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The sinking of MS Estonia: Case Reopened Part VII

Vixen said:
Here's a US paper
By Richard W. Stevenson
  • Oct. 1, 1994
quoting Reuters (who check their facts) and from which probably the other papers also took their sources:
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The context implies "the authorities" means the Estonian authorities. There had been confusion about what had happened to Piht but they now believed he was "in Finland and had spoken to investigators". Do you suppose that can be true? I do not. Nobody has ever emerged who says they met Piht or spoke with Piht or interviewed Piht in Finland. If he had really spoken to investigators in Finland why is there no trace of that ever having happened? Who were these Finnish investigators and what became of them?

Vixen said:
This info was from 'Helsinki Police'. NB HS is equivalent to say, the old style TIMES, extremely reliable and accurate source for news.
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The "info" being that multiple stories about what happened to Piht were circulating. No actual eyewitness stuff, just thirdhand rumours. And are you quoting from HS itself or are you quoting secondhand what some other source claims HS printed? As I recall it eventually emerged your claims to be quoting HS turned out to be quoting someone else's website, claiming to be quoting HS, claiming to be quoting other newspapers claiming to be quoting the police.
 
JayUtah said:
But you do have an opinion about her credentials. You previously insisted that we had to accept her claims regarding this sinking as credible (despite their facial problems) because she had a good reputation as a journalist. You don’t get to change that basis just because it turns out not to be true. “Passion” is not a substitute for journalistic integrity in search of the truth.
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Her reputation as a journalist is, at best, mediocre. She was something of a nonentity, never employed by any significant organisation, always a freelancer with no great reputation. I suspect her involvement in the dire "The Millennium Disaster - Computer Crash 2000" and similar nonsense had something to do with that. She broke no notable stories, became obsessed with the Estonia sinking and later dabbled in Madeline McCann conspiracies.
 
Reformed Offlian said:
1) Even in cases where there is a passenger manifest, I'd bet it's going to be a separate document, not an entry in the pilot's logbook.
2) For a variety of reasons (have you ever ridden on a helicopter?), rescuemen aren't going to make "passenger manifests" of rescuees mid-flight. That will happen after they land and can take them somewhere where they can hear themselves think.
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Correct. I know several pilots' logbooks. They contain pertinent details of flights, not irrelevant trivia.
 
Vixen said:
Given I have read Hegel, I rather think I do know what dialectics mean.
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If this is true, then you have either:

1) Not understood what Hegel was saying, and thus come away with a highly idiosyncratic notion of dialetics, or
2) Understood exactly what Hegel was saying, and thus come away with a highly idiosyncratic notion of dialectics.
 
People can use words wrong. It happens to everyone. Just yesterday I watched a YouTube essay which was overall very well written and made good insightful points about modern storytelling and the difference between traditional heroes who earn admiration through hard lessons, learning from failure and overcoming their initial flaws; and false heroes ("Mary Sue" and other variations) who are presented as admirable just for who they are, and all they have to overcome is that the rest of the world (at first) doesn't admire them enough.

Anyhow, the essay kept using the word "wizened" to describe a hero's condition late in the Hero's Journey after their trials. For example, Luke Skywalker is "wizened" after facing and failing against Darth Vader at Bespin. The problem is, "wizened" doesn't mean "has become wise." It means "shriveled up with age." And while Mark Hamill did look a bit wizened in The Last Jedi, that's not what the essayist was talking about, and it certainly doesn't apply to Ana de Armas or her character Eve in Ballerina after fighting John Wick.

What's important (in real life as in the Hero's Journey) isn't that a person makes mistakes, or even the reason why. (There have been so many passages in fantasy novels about wizened old wizards that it's understandable that their readers, and perhaps even some of their authors, mistakenly gleaned from context and lexical similarity that it means wise.) It's that the person can and does learn from them.

If I were to tell the essayist in question about his mistake, I'm certain his reaction would be, "thank you for letting me know," followed (after looking up authoritative sources and confirming what I said) by no longer using the wrong meaning, with actual gratitude for helping him make his works better in the future. Why am I certain of that? Because he's a good essayist making insightful points, and he couldn't have become that without having learned from constructive criticism on many occasions in the past.

By the same token, what I'm certain he wouldn't do is immediately question my academic credentials in literature or lexicography, followed by spinning a tale about how his was the correct usage in the prep school he went to and it's a shame I was too ignorant to recognize that.
 
Disbelief said:
It is definitely a conceptual mistake, as you don't even know when it is appropriate to use high strength steel versus other grades.
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HY-180 steel, for example, is still just steel. It's not reinforced with anything; it's just stronger than mild steel. You can reinforce a steel structure by adding members, say stiffeners or stringers . But that would be a structural argument, not a materials argument (i.e., not one you'd study with metallurgy). That's not the kind of reinforcement we're interested in. Here it appears the goal is to exaggerate the strength of the steel in order to suggest that it would take causes beyond those ordinarily encountered by a ship throughout its life to produce the effects noted in a metallurgical examination.

The problem ultimately is that Vixen typically doesn't know what she's talking about, but still insists that we take her seriously. She tries to dismiss calling her on mistakes in her claims as "heckling" or "bullying," thereby shaming people away from criticizing them. According to the presumed rationale above, it would be appropriate to narrow down what is meant by "reinforced steel." Ship shell plating, for example, is typically made from mild steel in order to preserve ductility, which is lost as steel increases in hardness. You want the plating to bend when stressed—ductile behavior—not fracture and thereby admit water. But conceding that the steel in question is not particularly tough (for steel) allows that the injury observed in it does not require an extraordinary cause and thus does not compel us to reach for conspiratorial hypotheses to explain it.

The doubling-down is especially egregious, and indicates bad-faith argumentation. The first answer was along the lines, "Let me go look up what 'reinforced steel' means." When that didn't satisfy, the next claim was along the lines, "It was obviously a misquotation." And when asked what source was being quoted, the answer transmogrifies into, "It was a typo made in a momentary state of fatigue." Three completely different answers, none of which requires her to admit the likelihood that she just made up "reinforced steel" to sound knowledgeable.

We could certainly accept, "It was a typo and I didn't mean it," and allow that maybe Vixen really does know how steel works (apart from welding), except that this isn't the first time (or even the third time) she's used this phrase :—

Vixen

Post in thread 'Another terrorist attack - London Bridge'

Darat said:
No it is not easy enough, nor could it be done quickly and why just London? Nothing to stop such an attack taking place somewhere like say Warrington.
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It's the copycat aspect. Perhaps all major city centres along popular thoroughfares should have simple concrete posts (or reinforced steel)constructed say every six feet along the pavement edge (as we see on street corners), so people can still cross, but cars couldn't mount the pavement far.

I've lost count the number of times I've strolled across London Bridge. It's all too close to home.
Vixen

Post in thread 'The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-Opened'

gypsyjackson said:
There’s a thread in CT about this.
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Wish I'd known about that thread! Seems the Swedish and Estonian authorities are no longer treating it as conspiracy theory.

It is all very well saying the four metre long gap happened when the stern hit the seabed. However, it is not just a gap, there is actually a 1.2m hole in the middle of it. As ships are designed to be bouyant - the Estonia took a total of ninety minutes to sink - so even if it did sink to the bottom once the bow was 45° it seems unlikely to me that a 'rock caused the hole in the hull' and the split in the thick...
Vixen

Post in thread 'The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-opened Part II'

Captain_Swoop said:
Welding works by melting the steel.
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Look. Water boils at 100°C. If you have a gas stove, then the flame you are using is anything up to 600°C in intensity. Yet it takes at least 4 - 6 minutes to boil 1 pint of water.

How long do you have to point your arc welding cutter at a piece of thick reinforced steel to get it to melt? It certainly doesn't happen instantly.
Vixen

Cont: Post in thread 'The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Reopened Part V'

Well, dearie me!

Weird beliefs of the general public


• When a vessel capsizes, it floats around on its side.

• A strong wave can cause a reinforced steel bow visor to just simply fall off.

• The bow visor falling off meant that the cast iron door of the car deck also opened.

• This opening was enough to cause instant flooding of the car deck and the ship to sink within thirty-five minutes.

• Notwithstanding the car deck ramp-style door opening to let in a huge torrent of water, it then shut all by itself, sufficiently enough to enable two Estonian athletes to climb down...
Vixen

Post in thread 'The sinking of MS Estonia: Case Reopened Part VII'

@BlueMoutain: re your comments elsewhere:

  1. It was confirmed by a naval official at the official investigation that the EPIRBS were automatic EPIRBS.
  2. It was confirmed by a Norwegian professor of Metallurgy that the type of deformation seen in the bow were compatible with an explosives reaction and she did say this type of deformation in reinforced steel is only reproducible in a laboratory and at temperatures >800°C. If you want to mock an expert, that reflects on you, not me.
  3. Underwater images did indeed show submersible track marks on the Baltic Sea bed.
(etc.)

...nor the first time she's been corrected on her misuse.
Andy_Ross

Post in thread 'The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-Opened'

Vixen said:
How is that relevant? Is that all you can do, search around desperately for typos or a sentence taken out of context?

At least I knew what deformations were.
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How is it taken out of context?

What typo?

You originally claimed the hull was 'reinforced steel'

When you were shown that it wasn't 'reinforced' and that the thickness varies depending on location you admitted you knew nothing about it.

It's a mistake she has made so often in the face of correction that not only is it proper to characterize it as a conceptual error, it's proper to characterize it at this point as deliberate misrepresentation.

Now matter how much handwaving is offered about chartered accountancy or psychology, disclaiming expertise in metallurgy followed by copious examples of not understanding how steel works and covering up for it in ever-changing face-saving excuses has consequences for an argument that purports to interpret the metallurgical findings in a way that requires explosives to produce the reported effects.
 
catsmate said:
Correct. I know several pilots' logbooks. They contain pertinent details of flights, not irrelevant trivia.
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I used to be a pilot. Pilot logbooks do not record the names of passengers. The only name recorded in the logbook is the name of the check pilot if the flight is for any certification (i.e., a check ride to restore currency).
 
Vixen said:
As for the reinforced steel comment, I did say it was a misstatement and would have to check (it was 'strengthened steel' I was looking for). If you really want an explanation for the error, I had been up in the early hours watching Katrina Hell and High Water on Netflix, had done the company quarterly VAT return earlier in the day and thus, was extremely tired. Is that OK to make a typographical mistake?
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How was the steel 'strengthened?
 
Jack by the hedge said:
The context implies "the authorities" means the Estonian authorities. There had been confusion about what had happened to Piht but they now believed he was "in Finland and had spoken to investigators". Do you suppose that can be true? I do not. Nobody has ever emerged who says they met Piht or spoke with Piht or interviewed Piht in Finland. If he had really spoken to investigators in Finland why is there no trace of that ever having happened? Who were these Finnish investigators and what became of them?



The "info" being that multiple stories about what happened to Piht were circulating. No actual eyewitness stuff, just thirdhand rumours. And are you quoting from HS itself or are you quoting secondhand what some other source claims HS printed? As I recall it eventually emerged your claims to be quoting HS turned out to be quoting someone else's website, claiming to be quoting HS, claiming to be quoting other newspapers claiming to be quoting the police.
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The investigators were the three Prime Ministers together with the intelligence service police of Sweden and Finland plus interpretors. So if it is untrue why did Stenmark resign rather than blame the papers for circulating incorrect detail?
 
Mojo said:
Here's Vixen's attempt to support her claim that you had called it an "ordinary deportation": https://internationalskeptics.com/f...-reopened-part-vi.366861/page-3#post-14154713

It's a complete failure. None of the posts she links to you has you calling it an ordinary deportation; in fact four of them show you describing it as "against Sweden's own rules", "illegal", "reprehensible and illegal", and "a totally different crime, that of enforced deportation". Of the remaining three, in one you said that you had "never once claimed they were ordinary deportations" and the other two didn't use the term "deportation" at all.
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Here is a link back to the discussion about it at the time, and there have been a number of posts in the last few pages about it so go on, quote them. Quote the posts.

Oh and no, bringing up the fact you lied is not "being upset" it is holding you to account for being a liar.
 
Vixen said:
Actually I was going from memory not knowledge.
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But as Jay pointed out, you have repeatedly made this mistake. (Thank you Jay, for that background!). Your memory is as faulty as your attempt at googling. You don't even understand if high strength steel would be appropriate for the application. I am not an expert on shipbuilding, but I have a pretty good idea on whether it would be appropriate or not for anything to do with the bow visor.
 
Vixen said:
You said it wasn't realistic to expect them to pull Andresson out, so I pointed out it doesn't have to be any of the teams we already know about, to do it.
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I said it wasn't a task they were given. Would you like to tell us about any other dives on the wreck which you believe were given the task of recovering bodies? If not, the point stands that there was nothing whatsoever suspicious about that particular dive not recovering that particular body, despite your weasel-worded attempt to insinuate there was.
 
Disbelief said:
But as Jay pointed out, you have repeatedly made this mistake. (Thank you Jay, for that background!). Your memory is as faulty as your attempt at googling. You don't even understand if high strength steel would be appropriate for the application. I am not an expert on shipbuilding, but I have a pretty good idea on whether it would be appropriate or not for anything to do with the bow visor.
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As I said, I had been awake 20 - 23 hours as of that point. It has been a while since we discussed the Estonia and there was quite a bit as to what treatment the bow visor had had in light of the Braidwood/Rabe samples they had analysed.
 
Vixen said:
As I said, I had been awake 20 - 23 hours as of that point. It has been a while since we discussed the Estonia and there was quite a bit as to what treatment the bow visor had had in light of the Braidwood/Rabe samples they had analysed.
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That might account for that specific example. but it does not deal with the other examples listed.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
I said it wasn't a task they were given. Would you like to tell us about any other dives on the wreck which you believe were given the task of recovering bodies? If not, the point stands that there was nothing whatsoever suspicious about that particular dive not recovering that particular body, despite your weasel-worded attempt to insinuate there was.
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I didn't say it was suspicious, I said it was strange.
 
Vixen said:
The investigators were the three Prime Ministers together with the intelligence service police of Sweden and Finland plus interpretors.
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Really? Prime Ministers are "investigators"? Are you proposing three countries' prime ministers plus witnesses including the police really interviewed Piht and then all conspired to deny it and keep their deadly secret forever? Is that your claim?
 
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