Australia Examines Ship Routes After Reef Grounding

Often, I think I know China well. However, just as often, it occurs to me that I don't really know what I thought I knew. The visions and experiences collected and stored in my mind while I am awake are gone after I have slept. Reasoning and understanding seem to last only for a few hours before becoming illusory: the images and meanings disappear one by one, stolen from me by apparitions and secreted away, never to be returned in their original form. The understandings that I have assiduously acquired are nothing more than banal when bound together to try and shape the oldest continuous civilization on earth. Experience, learning, and proudly possessed knowledge, gained from many sources and from interaction with its people, are taken from everyone who thinks they know China and passed on to others who share them smugly, use them with confidence, reverently broadcast them as Gospel for a few praiseworthy moments. "I know China." Then, time and circumstance mangle them until they are beyond comprehension. These ,too, will be passed on and shared as truth, only to be proved wrong again. The enigma is this: China never changes, but China always changes. Its people beset by burden, affected with melancholy, inured to bewilderment, and suckled on uninterrupted millennia of incalculable hopelessness and sorrow. "There is chaos under heaven and things could not be better", said Mao Zedong. This is the real truth: "China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese" - Charles De Gaulle. China: don't ask, it is what it is... ,,,,,,,,W.D. Box

04/15/2010

Australia Examines Ship Routes After Reef Grounding

April 15 (Bloomberg) -- Australia will examine ship routes and the piloting of vessels as part of investigations into the grounding of the Shen Neng 1 coal carrier on the Great Barrier Reef, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau said.
Bureau officials will investigate how the ship managed crew fatigue as well as the measures in place to protect the World- Heritage listed reef, including traffic services and pilot route guidelines, according to a report released in Canberra today.
The inquiry may lead to new recommendations about the types of vessels and the routes they may use through the area as well as additional rules for marine pilots, the Bureau’s Chief Executive Officer Martin Dolan told reporters in Canberra.
Read more at BusinessWeek

Apr 15, 2010 12:49:42 AM | Boats, Current Affairs, Environment

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