I know nothing about machinery in general, or airplanes in particular, and even I know Spitfires are prop planes – without even having to look at them.
I think this was on Slashdot, where “the kids” were doing a “what a maroon” eye roll on a Fox News business reporter (natch), who answered “why are the Germans more successful with solar energy” with “because Germany gets more sun.”
The correct answer is that indeed, parts of the U.S. get much more sun than Germany, and no, judging by the large subsidies, expensive electricity, and worsening economic conditions, solar power isn’t working in Germany, and the reason Germany is still pushing solar power in cloudy Germany, instead of doing something like colonizing North Africa and building solar farms there, or better yet, developing the oil and gas resources in that region is that 1) that hadn’t worked out for them in the past, and 2) there is this a history in Germany of being grimly committed to a cause long after it has been determined to be a disaster leading to utter ruin (see response to 1) — is someone going to “call Godwin” on me for relating the Green Party to the German Worker’s Party?).
So what I am saying is that someone on Fox News saying Germany gets more sun and has success with solar power is a brain burp and not a reflection on the credibility of Fox News, regardless of how trendy it is to think otherwise, and the jet-propelled Spitfire is in the same category. Don’t read too much into it.
The total, utter, and complete lack of knowledge among ‘journalists’ is staggering. [someone should create an emoticon air quote symbol] And evidently, they can’t or don’t know how to use the most common browsers and search engines of the day, to GET information on anything, much less the Spitfire.
The most important thing for them to find may have been a photograph of a Spitfire, showing a propeller! That alone may have given them a clue, that it ain’t a jet Buford!
[yeah, I did know about turboprops I grew up around airports and airlines, so I DO know about turboprop planes, but that is knowledge I'm certain they won't have at "X" branch of the AP]
I did an experiment, using the following pieces of search software.
IE8, with Google, Bing and AVG Search
Firefox, also with Google, Bing and AVG Search
With the exception of the IE8 and Bing combo, all the rest brought up links to web sites about Spitfires, AND pictures of Spitfires flying, taking off, landing and sitting still. The IE8 and Bing combo brought up just links. But the very first link took me to a site that had [here's the shocker!] PHOTOGRAPHS, photos of Spitfires, photographs, eh? Know what I mean? Photographs, nudge nudge. Snap snap. Grin grin, wink wink, say no more!
I ass-u-me that Rand posted this to point out not just the error, but their blatant ignorance and propensity to print their ignorance as fact. If not, then I’LL point it out.
I’m not entirely convinced that even photographs would help. Would a photo of a propeller on the plane be any good if they didn’t know that jets don’t use propellers to begin with? To the J-school graduate, “jet” is just a punchy word for “thing that goes fast in the air”.
The ‘journalist’ types are all about knowing old from new. My thought pattern was that they’d see a propeller and think stagecoach, steam driven train, Samuel F.B. Morse.
Or some such total lack of dates of technological knowledge parc.
It just shows that people are forgetting all about WWII. 1945 was 68 years ago and the people fighting there are likely in their 90s or whatever if they are still alive.
Things a lot of people do not know:
- there were submarines in WWI (well there were submarines in the US Civil War but let us discount that). In fact the US entered WWI because of a casus belli from a German submarine torpedo sinking a civilian vessel.
- SONAR (i.e. ASDIC) was invented during WWI.
- The Bazooka hand held rocket launcher was invented during WWI by Goddard for the US Army Signal Corps. Turned out the war ended before it could be deployed so it was stored and kept in secret until WWII.
- Night vision devices were developed during WWII.
- Smart bombs were developed during WWII.
- During WWII there were proposals and prototypes of heavy hybrid tanks with electric transmission. This is used in modern dump trucks and many militaries today are investigating using electric transmission for the next generation of tanks.
- The magnetron, which is the basis of modern microwave oven technology, was developed during WWII for RADAR.
‘zilla,
it’s not that they, the journalists, don’t know, they don’t want to know. They believe that the U.S. went rogue wild and that socialism / communism would have been a better way for the world, and because we ultimately nuked Japan, the U.S. is the evil, imperialistic, aggressor in that war.
That means you only need to know about stuff the Allies did wrong, there’s no requirement to know anything of substance or import.
The Lusitania was sunk in 1915 and the US didn’t enter the war until 1917. I’ve never heard of America being that slow to anger. It was the Zimmerman telegram, not the Lusitania, that got the US to enter the war.
Agreed the Zimmerman telegram was more important. But wars are seldom started over a single incident. It is usually a last resort after an accumulation of incidents.
In fact the US entered WWI because of a casus belli from a German submarine torpedo sinking a civilian vessel.
Not so. The Lusitania sinking happened in 1915. The U.S. didn’t enter WWI until 1917. In between, there were Pancho Villa’s cross-border banditry in the American southwest and the little matter of the Zimmerman Telegram in which the Kaiser’s government promised to support Mexico if that country would invade the U.S. to get its pre-1836 territory back. The Villa raids and the U.S. punitive expedition launched in response certainly had Americans of the time viewing this as a credible threat of European interference in the Americas; a direct challenge to the then nearly century-old Monroe Doctrine. Even Woodrow Wilson couldn’t ignore that one. I have no idea why so many people seem to know about the Lusitania and attribute U.S. entry into WWI to its sinking, but have no knowledge of the Zimmerman Telegram or even of Pancho Villa. I blame the dumbing down of U.S. History teaching and the malignant influence of left-wing political correctness.
I seem to read articles differently than most. It seemed to me that the article made two different statements about two different aircraft. (1) Is that there were no jets believed to have been delivered there. (2) Is that as many as 140 Spitfires were believed to be there.
That’s not a tenable interpretation. The first two paragraphs of the article:
A global video gaming company that funded a search for dozens of World War II-era British fighter jets in Myanmar says none of the legendary planes are buried in the Southeast Asian country.
Aviation enthusiasts hunting for the lost planes believe as many as 140 Spitfires were hidden in crates in pristine condition in three Myanmar locations.
clearly equates “dozens of World War II-era British fighter jets” with “as many as 140 Spitfires”.
As stupid as this error was, it still doesn’t beat the record bonehead statement I saw in a newspaper article several years ago about the “E-2 Hawkeye jet fighter.” Three errors in 4 words must be a record.
Those spinny things on the front are fans to keep the jet engines cool.
Jeezus on a pogo stick!
I know nothing about machinery in general, or airplanes in particular, and even I know Spitfires are prop planes – without even having to look at them.
Wotta maroon. >:-(
I think this was on Slashdot, where “the kids” were doing a “what a maroon” eye roll on a Fox News business reporter (natch), who answered “why are the Germans more successful with solar energy” with “because Germany gets more sun.”
The correct answer is that indeed, parts of the U.S. get much more sun than Germany, and no, judging by the large subsidies, expensive electricity, and worsening economic conditions, solar power isn’t working in Germany, and the reason Germany is still pushing solar power in cloudy Germany, instead of doing something like colonizing North Africa and building solar farms there, or better yet, developing the oil and gas resources in that region is that 1) that hadn’t worked out for them in the past, and 2) there is this a history in Germany of being grimly committed to a cause long after it has been determined to be a disaster leading to utter ruin (see response to 1) — is someone going to “call Godwin” on me for relating the Green Party to the German Worker’s Party?).
So what I am saying is that someone on Fox News saying Germany gets more sun and has success with solar power is a brain burp and not a reflection on the credibility of Fox News, regardless of how trendy it is to think otherwise, and the jet-propelled Spitfire is in the same category. Don’t read too much into it.
Everybody knows jets are much older than that. Just read Watterson:
http://bestofcalvinandhobbes.com/2012/05/tyrannosaurs-in-f14s-attack/
Thanks Dan, I’d forgotten about that particular strip.
And I think Hobbes has this one wrong!
The total, utter, and complete lack of knowledge among ‘journalists’ is staggering. [someone should create an emoticon air quote symbol] And evidently, they can’t or don’t know how to use the most common browsers and search engines of the day, to GET information on anything, much less the Spitfire.
The most important thing for them to find may have been a photograph of a Spitfire, showing a propeller! That alone may have given them a clue, that it ain’t a jet Buford!
[yeah, I did know about turboprops I grew up around airports and airlines, so I DO know about turboprop planes, but that is knowledge I'm certain they won't have at "X" branch of the AP]
I did an experiment, using the following pieces of search software.
IE8, with Google, Bing and AVG Search
Firefox, also with Google, Bing and AVG Search
With the exception of the IE8 and Bing combo, all the rest brought up links to web sites about Spitfires, AND pictures of Spitfires flying, taking off, landing and sitting still. The IE8 and Bing combo brought up just links. But the very first link took me to a site that had [here's the shocker!] PHOTOGRAPHS, photos of Spitfires, photographs, eh? Know what I mean? Photographs, nudge nudge. Snap snap. Grin grin, wink wink, say no more!
I ass-u-me that Rand posted this to point out not just the error, but their blatant ignorance and propensity to print their ignorance as fact. If not, then I’LL point it out.
I’m not entirely convinced that even photographs would help. Would a photo of a propeller on the plane be any good if they didn’t know that jets don’t use propellers to begin with? To the J-school graduate, “jet” is just a punchy word for “thing that goes fast in the air”.
The ‘journalist’ types are all about knowing old from new. My thought pattern was that they’d see a propeller and think stagecoach, steam driven train, Samuel F.B. Morse.
Or some such total lack of dates of technological knowledge parc.
It just shows that people are forgetting all about WWII. 1945 was 68 years ago and the people fighting there are likely in their 90s or whatever if they are still alive.
Things a lot of people do not know:
- there were submarines in WWI (well there were submarines in the US Civil War but let us discount that). In fact the US entered WWI because of a casus belli from a German submarine torpedo sinking a civilian vessel.
- SONAR (i.e. ASDIC) was invented during WWI.
- The Bazooka hand held rocket launcher was invented during WWI by Goddard for the US Army Signal Corps. Turned out the war ended before it could be deployed so it was stored and kept in secret until WWII.
- Night vision devices were developed during WWII.
- Smart bombs were developed during WWII.
- During WWII there were proposals and prototypes of heavy hybrid tanks with electric transmission. This is used in modern dump trucks and many militaries today are investigating using electric transmission for the next generation of tanks.
- The magnetron, which is the basis of modern microwave oven technology, was developed during WWII for RADAR.
‘zilla,
it’s not that they, the journalists, don’t know, they don’t want to know. They believe that the U.S. went rogue wild and that socialism / communism would have been a better way for the world, and because we ultimately nuked Japan, the U.S. is the evil, imperialistic, aggressor in that war.
That means you only need to know about stuff the Allies did wrong, there’s no requirement to know anything of substance or import.
The Lusitania was sunk in 1915 and the US didn’t enter the war until 1917. I’ve never heard of America being that slow to anger. It was the Zimmerman telegram, not the Lusitania, that got the US to enter the war.
Agreed the Zimmerman telegram was more important. But wars are seldom started over a single incident. It is usually a last resort after an accumulation of incidents.
There was also a submarine in the US Revolution but its sole attemped use failed to sink a ship.
In fact the US entered WWI because of a casus belli from a German submarine torpedo sinking a civilian vessel.
Not so. The Lusitania sinking happened in 1915. The U.S. didn’t enter WWI until 1917. In between, there were Pancho Villa’s cross-border banditry in the American southwest and the little matter of the Zimmerman Telegram in which the Kaiser’s government promised to support Mexico if that country would invade the U.S. to get its pre-1836 territory back. The Villa raids and the U.S. punitive expedition launched in response certainly had Americans of the time viewing this as a credible threat of European interference in the Americas; a direct challenge to the then nearly century-old Monroe Doctrine. Even Woodrow Wilson couldn’t ignore that one. I have no idea why so many people seem to know about the Lusitania and attribute U.S. entry into WWI to its sinking, but have no knowledge of the Zimmerman Telegram or even of Pancho Villa. I blame the dumbing down of U.S. History teaching and the malignant influence of left-wing political correctness.
In fact the US entered WWI because of a casus belli from a German submarine torpedo sinking a civilian vessel.
No, that’s a myth. The Zimmerman telegram was the causus belli.
I seem to read articles differently than most. It seemed to me that the article made two different statements about two different aircraft. (1) Is that there were no jets believed to have been delivered there. (2) Is that as many as 140 Spitfires were believed to be there.
That’s not a tenable interpretation. The first two paragraphs of the article:
A global video gaming company that funded a search for dozens of World War II-era British fighter jets in Myanmar says none of the legendary planes are buried in the Southeast Asian country.
Aviation enthusiasts hunting for the lost planes believe as many as 140 Spitfires were hidden in crates in pristine condition in three Myanmar locations.
clearly equates “dozens of World War II-era British fighter jets” with “as many as 140 Spitfires”.
I think that it could be interpreted either way. I don’t think this is a good subject to cross too many swords over.
The Gloster Meteor!
As stupid as this error was, it still doesn’t beat the record bonehead statement I saw in a newspaper article several years ago about the “E-2 Hawkeye jet fighter.” Three errors in 4 words must be a record.
They must have fixed it because I see no such text.
Yep, it looks as if they fixed it. The new article mentions Spitfires a number of time, and talks about prop-driven craft in the last paragraph.