It may seem like a bit of a reach to connect the recent book about faulty rivets on the Titanic with the public sphere, but bear with me. I've long wondered about whether and how public safety issues connect up to larger issues of a free press, oversight, corruption, and the public sphere. In the book, the authors allege that, due to time and cost pressures, weaker rivets were used by the shipbuilding company that built the Titanic, and that those contributed to the fault lines that ultimately led to the Titanic's sinking. The company that built the Titanic has disputed these allegations.