Tom Walker wrote:
>
> brad,
>
> Have you forgotten, then, the story of the O ring on the space shuttle
> Challenger?
>
> brad mccormick wrote,
>
> > Remember the Titanic. ("I cannot conceive of any vital
>
> . . .
>
> > Remember the Concorde. (Cheaper not to install wheel flaps
>
> Tom Walker
> Bowen Island, BC
> 604 947 2213
To borrow an acronym from the nuclear industry (or maybe it's
from epidemiology...) "TMTC" (Too Many To Count).
Yes, The Challenger, Chernobyl, The Greenville....
The Challenger is, however, a classic -- a real life example of
_Paths of Glory_. Ronald Reagan wanted to be able to announce in
his State of The Union address that America had sent a school
teacher into space. He really wanted it. The engineer Roger Boisjoly
did his best to try to stop it, but his management gave
in to pressure from NASA big-wigs to launch. (I seem to
remember that I was in Orlando Fla that morning, and it
was *cold*.)
http://onlineethics.org/moral/boisjoly/RB-intro.html
The Concorde story is a "real nice one":
http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/concorde.html
Here's some material on Pearl Harbor (Hiroshima, etc.)
http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/hiroshima.html
Sometime in the 1930s, the US did a training exercise in which
the scenario was a sneak Japanese aircraft carrier attack on
Pearl Harbor. I'm not "up" on the details, but one does not
need to prove that FDR personally made sure the commanding officer
at Pearl Harbor was uninformed about the possibility of
attack, and that FDR personally denied the commander's request
for a heightened level of alert (although these seem
not unlikely...), to get the feeling
that the only plausible alternative to some kind of "conspiracy",
was that the persons running the American military and
diplomatic corps at the time were indeed as "innocent"
as the lyrics of the popular crooner-songs of the time (which,
of course, raises questions how they managed to have even been born,
since those lyrics were in denial even about sex,
not to mention basic military and diplomatic ideas). Is it
really possible FDR and decades of classes of Harvard, Yale,
West Point and Annapolis, etc. were that "out of it",
that they thought Japan wouldn't respond to us
cutting off their oil supplies (etc.)? Did they
really believe that the most important lessons about the story of
the Trojan Horse was that it happened 3000 years ago, and *in Troy* (Turkey,
not New York)?
--
Surely the "point" of Memorial Day should be not
just to remember the heroes, but to remember why they
had to become heroes, and to commit ourselves to minimize
occasions for anyone henceforth to have such
an "opportunity".
But we also know that
this is one of the differences between "liberals"
and "conservatives": Liberals try to organize
society so that it's hard for people to get into
trouble; conservatives believe such "coddling"
is bad for people and for society. Conservatives
believe the important thing is for
people to develop "character" and prove it.
--
Wanna see a *real* Memorial Day movie? Watch
Stanley Kubrick's "Paths of Glory".
"Yours in discourse...."
+\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
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Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
