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Google Earth Causes US Navy to Redesign “Swastika” Building
Author: Jeremy Scott28 Sep
One of my favorite new toys is Google Earth. It gives us amazing aerial views of pretty much anywhere in the world–and it’s free!
But a lot of buildings weren’t designed with the aerial view in mind. Prior to Google Earth (and similar Windows Live Earth), these perspectives simply weren’t possible.
The US Navy, for example, has a barracks building in Colorado that, when viewed from above, resembles the Nazi swastika. The accidental resemblance was discovered recently by Google Earth users, and now the Navy is going to spend $600,000 remodeling and redesigning the structure.
I don’t know what’s crazier here: that someone has enough free time to go looking for offensively-shaped buildings on Google Earth, or that the government is going to spend over half a million dollars to fix something that is clearly not intentional and will be viewed only by bored air travelers and a few obsessive computer users? You make the call.
2 Responses for "Google Earth Causes US Navy to Redesign “Swastika” Building"
Obviously accidental my ass. How can you claim it was “obviously accidental”. Are you telling me architects just didn’t have the blueprints, and constructors made the building from scratch? Right, yeah I believe that… note the sarcasm
Well, I said “clearly not intentional” not, as you said, “obviously accidental.” But… that being said, let me clarify what I meant.
What I meant is that offending someone with this building design was not intended. Yes, T.L., I’m sure they used blueprints.
I’m saying that no one would have pulled out the blueprints and said, “Gee, do you know that one day in the future, when search engines have satellite photos of everything, someone’s going to be offended by the fact that this building is in the shape of a swastika.”
No one intended to hurt anyone’s feelings or to be racist. That’s my point.
Yes, I’m sure the building is shaped the way they meant it to be.
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