publishing the advertisement, claims the Muslim Brotherhood created MSA and the group is therefore guilty of sponsoring terrorist activities. Its a soft jihad, Horowitz said. MSA does not throw bombs but it invites speakers to come to campus who support terrorists. UCSB MSA is not a cultural organization but a religious and political organization and an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. People have averted their eyes from the reality that they have a genocidal agenda.
MSA is currently in the process of issuing an official statement endorsed by several other campus organizations denying the allegations and seeking funding for a Muslim Islamic Awareness week, designed to reestablish MSAs reputation on campus. Further actions will be discussed at an open meeting Thursday at 6 p.m. in the Middle Eastern Student Resource Center in the SRB.
#3
Poor Mr. Ahmad can't read. The accusation was that his group was founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, not funded. It's only one little letter, but oh, the difference it makes!
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
At 11:40 PM while sailing south of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, lookouts Fredrick Fleet and Reginald Lee spotted a large iceberg directly ahead of the ship. Fleet sounded the ship's bell three times and telephoned the bridge exclaiming, "Iceberg, right ahead!" First Officer Murdoch ordered an abrupt turn to port and full speed astern, which stopped and then reversed the ship's engines. A collision was inevitable and the iceberg brushed the ship's starboard side, buckling the hull in several places and popping out rivets below the waterline over a length of 300 ft. As seawater filled the forward compartments, watertight doors shut. However, while the ship could stay afloat with four flooded compartments, five were filling with water. . . .
An advertisement attacking the Muslim Student Association ran on the fifth page of the Daily Nexus yesterday, prompting the organization to call upon the UCSB administration and others for support.
