tim's experiment

Ahoy there, South China Morning Post! Time for a few brief words about some basic pieces of nautical terminology. On Page 2 today, in that silly column called “talking points” (our editors will be looiking ahead at these developing stories…) we are told that “All eyes will be on the northern port of Dalian, with wide speculation that China’s first aircraft carrier will be launched to mark the anniversary of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army.”  Well some of those eyes are going to be sorely disappointed. On the opposite page fans are rushing to Dalian to see the aircraft carrier, the Varyag, which is already “at anchor” about a kilometre from the shore. To launch a boat means to put it in the water. If the Varyag is at anchor it is already in the water.

Is there another aircraft carrier on the slipway, or is the SCMP just bad at boat stories? Well there was another clue on the same page as the story, a picture of the aircraft carrier concerned. This was captioned “The Varyag lies anchored yesterday at the shipyard in Dalian ….” But the Varyag was not anchored in the picture. Both anchors could be clearly seen stowed in the usual place, one each side of the bow. And indeed you would not, after all, drop anchor in a shipyard, supposing you were in one. You would simply tie up. By a delicious coincidence, the story and picture on page 3 are right under a story headlined “Press council to look into newspaper errors”.

I am trying not to be too hard on the Post, but clearly some people have stopped relying on it for information. One of them is apparently its own columnist, Michael Chugani, who thinks that democratic countries should abandon democracy so that they can become prosperous and efficient … like China. ROFL.