Surfside Condo

 

 I have a hypothesis for what caused the collapse of the building recently in Surfside, Florida.  The Surfside, FL Condo Collapse Was Caused by The Builder Using Beach Sand To Make The Concrete Used To Construct The Building.  See what you think.

1.      It was not a failure in architecture or engineering because it stood through 40 years of hurricanes and gale force winds.  Then fell on a quiet night.  It rotted from within.

2.      Most concrete buildings are located near the water, because 80% of our population lives near water, in large cities.  Most of the water is salt water.  Think of cities like Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Miami and San Diego.  All have salt breezes.

3.      Many of the concrete buildings, by the sea, are well over 100 years old and yet they do not collapse.

4.      Many bridges are built of concrete and stand in salt water.  They do not crumble in forty years, nor do the nearby buildings.

5.      It is cheaper to gather local beach sand than purchase salt-free, commercial inland sand to mix with the cement.

6.      The Surfside condo rubble isn’t composed primarily of large slabs of concrete.  It is small clumps, indicating decomposition.

7.      Before my wife and I moved to Oregon it was investigated and determined that a recently built bridge on Highway 1, near Florence, collapsed because the contractor that built it used beach sand to make the concrete for the bridge.  Beach sand plus cement creates a soon to be crumbling concrete.

8.      A probable NSA investigation, which will likely be somewhat influenced by corporate America, will probably determine that the probable cause was salt air destroying this 40 year old building.  After all, we would like to believe that a large construction company would not use beach sand in constructing a concrete commercial building, even if it saved them hundreds of thousands of dollars.  And who knows what other structures this company used this practice in building? 

 

“Common Wisdom is an oxymoron.” – Old Buz     6/29/2021

Iambloggerbuz.blogspot.com

Your Military Spending

 

Rank	Country	Annual Spending in US $	Population	You Spent
1	United States	$732,000,000,000.00	331002651	$2,211.46
2	China	$261,000,000,000.00	1439323776	$181.34
3	India	$71,100,000,000.00	1380004385	$51.52
4	Russian Federation	$65,100,000,000.00	145934462	$446.09
5	Saudi Arabia	$61,900,000,000.00	34813871	$1,778.03
6	France	$50,100,000,000.00	65273511	$767.54
7	Germany	$49,300,000,000.00	83783942	$588.42
8	United Kingdom	$48,700,000,000.00	67886011	$717.38
9	Japan	$47,600,000,000.00	126476461	$376.35
10	South Korea	$43,900,000,000.00	51710000	$848.97
11	Australia	$27,500,000,000.00	25499884	$1,078.44
Total of #2-11		$726,200,000,000.00

I got to thinking about the blog I posted on 3/25 about our annual military spending and realized that it might be more meaningful to consider how much, on average, each of us spends per annum on our military. We are real patriots here in America. If you take the annual military spending and divide it by the number of citizens in our country, the result for 2019 is $2,211.46 per citizen, per year. That is very impressive when you realize that the average citizen of China only spent $181.34. To accomplish this amazing feat the US spent an annual 732 billion dollars. The Germans, who we generally consider a fairly military nation, spent a little over 49 billion. I would like to spend the same as Germany on our military annually. This would give us 680 billion dollars a year to spend on things like buying the Amazon (no relation to Jeff Bezos) rain forest and replanting the trees that give us our clean air and normal climate. Or perhaps to give our nation Universal Health Care. Or perhaps to desalinate some ocean water, in the Southwest and stop the drought. We could use the money to educate our best and our brightest, not our wealthiest. We could use it to repair our infrastructure. There are many ways to spend the money that will be of greater benefit than on our military.

You get the point. Do we really need to outspend the next ten nations in the World, combined? Does that spending create or destroy our future? How does operating a giant military serve or better our country? What good is another atomic aircraft carrier, or an inter-continental nuclear missile? We can still wave our flags and call ourselves patriots without the military waste.

I'm a patriot, just like you are, but I am a Patriot of The Planet. You should try it. You will make better decisions for our country and for the world. We are the richest nation on Earth. How well do we use it? That $2,211 per year will go a long way. It need not be an investment in war.

Cheers, Old Buz 6/28/2021

iambloggerbuz.blogspot.com