We here at Chankslee like ghosts. If you remember last year we took you to Zanzibar in Afrika and told you about the ghost workers. Today, another mystery.
Air and sea rescue services have discontinued a search for an abandoned yacht found drifting off the coast of Townsville, in Northern Queensland this weekend. Over ten planes and helicopters were scouring the area but to no avail. It seems there was a table set for 3, dinner served, laptop turned on, the engine was running and the radio was on, but nobody aboard. A mate of mine was 80 meters away from the place where the boat was launched and described the place as busy. Airlie beach is a popular place for locals, tourists and another great place to be out on the open water. It seems the crew was from Perth and the plan was to sail around Australia. Speculation as to the demise of the crew was rampant. Most casual observers that we have interviewed feel that one must have fallen overboard, and while being rescued the other two fell in as well. Pirates are practically non existent but there are some who wonder if there has been foul play. One cynic described this tragedy as " a couple of guys trying to capitalise on an insurance policy." I don't know and it appears that we will never know, the fate of the three sailors. One can only hope for a happy ending.
Air and sea rescue services have discontinued a search for an abandoned yacht found drifting off the coast of Townsville, in Northern Queensland this weekend. Over ten planes and helicopters were scouring the area but to no avail. It seems there was a table set for 3, dinner served, laptop turned on, the engine was running and the radio was on, but nobody aboard. A mate of mine was 80 meters away from the place where the boat was launched and described the place as busy. Airlie beach is a popular place for locals, tourists and another great place to be out on the open water. It seems the crew was from Perth and the plan was to sail around Australia. Speculation as to the demise of the crew was rampant. Most casual observers that we have interviewed feel that one must have fallen overboard, and while being rescued the other two fell in as well. Pirates are practically non existent but there are some who wonder if there has been foul play. One cynic described this tragedy as " a couple of guys trying to capitalise on an insurance policy." I don't know and it appears that we will never know, the fate of the three sailors. One can only hope for a happy ending.
7 comments:
Another Bermuda Triangle??!! Like you said Chanks, probably an insurance scam.
The mystery books are usually to do with drugs or greed.
In this case I think it might be drugs.
These guys just bought a brand new Yacht. Where did they get the money? Drug Money? Winnings at Gambling?
So they buy this new Yacht and go off to enjoy their winnings. Well, wherever there is a winner there is also a loser.
So the loser shows up when they are out there. He shows up at dinner time. He pulls out a shotgun and blasts the sail to shreds. This gets their attention. Then he pulls up alongside and invites them into his boat. He then takes revenge upon these guys and they are never seen again.
Lesson is that you don't mess with me or you get done in.
hmmmmm..... maybe I should write a book.
Bermuda Triangle, UFO abduction, Nope I think it was a drug or a gambling problem.
dost
Did they check the boat for a Diplomacy board? Maybe there was a game of Diplomacy on the boat. Maybe the occupants of the boat got into a dispute over Burgundy or Bulgaria (note the fact that both 'b' territories are subjects of dispute) and started fighting. The fighting escalated into threats, weaponry, and then, finally, everybody got shot all at the same time and fell into the water reeling with the severity of the blow that finished their lives.
War is evil. Board games that represent war are evil. People that play board games representing war are evil. It ends in DEATH!!
Be careful.
bench you might like to refer back to the last post and look at my rebuttal to your comment. I am interested in hearing how you can dispute my claims. If I'm wrong, then I suppose it is important that you teach me where my error in perceptions lies. I will check the last post for further comments regularly if you'd like to continue the discussion there.
Thanks. And thanks for the opportunity to learn about each other's point of view. Apologies for emotional outbursts. I want you to know I have full respect for you.
In the last blog entry, someone directed the following question at me:
When you see a sign that reads 50kph and you do 80kph....whose fault is it?
I'm not sure exactly what implications were intended by this question. I'm also not sure anyone really wants to read the fourty-six chapter novel that flies through my head as I endeavour to come up with my usual sort of long, convoluted response. However, what the heck. I guess I've got nothing better to do because I just got home from work. So here goes. Jump ship if you can.
First of all, I apologize for my dark humour about board games ending in death. All of us playing this game love each other dearly and are just playing for fun. If the occupants of the boat shown in this blog entry were indeed playing Diplomacy, then I'm sure they had some strong violent mental imbalances to begin with.
Now, let me start my answer by making an illustration as to how I perceive the act of creating laws. One of the most important things to keep in mind when creating laws that must be followed by thirty million people is that the laws be simple so that everybody can both understand them and agree upon them. Otherwise you will end up with people having radical arguments over who's right and who's wrong and who should or shouldn't be going to jail. The problem with this necessity for simplistic laws is that sometimes laws are created that punish people for doing things that are really quite harmless. For instance, jaywalking is illegal because in big cities people can get killed walking across the street when traffic is as busy as your average rush hour. However, in a small town, which is under the same national laws as the cities, people still can't jaywalk even if they can see thirty kilometres down the road in either direction, and the light is going to take another thirty seconds to turn green. So then they make bylaws. But not everybody gets to know which bylaws apply where. And it all gets very complicated.
Another example is a speed limit that applies to a fifty kilometre section of road. There may be a total of 49 kilometres of that road where it's inscrutably safe to drive 80 kph, but they still make the speed limit constant along the whole road just for simplicity's sake. Is this fair? I'd have to say I don't think it is. If you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that driving 80 kilometres per hour along a stretch of road is safe, but you also know that if you do, you stand to get a speeding ticket for a hundred and fifty bucks, that amounts to an infringement on your freedom to pursue your life the way you deem to be appropriate.
The reason for coming up with laws governing speed is certainly well-placed. Nobody wants to live in a country where they feel their lives may be endangered by people driving recklessly. We have to make compromises to construct a legal system that keeps everybody safe. But I would submit to you that if you create a legal system, and every single person in the nation follows those laws to the letter, you would end up with an inefficient nation that maintains a steady state of gradual decay, and people would be discouraged from building their own sense of independence, self-reliance, and their own personal common sense.
This is going to sound like a crazy radical idea, but I suppose everybody's used to that sort of thing from yours truly. So let me tell you. I believe that everybody that lives under a legal system has a responsibility to recognize the limitations of that legal system. Everybody has a responsibility to recognize that it is impossible to follow every single law to the letter. That responsibility entails that you learn for yourself how to exist in such a way that you are not unfairly infringing upon the lives of others. You use the laws as a guideline, but don't follow every single law all the time. It is your responsibility to break the law when you deem it to be appropriate, and when you are sure that the reason the law was created is not applicable under your current circumstances. Your reason for following laws should be based upon your recognition that if you do follow them, you will be helping to maintain a good environment for the people that you live in proximity to. You will gain a sense of confidence in your own character if you break the law at times when you know that it is harmless to do so. Furthermore, I believe that it is the responsibility of police officers to enforce laws with some common sense and good judgement.
Another aspect of law creation is that no matter how many laws you make, it is always possible for somebody to pursue selfish actions that are extremely harmful to others and yet are not forbidden by the law. So let's add another responsibility to this list. It is every citizen's responsibility to recognize that just because their actions are not forbidden by law does not mean that they should feel justified in pursuing them. Use your common sense.
So having said all that, let's get back to the original question: if you see a sign that says the speed limit is 50 kph and you drive 80 kph, whose fault is it? Well, if you are driving in a place where you know for absolute certain that you are not endangering anybody by driving at this speed, then if you are given a ticket for it by an uncompromising officer who does not have any regard for the infringement that is being placed upon your personal freedom, then it is that officer's fault that you are being oppressed in the name of your imperfect nation. Conversely, if you see a sign that says the speed limit is 50 kph, but you see that there's a corner where driving faster than 40kph is going to possibly endanger yourself or others due to imperfect visilibity, then it is your fault that you have unquestioningly followed your laws to the letter and caused an accident that you should have had the common sense to avoid. Just because you followed the law does not mean that you're not behaving poorly.
Let's pretend you have created a soft drink that people just love the taste of, but you know that it is extremely damaging to people's health. It's not quite damaging enough that the law will forbid you from producing it. You advertise the heck out of your product and get it selling nationwide to millions of people. The health care system is drained. Millions of people become obese and unhealthy. You make a killing in several ways, one being of course your bank account, another being the stock market, and of course another being people's life expectancies reduced because they're drinking this garbage. But you haven't done anything illegal, no sirree. So you walk around smiling and everybody kisses your royal behind because you've got all this money and they want to suck up to you get in your good graces and you have a decadent, indulgent, stupidly rich lifestyle and don't feel any sort of responsibility whatsoever to use all this money you make to help anybody out. Illegal? Well it doesn't seem so. But do you really deserve to be allowed to do this? Well as long as people think that a legal system can solve everything, then you'll find a way to get away with it. As long as you don't recognize that a personal sense of concern for the lives of others is something you need to learn, you'll spend the rest of your life being a drain on the lives of everybody around you. And who knows, you might find a way to sell it to some third world countries, drain them of the money they were going to use to buy cradles for their babies, and wreck their economies, which spiral into poverty and lose their millenia old culture that knew how to live in harmony with the land. God bless America, land of the free, home of the capitalists who'd just as soon kick a starving man in the street cuz he "doesn't have a job" as spend a half hour talking to him about his hardships. Oh yeah, but you never broke the speed limit. Good on ya. I'm real impressed.
Very good Psam!
Law making......what applies nationaly needs to apply internationaly.
You think a person has the right to choose to speed just like they have the right to choose to drink a sugar filled softdrink. Or smoke!
Responsibilty! If you smoke you pay more taxes to try and cover health care cost. The same applies to junk food. It may not be perfect, but when people aren't responsible the goverment has to step in and try and help. Nationaly and Internationaly!
Bench
The problem with the government stepping in to try and help is that most people like you or me are more aware of our own circumstances than anybody in the government is. So they are doing more harm than good by stepping in.
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