User:Socrates90/sandbox
Articles of Interest:
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster
Categories:
List of industrial disasters, 2011 Japanese nuclear accidents, List of civilian nuclear accidents,
WikiProjects:
Wikipedia:WikiProject Disaster management, Wikipedia:WikiProject Japan, WikiProject Earthquakes, Wikipedia:WikiProject Energy, Wikipedia:WikiProject Oceans, Wikipedia:WikiProject Environment
External Sources:
Maersk:
The news articles below document recent changes in the shipping company Maersk's business strategies and internal organization. Featured in the latter article is the retirement of the former CEO- who last year crafted a grand new strategy for Maersk including ordering twenty new ships and competing in the Asia-Europe market- and the accession of his replacement. The article points out that the company is in good hands due to the fact that the new CEO has spent his entire adult life working for it and so is well-equipped to deal with new challenges to business, such as a decrease in the demand for tankers that is promoting more cooperation among leaders of the tanker industry. Despite preparing to open new lines, Maersk lost almost a third of a billion dollars in the third quarter of 2011 (versus a profit of $1 billion the year earlier).
Maersk however enjoys an economy of scale by its industry-leading 18,000 TEU capacity tankers which should insulate it from excessive consolidation. These twenty ships are set to sail in 2013 and are being built by Daewoo Shipbuilding of South Korea. They are all container ships, which compared to the bulk shipping segment of marine transportation, have a more reliable future due to being less fragmented.
Sources:
Business: The Danish Armada; very big ships. (2011, Feb 26). The Economist, 398(8722), 73-73. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/854024513?accountid=10353
Maersk's New Man At the Top; Soren Skou, a 30-year veteran of the company, is well-placed to take over after Eivind Kolding's sudden departure. (December 26, 2011 Monday ). Journal of Commerce Online, Retrieved from http://198.189.53.33:2052/hottopics/lnacademic
Two Years Before the Mast:
The article in Wikipedia about Two Years Before the Mast, the novel published in 1840 by Richard Henry Dana Jr., has an obvious advantage over the content in the four-volume Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History (hereafter referred to as OEMH) which references the same topic because it is concentrated on one webpage as opposed to being scattered throughout several tomes. So, while the sections in OEMH comprise more aggregate material than that found on the Wikipedia page, the fact that they do not constitute a single document but rather are an amalgamation of blurbs and asides of other main topics consequently reduces their value. So profoundly did Two Years Before the Mast influence the public’s knowledge and opinions of the sea that there are a great variety of ancillary notes in OEMH that reference Dana’s work in relation to other it influence on topics. The need for sea shanties to motivate sailors is a notable example of this, as are the promotion of democratic principles in other works of American sea novels.
OEMH goes into more depth than Wikipedia in several respects. It points out that his novel greatly influenced other American authors who penned maritime-related prose, including Herman Melville, Edgar Allen Poe, and James Fenimore Cooper. As the encyclopedia states, it did so by shifting popular conception and literary representation of the sea from a romantic ideal to a realistic truth. It is similar to Wikipedia in emphasizing the author’s affluence and education in contrast to his lowly position aboard the sailing vessel as well as the author’s later political activism on behalf of and sympathy for the lower classes. However, Wikipedia does not relate the importance that the work had on the exposing of and abatement of practices now considered cruel and illegal, such as flogging. OEMH also contains a biography of the author that is absent from Wikipedia. This biography goes into important detail behind Dana’s motivations to raising awareness of discipline at sea; in addition to witnessing such acts first-hand, he also left his first ship the Pilgrim early in order to return back to Harvard in a timely manner, thus perhaps making him feel more accountable to doing something to support the shipmates he left behind such as writing his novel. It also details Dana’s later career (which was plagued with frustration) while Wikipedia glosses over it, only including a sentence about his anti-slavery involvement. However, Wikipedia does go into more detail than the encyclopedia regarding Dana’s description of California.
Regarding the sources listed on Wikipedia, while a blog is usually not a reliable source, in this case it is used solely because it contains a passage from the book Two Years Before the Mast. The e-book quoted is a classic work of fiction, meaning that its reliability is self-evident, and the remaining monographs are all scholarly in nature and have been published by reputable publishers.
Stylistically, the Wikipedia is written in a plain yet informative style that is sufficient for its purpose. It is organized in a logical manner as well. Based on comparison to all available information in OEMH regarding the book, Wikipedia is accurate in what limited information it provides.