lightblueline

imagine u r a skipper of a small sail boat and that there is aboard a person to help youand one other person who is just along for the ride so to speak that is to say i. e. this person for all intent and purpose knows nothing of the operations or procedures regarding the conduct of this said vessel and now one you and the vessel occupants have sailed for afew days maybe a week or two and land is a thousand miles away say from here in california or new york or washington to say texas only blue water in between there is a question now that occurs as to whether or not the bilge has been checked in the recent past few days i.e. dose antone remember the last time it was checked and the answer comes back that well no nobody has checked it in the past few days it turns out despite the distinct request and agreement made to check it twice daily morning and evening at this juncture it is decided that the crew will check the bilge the part of the boat below the cabin floor for water and to acess whether or not water is entering the boat and accumulating there it being a sort of routine activity if done regularly one can make a comparitive judgement based as it were on past observation data so to speak and on this day the person sent to check the relative level of the water in the bilge came back with the reply well there dose not appeart to be any more water in the bilge than normal whats normal becomes the question and the u that is the skipper asks well when was the last time u checked the bilge and the slightly seasick crew says well a couple of days ago i think but cannot be sure and the skipper which is u thinks for a moment and then asks well based on that how much do u think more or less water is in the bilge and the answer comes back welll alittle more maybe and u say well how much more and the crew answers that maybe an inch no two or thee maybe and u being a person wanting good data comparitive data being slightly absent here gives the helm to the crew saying something like this here you steer for awhile and i will look for myself and ¨pon doing so finds that the statement made by the crew while probably true left out one piece of vital fact possibly unobserved data or seen i.e. observed but not recorded as salient information which is to say that there was water entering the vessel from some region near the stern and that this water did not appear to be adding to the level of the water in the bilge so the crew assumed all was more or less well as usual and that business as usual was good and reported as such that the person along for the ride had upon hearing this assumed the same but u being the observer that u r asked a question about the observed data that was not asked by the person so charged with that duty u asked why and from where is the water coming from and why is it not seeming to add to the level of the bilge water so a search for the source is undertaken by u and u find that the bilge pump is working over time even when the engine is off which explains the batteries being run down so well maybe u decide to look a little more and soon discover a whole lot of h2o being pumped aboard by the engine because there is a hole in the salt water cooling jacket of the exhaust manifold which is a whole lot more than u were wanting to know when u asked the crew to check the level of the water in the bilge now here is the divide clearly the crew would just as soon have everything ok business as usual while the person along for the ride would perhaps be possibly hysteric over the idea of having to survive a thousand miles out at sea without the boat so that leaves u to analyze from the more complete observational data what actions might be taken to avoid the long swim so to speak and that is kind of where u we are