Good morning.
Friday ends Whitewater’s week with a chance of showers and a high of sixty-two.
NPR asks a question about catastrophes: Why didn’t the passengers panic on the Titanic? (They did panic when the Lusitania sank.)
David Savage, an economist from Queensland University in Australia, has a theory:
There were a lot of similarities between these two events. This ships were both luxury liners, they had a similar number of passengers and a similar number of survivors.
The biggest difference, Savage concludes, was time. The Lusitania sank in less than 20 minutes. The Titanic took two-and-a-half hours.
“If you’ve got an event that lasts two-and-a-half hours, social order will take over and everybody will behave in a social manner,” Savage says. “If you’re going down in under 17 minutes, basically it’s instinctual.”
Plausible, one supposes.
Google’s puzzle asks a question about another kind of accident: “You’re piloting a plane without skis over the Antarctic. Suddenly, you have engine trouble and see a patch of blue ice below. Should you aim for it?”