Thursday, April 12, 2012

Are we the United States of Titanica?

The 100th anniversary of Harriet Quimby flying a rickety plane over the English channel is today. 1912 planes had no cockpits, she was sitting on the bottom wing of her biplane when she made that flight...exposed to the elements.

Unfortunately for the boost to her aviation career, the Titanic sank on this day as well, so all the news was about that rather than her feat.

But, to the Titanic.

(As an aside, believe it or not, lots of young people did not know the Titanic was based on a real event. Someone on a message board shared screen captures of these various social message sites where people, presumably tweeners, were all in tears and shock saying, "I didn't expect the boat to sink.")

The Titanic was supposed to have the latest technology, and was supposed to be unsinkable. The captain of the ship ordered full-speed ahead even though he knew about the icebergs that had been spotted ahead, and even when the ship had struck the iceberg, hours went by before they started to man the lifeboats. (IN that instance, similar to that Italian cruise ship.)

Is the US like the Titanic?

We're such a huge country, and we have a wealth of things available to us...

But we're also bankrupt. Fifty percent of our population receives welfare from the government (i.e., money from the other 50%). We, the US of A, are ranked in about 30th place when it comes to school test scores in math, geography, etc.... and we've been that way for a while..

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