Horse 2823 - Ha ha "that's a big ship" and "ooh".

The Ever Given container ship which is currently stuck in the Suez Canal has given the world a momentary comic distraction during a time to of global pandemic. What has been interesting to watch is the sudden rise in experts, who have magically received an education in both navigation and seamanship.

Of course it is obvious that a container ship is a slow moving object. Of course it is obvious that just like a child's pegboard where the round peg goes in the round hole, the square peg goes in the square hole, and the triangle peg goes in the triangle hole, that the long straight oblong peg goes through the long straight oblong hole. Except in this case the long straight oblong peg is the container ship and the long straight oblong hole is the canal. What isn't obvious is that a long straight oblong peg which is massive, when acted upon by a breeze, is presenting an also massive surface area to that breeze. It is like trying to turn a 55 storey building against the wind. Suddenly all of the newly minted experts all look very silly.

Of equal note was the amount of experts suddenly offering broad solutions to the problem from the other side of the world, as though they had engaged in any engineering project at all. My full engineering experience when it comes to major building projects is to stand on the other side of the street and say things like "that's a big building" and "ooh". I am pretty sure that as a member of the general public, I am an adequate representative of the general idiotic dumbwittery out here; and the only meaningful advice that I am qualified to give is "that's a big ship" and "ooh".

It again highlights the importance of general ignorance. As someone who commutes to and from work 88km a day, the best journeys are when I have absolutely no idea of anything that happened on them. Boring is quietly brilliant. Likewise the only time that anyone usually remembers the name of any ship is either if it was very big and luxurious or if it was very big and disastrous. Of the most famous ships to have ever existed (Titanic, Exxon Valdez, Marie Celeste, Niña, Piñta, Santa Maria, and now Ever Given), they've all spelled disaster for someone. If anything, the fact that the Ever Given became famous because it got stuck is better than most other shipping disasters because it is mildly amusing. 

It's actually kind of refreshing to open a newspaper and read news that isn't about 10 people being killed or hearing that another 10,000 people have died due to Covid-19. This is news which isn't about immediate threat to life and limb and includes a story that in the days before it got stuck, the Ever Given in an earlier part of its voyage in the Red Sea, drew out what appears to be a phallic path. What it affords us collectively is the opportunity to play the role of 'Neighbour Dad' and offer dumb solutions; instead of looking on in horror.

More broadly, we should all learn to appreciate the people who serve us in boring unheralded ways and if we have the power to do so, ensure that they are properly rewarded. It is the rolling boringness of people quietly doing their job which makes the kosmos work; not the superstars on sporting fields and on stages and not the people in financial markets because if this pandemic should have taught us anything, they can stop and the people who actually do genuine work, actually run the machines of industry.

The vast majority of us who have no idea about hydrodynamic effects of moving a flat plane through a flow, or about the details of moving a ship can only howl from the sides and hurl peanuts from the galleries and at the moment, that might be fine because "that's a big ship" and "ooh" is what we need right now.