Cont: The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-opened Part III

[Vixen]

Bjorkman is a lunatic who is unable to use the basic physics and engineering that he is supposedly qualified as an expert on.

Again, if Ian Wright, YOUR HYPOTHETICAL, started talking about how football is a 13-a-side game, would he still be a credible expert on football irrespective of his successful past as a player?

Whilst Bjorkman might 'go on' a bit, I haven't noticed he has been factually incorrect re Estonia. In fact, quite the reverse.

Where I disagree is when it comes to opinion as opposed to hard facts.

 

[LondonJohn]

No. I don't do 'would, could, should'. Fact is, it was thrown back onto the seabed, a grossly reckless and negligent act. This is because the JAIC hinge (no pun intended) their key conclusion on the failure of the Atlantic lock, thus it was imperative it was available for examination, if only for reasons of transparency. The bow visor supposedly hung on this lock whilst it bashed about, yet one wonders whether it was ever bolted at all, given the crew's penchant for hammering the dashed thing in, as witnessed by passengers.

For those who aren't aware, the Atlantic lock was a bolt lock.

No, Vixen.

I'm wearily unsurprised that you still don't know the mode of failure of the bow visor.

The bottom lock was the first to break. It broke because the part of the lock comprising the lugs that were attached to the ship broke open (NB: nothing whatsoever to do with the bolt itself, which didn't fail). The visor then failed at its side locks (which were never designed for those sorts of loads) and hung loosely from its top hinges (banging against the forepeak deck as it did so) until those top hinges also finally failed and the entire visor detached from the ship.

How can you keep making such fundamental mistakes about this incident? Is it a poor capacity for learning/understanding? Is it a less-than-passing familiarity with engineering principles and the scientific method? Whatever it is, it's pitiful. And it's antithetical to proper, intellectually-honest debate, Vixen.

 

[JayUtah]

I think I would listen more carefully to the person who is a qualified astronaut and rocket scientist and someone who has years of vocational experience in the logistics of getting to mars and back. Who cares if they wear odd socks or vote Monster Raving Looney Party?

So in line with this analogy, wouldn't it make more sense to trust people who are qualified in forensic engineering analysis, those who have been actual sailors in the navy, and those types instead of an accountant with delusions of grandeur?

 

[MarkCorrigan]

I think I would listen more carefully to the person who is a qualified astronaut and rocket scientist and someone who has years of vocational experience in the logistics of getting to mars and back. Who cares if they wear odd socks or vote Monster Raving Looney Party?

No one. Where did I mention anything like that?

Deal with the questions you get as they are posed to you, stop attempting to twist them to suit your purposes. It's blatant what you are doing by the way. You're attempting to frame our disagreement with your using Bjorkman as a credible expert as us disagreeing with him politically or as a person rather than dealing with the fact that we disagree with him because he is woefully incapable as an expert now, irrespective of whether he once was credible.

So again I ask you, if Ian Wright talked on MOTD about how football is a 13-a-side game where the keeper could run with the ball like in rugby would he still be a credible expert on football, yes or no?

 

[Vixen]

That you make the existence of nuclear weapons, the ability to travel to the moon and return, and the physical effects of a collision between a plane and a building to be a matter of "opinion" illustrates perfectly why this thread is such a train wreck.

I see nothing wrong with people discussing these ideas.

If one wants the Thought Police, there are certain totalitarian regimes in the world who will tell you how to think and what to think.


I see nothing wrong in people discussing 9/11 or whatever.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

Whilst Bjorkman might 'go on' a bit, I haven't noticed he has been factually incorrect re Estonia. In fact, quite the reverse.

Where I disagree is when it comes to opinion as opposed to hard facts.

Stop deflecting. Deal with the question.

 

[JayUtah]

Whilst Bjorkman might 'go on' a bit, I haven't noticed he has been factually incorrect re Estonia.

How would you know? You're not qualified to vet his claims.

Where I disagree is when it comes to opinion as opposed to hard facts.

You trust his opinion on the buoyancy of ships. You argue that his opinion should be trusted by others because it is the product of his qualifications. And you completely ignore all the other cases in which he has rendered his opinion after selectively or incorrectly reporting the "hard facts."

 

[LondonJohn]

We don't know do we because we are just expected to take Stenström's word for it. Note the JAIC glibly do not even mention it was thrown back onto the seabed nor that nobody else had a chance to verify what Stenström recorded about it. How difficult is it to insert a sentence to this effect?

How can a person or organisation glibly not mention something, Vixen? I'm curious to know.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

I see nothing wrong with people discussing these ideas.

If one wants the Thought Police, there are certain totalitarian regimes in the world who will tell you how to think and what to think.


I see nothing wrong in people discussing 9/11 or whatever.

Itisn't his discussing them that we care about, it is the fact that he routinely uses arguments that violate physics to prop up his crackpot ideas. He is so often factually wrong that he is not credible.

 

[JayUtah]

I see nothing wrong with people discussing these ideas.

If the discussion involves material misrepresentation of the facts, then I would consider such a discussion evidence of the proponent's unreliability. The problem is not that Björkman questions widely-held propositions. The problem is that he questions them on grounds that are misleading at best, and wildly incorrect at worst.

 

[LondonJohn]

I was referring to Estonia. I am not interested in his views on JFK, 9/11 or Pearl Harbour.

Bjorkmann is a qualified naval architect. That is different from 'having an opinion'.

As an example, there is a man with such severe dementia (cf Alzheimer's) that if you speak to him, he'll immediately forget no matter how many times you repeat it. Yet, put him in front of a piano and a music sheet, and he plays beautifully and perfectly, just as he did when he was a world-renowned pianist when he was younger.

This is because, the part of your brain that retains memory of learned skill such as walking, driving, making a cup of tea, etc - 'working memory' - is 'stored' in a separate part of your brain than other types of memory. (This is slightly simplified because there are some forms of dementia that affect gait and ability to walk or write.) Thus, someone can be desperately mentally ill and have awful political views, yet still retain their academically trained skills.

So your dismissing someone wholesale just because you differ from them in an opinion reflects on yourself not them.

LMAOOOOOOO

But hang on....yes, I suppose it's entirely feasible that Bjorkman has some form of physiological brain impairment that causes him to talk all manner of unscientific CT crap about pretty much everything, but that when it comes to the Estonia disaster.... he suddenly snaps into "lucid and on-point" mode.

Yes. That actually makes a lot of sense, now you frame it this way. OK. You're right.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Hello? You are appointed to collect forensic evidence at a crime scene. You find a knife nearby the body. You estimate its dimensions - you might even have brought along measuring instruments - and then you throw it into the nearby waterfall. So your record becomes key evidence in convicting someone. But suppose the pathologist and the judge and jury also want to examine this Exhibit A knife? According to you, we just have to take your word for it that it was as described by you.

So if it's recovered you would like the bolt to be tested for traces of blood. Is that right?

And the divers were tasked with collecting forensic evidence at a crime scene? Did anyone tell them this?

 

[LondonJohn]

It wasn't a knife.

What testing do you think should have been done after the bolt was inspected and measured?

Exactly. It was clear, as soon as they found, measured and visually examined the bolt, that the bolt itself had nothing to do with the failure of the bow visor. Had the bolt been broken in two, or had the bolt become significantly bent or distorted, or had the bolt become significantly stretched, then that would have been a different matter.

But the bolt was none of those things. It was in fact within spec wrt all dimensions, and it was (obviously) in one piece. So, by definition, the bolt was effectively of no evidential value.

The lugs through which the bolt passed, on the other hand; the lugs which were found to be broken with busted welds..........

I guess Vixen is unable to distinguish between a) a smoking gun, and b) a gun which has never been fired, with a factory-condition breech and barrel....

 

[LondonJohn]

Vixen! Vixen! Tell us more about Braidwood "famously defusing the Greenpeace bomb"!!

I'm all ears to hear every detail of this man's fantastic heroism and derring-do on this mission! What a guy!

 

[LondonJohn]

I see nothing wrong with people discussing these ideas.

If one wants the Thought Police, there are certain totalitarian regimes in the world who will tell you how to think and what to think.


I see nothing wrong in people discussing 9/11 or whatever.

There's nothing wrong in "people discussing" such incidents. But there's everything wrong with people declaring they "know" that a) the official explanation is false, and b) their alternative explanation is right..... when they're demonstrably wrong on both counts.

Such people fully deserve to be told that they're wrong, and exactly how/why they're wrong. Which brings us neatly back to Bjorkman. And you.

 

[phiwum]

I haven't ever seen the distinction anywhere to be honest.

Myriad's usage sounds right to my Yankee ears.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Vixen! Vixen! Tell us more about Braidwood "famously defusing the Greenpeace bomb"!!

I'm all ears to hear every detail of this man's fantastic heroism and derring-do on this mission! What a guy!

I did wonder what that "Greenpeace bomb" reference was. Obviously it couldn't have been the Rainbow Warrior bombing by the French secret service because, as people tend to remember, that detonated. Hey, maybe Braidwood found a wet cardboard box wrapped in tape in the Rainbow Warrior after the event and defused that.

 

[phiwum]

He didn't say so. He's only quoted as saying they had two earpieces. He did not say they had different feeds to each ear.

Here's the relevant bits Vixen quoted earlier.

The diver received his instructions through two earphones - one in each ear - and spoke into one microphone. On the video tapes available to the public only the voice of the supervisor into one of the earphones and the voice of the diver are audible. Only on some occasions does it become evident that the diver gets additional respectively other instructions when he reacts differently or replies differently, this being particularly obvious when he quickly turns his head away from areas which the public should not see as will be explained on the following pages.
It is common practice - according to the diving expert Brian Braidwood - that divers carry two different earphones during an operation like the one under consideration here.

The highlighted bit does not appear to come from Braidwood. Braidwood is cited for the claim that divers carry two "different" earphones during an operation like this, which suggests that the earphones have different feeds but doesn't say it outright. In any case, we don't have Braidwood's literal words, so it seems plausible that his words are being misinterpreted here.

Without his words, I'd be cautious in claiming that he concurs that divers regularly have two different bosses telling them what to do on two different earphones.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Here's the relevant bits Vixen quoted earlier.



The highlighted bit does not appear to come from Braidwood. Braidwood is cited for the claim that divers carry two "different" earphones during an operation like this, which suggests that the earphones have different feeds but doesn't say it outright. In any case, we don't have Braidwood's literal words, so it seems plausible that his words are being misinterpreted here.

Without his words, I'd be cautious in claiming that he concurs that divers regularly have two different bosses telling them what to do on two different earphones.

Just so. None of it quotes Braidwood directly. The word "different" is not his. And of course Captain_Swoop has said that it is not at all normal for the diver to have two different feeds.

 

[Vixen]

If the discussion involves material misrepresentation of the facts, then I would consider such a discussion evidence of the proponent's unreliability. The problem is not that Björkman questions widely-held propositions. The problem is that he questions them on grounds that are misleading at best, and wildly incorrect at worst.

Why does this frighten you? People are quite capable of assessing propositions for themselves.