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posted by
martyb
on Thursday July 26 2018, @08:01AM
from the if-it-walks-like-a-duck,-sinks-like-a-duck,-oh,-wait... dept.
from the if-it-walks-like-a-duck,-sinks-like-a-duck,-oh,-wait... dept.
The Los Angeles Times reports:
The duck boat that sank in a Missouri lake last week, killing 17 people, was built based on a design by a self-taught entrepreneur who had no engineering training, according to court records reviewed by the Los Angeles Times.
The designer, entrepreneur Robert McDowell, completed only two years of college and had no background, training or certification in mechanics when he came up with the design for "stretch" duck boats more than two decades ago, according to a lawsuit filed over a roadway disaster in Seattle involving a similar duck boat in 2015.
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Duck Boat in Missouri Disaster was Designed by Entrepreneur With no Engineering Training
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Thursday July 26 2018, @03:05PM (1 child)
I've been on duck boat tours in Boston on the Charles River. They have canopies as well and would trap passengers if they capsized. Nobody wore lifejackets, though flotation devices were present on the boat. When fully loaded there was not a lot of distance between the water and the lip of the boat; it would not have taken much to swamp it.
Capsizing? I don't know the specific calculations but if a strong enough wave struck a craft whose center of gravity was too high and which tilted past the critical angle, it would do so. How would that have been different for a regular length duck boat? As i understand it, that is why keels are useful, but as an amphibious craft of course it would not have one of those.
The thrust of the article therefore smacks of credentialism, whereby people despise anyone who does anything they haven't gotten a 4 (preferably PhD) year degree to do, and which hasn't been given a stamp of approval by at least 3 different govt. Agencies. Because, meh, we had to rack up heavy student loan debt to write mealy mouthed articles panning others, so how dare anyone do otherwise?
It's the same credentialism that rears its head when a good samaritan happens upon somebody bleeding to death on the side of the road, who then binds his wounds, and then winds up getting sued by the victim's family because he used a shirt instead of factory-wrapped sterile gauze, and panned in the press for not having "professional training."
The simpering naysayers and ninnies and pantywastes who engage in this stuff are a pox on humanity. Life is risk. Strap on skis, and there's a chance you could die. Eat at a restaurant, and there's a chance you could choke on your meal and die. Sit in your easy chair too long and there's a chance you could die of a blood clot.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 26 2018, @04:35PM
aka lawyers.
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