Quotulatiousness

July 28, 2009

And now, in our special poetry section, William Shatner

Filed under: Politics, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:42

This is, according to Peter Suderman, “an actual, unedited passage from her speech”.

Shatner flubs a word or two right around the bit about “ice fogged frigid beauty,” but otherwise, this is lifted verbatim. Students of Washington are used to politicians who don’t make sense, but this is rather more brazen than is typical. I think I have to agree with Gawker’s Alex Pareene: Palin is growing steadily more incoherent as we watch.

Still, there may be an upside: With luck, the discovery of her lyrical talents will end Palin’s terrifying political career and usher in the happy day when aimless lit majors can spend four years puzzling over her “verbiage” in order to turn out papers with titles like “Gertrude Stein and Robert Frost: Sarah Palin’s Poetic Lineage.”

Update: And in a stunning, but not-at-all-unexpected move, NBC Universal has demanded that this clip be removed by YouTube. Idiots. Do they fail to understand that clips like this might bring untold numbers who didn’t see that part of the show live to watch the show now?

If you didn’t see it, it was a reading by William Shatner of a highly poetic (for certain values of “poetic”) section of former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin’s resignation speech. If you can find a non-interdicted-by-NBC-Universal-version, do watch/listen. It’s more than worth the price of admission.

NBC Universal, while your claim may be legal under current law . . . you demonstrate both your ignorance of popular culture and your contempt for the very people who made you successful in the first place. Nice work. Give yourself a bonus . . . while you’re still profitable.

Boeing’s Dreamliner woes

Filed under: Technology — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:28

The amazing sales record set by the Boeing Dreamliner (866 on order, more than any other wide-body passenger aircraft) is now being overshadowed by the technical problems holding up production:

[. . .] thanks to one technical glitch after another, the new plane is running way behind schedule. Today, it is known increasingly as the “Dream-on-liner”. Originally due in 2007, its initial delivery (to All Nippon Airways) won’t now take place until 2011 at the earliest.

The latest delay looks like the most serious yet. In May, routine bending tests in the workshop showed the wing structure to have separated from its skin (“delaminated”) at 120%-130% of the load limit. To pass muster with the Federal Aviation Administration and other certification bodies, wings have to sustain at least 150% of the load limit without rupturing.

Then, in late June, Boeing announced it was postponing the plane’s maiden flight — originally scheduled for June 30th — while it found a way to reinforce the structure where the wings join the fuselage. The 787 Dreamliner’s first flight has now been put off until this autumn or later.

Boeing declared at the time that the fix was relatively simple. Scott Fancher, the Dreamliner’s programme chief, said all that was needed was “a simple modification” using “a handful of parts”. But Gulliver thinks Boeing is in bigger trouble than it admits — and is having to rerun fresh batches of its computer simulations of the wing’s design.

The preceding advertorial is brought to you by Airbus Industries.

Okay, not really . . . as far as I know. But I’m sure it’s music to the ears of Airbus sales folks.

Did James Lileks like The Watchmen?

Filed under: Books, Humour, Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:23

One quote from a fascinating take-down:

. . . it’s a sign of the movie that leaving in the giant squid would have made it less ridiculous.

Haven’t seen the movie myself, although Victor said he liked it.

QotD: Re-interpreting that number

Filed under: Government, Health, Quotations, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 07:38

There have been two trends in US health care over the last decade. On the one hand, a lot of Americans have become, in any rational sense, over-insured: They get tested for things they’ll never get. On the other, there has been an abandonment of health insurance by the rich. If you peel the Census Bureau and DHHS figures, of those alleged “45 million uninsured Americans”, one-fifth aren’t Americans; another fifth aren’t uninsured but are covered by Medicare; another two-fifths are the young and mobile (they don’t have health insurance, but they don’t have life insurance or home insurance, either: they’re 22 and immortal and life’s a party); and the remaining fifth are wealthier than the insured population. Really. According to a 2006 Census Bureau report, 19 per cent of the uninsured have household income of over $75,000. Since the last round of government “reform” in the Nineties, wealthy Americans have been fleeing insurance and opting to bring health care back to a normal market transaction. And, if you look at the “uninsured discount” offered by doctors, one can appreciate that, for everything but chronic disability, it’s not an irrational decision to say I’ll get a better deal for my broken leg or my colonoscopy or my heavy cold if I just write a check for it.

Mark Steyn, “The Nationalization of Your Body”, National Review, 2009-07-28

“The best thing about Miami is how close it is to the United States”

Filed under: Government, Law, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:20

Ryan Grim looks at the (government assisted) rise of Miami’s drug trade:

Miami was the perfect base for largescale drug smuggling. By the mid-1970s Coconut Grove was bursting with hippies, the type of smart, anti-authoritarian troublemakers who make the best smugglers. The Carter administration had pulled back on the effort to overthrow Cuban leader Fidel Castro, leaving South Florida with an idle army of welltrained, mostly Cuban-American adepts of the dark arts that would become valuable in the cocaine smuggling business. They knew how to acquire and use weapons, how to hide money, how to surreptitiously pilot planes and boats. A speedboat could zip through any one of the Everglades’ hundreds of little waterways to find a hidden place to unload, or dock elsewhere along Florida’s 3,000 miles of coastline.

The infrastructure for this multibillion-dollar import business wasn’t created solely for cocaine, or even for marijuana before it. South Florida had a long history of smuggling coffee, tobacco, and other products subject to tariffs. A “mother ship,” either from the Caribbean or directly from Colombia, would anchor near the shore, though not close enough to be seen from land. Yachts or cigarette boats — named for the vessels that smuggled bootleg tobacco — would zip out to the offshore vessel to load up with coke. The drug also came in by air. In the late ’70s and early ’80s customs officials estimated that more than 80 cocaine-laden planes landed in the United States every night, mostly in Florida. In 1980 the U.S. Customs Service seized 200 cigarette boats and 50 airplanes, one of which was a World War II–era bomber. It had previously been used by customs agents investigating drug operations.

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