Thursday, September 15, 2005

1519 Don't know much about geography

What a wonderful world it would be if Europeans would read a geography book sings Jane Galt. Megan McArdle “is sickened by the smug response of some Europeans to this tragedy: their gladness that it has taken Bush down a peg, their overweening belief that this somehow happened because Americans just aren't as nice or as smart as Europeans are. Of course, Europeans have no way of knowing how they'd do in such a disaster, because they have no storms like Katrina, no earthquakes like Northridge, no rivers like the Mississippi . . . but somehow that doesn't seem to stop some of them from being sure that the ability of their police to stop 40 or so football yobs from rioting translates perfectly into an ability to handle the displacement of 500,000 people when even the police have no water, food, gas for their cars or power for their radios.”

She lists five items about our geographic, climatic and demographic differences that Europeans [and Americans] need to consider when criticizing the hurricane response. Might be nice if some librarians providing misinformation were aware of a few of these facts too.
Asymmetrical Information

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