| The Kensington Review |
16 December 2005 |
| Latest Commentary: | Volume IV, Number 150 |
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White House Wants to Spend $3.1 Billion Fixing New Orleans’ Levees -- Mr. Bush took a huge hit in his popularity with his mishandling of the flooding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina came ashore in August. Nothing restores a politico’s reputation so much as handing out millions upon millions in local spending. So, one may expect him to get a bit of a bump now that he has announced $3.1 billion to fix New Orleans’ levee system. This is most welcome, and one hopes it will be spent wisely and will incorporate the experience not only of Louisiana but Holland as well.
Iraqis Vote, Violence Continues, Americans Stay -- The people of Iraq voted yesterday for the third time in eleven months. First in January, they chose an assembly to draft a constitution (which has also acted as a government). Second in October, they voted to approve that constitution. Yesterday, they voted for members of parliament under that constitution. The violence did diminish thanks to heightened security, but there were still explosions in Baghdad and elsewhere. Meanwhile, the Pentagon says there are 160,000 US troops in Iraq, up from 138,000 a year ago. Boeing Wins Qantas Business Worth US$10 Billion -- Boeing and Airbus have had a pretty good year considering they have both received record orders in the last twelve months. That said, Airbus lost out to Boeing on a hefty piece of business from Qantas earlier this week. The Australian carrier, the world’s eighth largest passenger line, announced that it was ordering 65 of Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliners, with an option for 50 more. The total for this will be about US$10 billion. Wikipedia Prank Entry Proves Value of Open Access Concept -- Wikipedia is one of the great applications of internet technology, along with search engines like Google and Yahoo, marketplace operations like Craig’s List and eBay, and e-mail. Relying on volunteer contributors, some 13,000 of them, Wikipedia is an internet-based encyclopedia of data organized to take advantage of hypertext. Recently, one contributor put some false information on Wikipedia to deceive a co-worker. The media jumped on this, calling Wikipedia’s reputation for accuracy into doubt. What the case actually proves is that the idea of having an open encyclopedia allows good information to supplant the bad. © Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux. |
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