(Alas, I see Mr Hamilton (#9) beat me to the punch. Well met, well met.)
Black Canadians? That's it? I can tell you, on the ground, that even over here in Alberta (ostensibly the bastion of Canadian conservatism) we're ready to celebrate - independent of ethnicity, independent of colour, and in many cases independent of what the myth of ideology tells us we're "supposed" to support. The sentiment among those who follow politics up here: wariness at what Obama's occasionally protectionistic tendencies may mean for us, outweighed by the utter unacceptability of his defeat.
Have you seen the global electoral college?
"The standards for lifeboats, however, didn't take radio and the chance of rescue into account."
Sorry, could you explain this? As I recall it, the Titanic managed to follow exactly the procedure it should (and could) have to call for the attention of what was ultimately the Carpathia.
Quick check with Google -> more here:
http://www.avsia.com/djohnson/titanic.html
Are you just trying to to say that the Titanic didn't have enough lifeboats because nobody accounted for the fact that radios made people rescuable? Or am I missing something here?
Also:
"The Titanic’s lifeboat capacity was governed by the British Board of Trade’s rules, which were drafted in 1894. By 1912, these lifeboat regulations were badly out of date. The Titanic was four times larger than the largest legal classification considered under the eighteen year old rules and so by law was not required to carry more than sixteen lifeboats, regardless of the actual number of people onboard. When she left Southampton, the Titanic actually carried more than the law required: the sixteen rigid lifeboats were supplemented by four additional collapsible boats. The shipping industry was aware that the lifeboat regulations were going to be changed soon and Titanic’s deck space and davits were designed for the anticipated "boats for all" policy, but until the law actually changed, White Star was not going to install them. The decision seems difficult to understand today, but in 1912, the attitude towards accident prevention was much different. At the turn of the century, ship owners were reluctant to exceed the legal minimum because lifeboats took up most of the space on first- and second-class decks. Boats were expensive to purchase, maintain, and affected a ship’s stability. Finally, in the years before the Titanic Disaster, it was felt that the very presence of large numbers of lifeboats suggested that somehow the vessel was unsafe. Oddly, the same reluctance showed up as late as the 1950s for automobile seatbelts. Car makers at that time were also reluctant to install seatbelts because the belts seemed to imply there was something unsafe about the car."
(Source: http://www.rmstitanic.net/index.php4?page=faq )
One wonders what kind of surfaces we could define were we to plot sets of works associated with authors, genres, publishers, and so on. I have my fingers crossed for Klein bottles. Dinosaurian, sodomistic Klein bottles.
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