House of Eratosthenes

Investigators said that the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis, which collapsed into the Mississippi River on Aug. 1, killing 13, came down because of a flaw in its design.

The designers had specified a metal plate that was too thin to serve as a junction of several girders, investigators say.

The bridge was designed in the 1960s and lasted 40 years. But like most other bridges, it gradually gained weight during that period, as workers installed concrete structures to separate eastbound and westbound lanes and made other changes, adding strain to the weak spot. At the time of the collapse, crews had brought tons of equipment and material onto the deck for a repair job.

The National Transportation Safety Board was to hold a news conference Tuesday to discuss its investigation.

The information released will be important to highway departments across the northern United States, which are planning their warm-weather inspection and repair programs. Usually they inspect for corrosion and age-related cracking, but that was not the problem in the Minneapolis collapse, investigators now say.

Flashback to five months ago…

On Friday’s Countdown, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann charged that the “endless war and endless spending” had “crippled our ability to repair or just check our infrastructure,” as he hosted Air America’s Rachel Maddow in a discussion blaming the Minneapolis bridge collapse on Iraq war spending and unwillingness by conservatives to raise taxes. Olbermann quoted Minnesota Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar’s charge of “messed up priorities” and New York Democratic Congresswoman Louise Slaughter’s labeling of bridge collapse victims as “almost victims of war” because “perpetual war depletes the funds available to maintain our infrastructure.” Maddow charged that America is “paying this incredible deadly price for a brand of American conservatism that hates and demeans government.”

Wow, Keith. It’s a good thing you don’t “courageously speak truth to power,” as the saying goes, even more often. Because then you might really be making an ass out of yourself.

Ya know, I try to be as non-judgmental as possible in my old age, seeking the redeeming value that lurks in everyone, however small. And I can usually find something. But sometimes there isn’t a whit of redeeming value to be found, anywhere. Case-in-point: Olbermann. The man is an asshat. NO other word fits.

YMMV, but I think not.
- Buck | 01/16/2008 @ 16:17
But sometimes there isn’t a whit of redeeming value to be found, anywhere. Case-in-point: Olbermann.

Well — and I’m reaching for this one, you know — he is symptomatic of the kind of cultural disease of which I would hate to be ignorant, once it’s goin’ on.

Multiple cultural diseases.

One, we got a bunch of people walking around free as you & me, who think the word “courage” applies to some washed-up sportscaster who regularly babbles his five-minute clips of foolishness, in a sovereign state whose government guarantees nothing bad will ever happen to him because of it. No harm can come to him instigated by the government, and with very few exceptions, said government will be obligated to prevent any harm coming to him when instigated from elsewhere. I struggle to think of a safer thing anybody can do, anywhere, and still be called “courageous” for doing it.

Two, is his cookie cutter approach. He’s given props for, if one allows for synonyms and euphemisms, something that could be fairly encapsulated by the word “originality.” Mr. Bill from Saturday Night Live, as I recall from memory, was far more original than Keith Olbermann. He could be dragged off by a previously-thought-instinct flying dinosaur at nine o’clock tonight, and with a modestly artistic touch to the recycling of his old clips at regular intervals thereafter, nobody would ever notice.

Three — partisanship. Naked partisanship. Waitaminnit…purely naked partisanship wouldn’t be such a big problem, because it wouldn’t involve such staggering cognitive dissonance. This is paritsanship dressed in a tastelessly cut speedo. A “Bizzaro-Olbermann” could be manufactured that would hurl exactly the same brand of bile at well-known democrats, using exactly the same voice inflections. Keith’s most devoted fans would sneer and snark away at Bizzaro…you know it…and you also know, they’d never admit it, either in prospect or in retrospect.

I think that last one is the biggest cultural malady out of the three. Our society is losing its ability to perceive things. But I know you’ve been reading these pages for awhile, Buck, so by thundering away about that I’m making myself as repetitious as Olby himself, just on a different topic.

Well…almost.
- mkfreeberg | 01/16/2008 @ 16:29
Well, you may not think that worthy of a post but I do. I am off to do satan’s work.
- vanderleun | 01/16/2008 @ 22:42
[…] Not In It For The Attention, Mind You… XV The Ego January 16, 1919 A Bush Scandal…Collapses Under Its Own Weight “There’sSomething Really Disturbing About You” Dilbert Comic Strips Eco Warriors Are Biggest Polluters Superman Gets Cozy With Spider Woman Pulling It Off “Don’t Take It Easy” Never, Ever Send Ellie Pictures of… Ecotainer TTLB […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 01/17/2008 @ 08:52
[…] Human Events Endorses Fred Thompson Best Sentence XXII Reflections on the Death Penalty Not In It For The Attention, Mind You… XV The Ego January 16, 1919 A Bush Scandal…Collapses Under Its Own Weight “There’sSomething Really Disturbing About You” Dilbert Comic Strips Eco Warriors Are Biggest Polluters Superman Gets Cozy With Spider Woman Pulling It Off TTLB […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 01/19/2008 @ 12:35

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A Bush Scandal…Collapses Under Its Own Weight
Wednesday, January 16th, 2008