McKinney incident

In case you had not yet found out…the city of McKinney is currently in the news for all of the wrong reasons.
There are a few obvious things about how to handle this kind of crisis that i learned when reading the classroom materials from a class that a work colleague attended in 1997 called “how to deal with the media”. There are several simple (and rather obvious) rules:

1. If you screwed up, admit it
This is the most obvious, and the most ignored. The reason for the old saying “it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up” is that humans have a far higher forgiveness threshold for people and organizations who admit to error than they do for people and organizations who obfuscate, bullshit or lie in an attempt to deflect accountability. (Obvious note – with video in existence of at least part of the incident, it is not a good idea for the law enforcement bodies to try to impose a false narrative. Arguing against what people can see or interpret from a video is a Really Really Bad Tactic).
2. Make Good on recompense
The case study for this is Intel, who discovered an obscure (and rarely used) math processing error in their Pentium chip. Rather than sweeping it under the carpet, they admitted to its existence (tick Rule 1). But then they did something far far smarter. They announced that anybody who felt that they no longer had confidence in their Pentium CPU could send it in and get a replacement AT NO COST TO THEM. The gesture removed just about all remaining negative impact from the initial announcement. Intel had stood behind their product and their reputation, and backed it up with action. Their long term reputation was unaffected, and possibly even enhanced.
3. Hold the Right people accountable and show how you held them accountable
This is more tricky. The temptation in large organizations is to circle the wagons and diffuse accountability, via a number of rhetorical devices (prominent among them is the use of the passive “mistakes were made”, which de-personalizes and diffuses accountability). The aim is to ride out the storm. Those tactics communicate that you are not really interested in changing for the better, you just want the noise to go away. The challenge is that it erodes your credibility and trust with the public.

McKinney has a window of opportunity to Do The Right Things. Some of them may be unpalatable in the short term. However, failure to do them will result in Google searches of McKinney returning hits that are a lot more negative than positive in the months to come. (Obvious parallel – google Ferguson).
Ultimately, it is all about credibility. Failure to respond correctly will reduce and possibly eliminate the credibility of the city of McKinney.

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Custom iPods for now and the future

In order to have enough sound sources for our parties, and to accomodate my music collection, we are adhering to the cliche that Size Matters.

Since Apple stopped selling the iPod Classic last Fall, prices have been rising, so I snapped into action a few months ago and procured 2 special iPods from a custom iPod creator on Enay. They are modified customized limited edition iPod classics, part of the U2 Limited Edition series. However, the disk drive has been replaced by a 240gb flash memory array. The flash memory gives faster playback speed, but some load and organization activities are slower. The iPods are also significantly lighter, since disk drives are dense devices.

The iPods comfortably hold my 18000 tune music collection with lots of space left for additional music. I am set for life…

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“If you don’t like it, leave” and “If this happens, I’m leaving”

“If you don’t like this country, then leave”

“If X happens, I’m going to leave”

I read these statements all of the time. In fact, I have had the first one used against me in Facebook and blog comments.

My first response is usually some variant of “is this all you have”? It’s not an argument. It’s an attempt to shut off the conversation. It is, like many rhetorical tricks used by people who are not into reasoned debate, intellectually risible, unserious nonsense. It reads like childish petulance, the sort of thing you would not tolerate from one of your own children.

It is hardly surprising that these kinds of invitations are usually written by authoritarians. One thing I notice about authoritarians is that many of them have a binary worldview. When they think they are in the ascendant, they suggest or demand that anybody who does not agree with them leave the country. When they fear they are not in the ascendant, they decide that they themselves are going to leave the country.

My response to “If you don’t like it leave” is usually “no, I am a citizen, I am not leaving. Now, do you have an argument?”

 

 

What I always think after reading the meme “I’m going to leave the country” is “so where the hell are you going to go?”. The challenge  is that when they say “I am going to leave this country”, that is not all that they are saying. Unspoken is the addition “I am going to go somewhere else and set up a place where We Are In Charge”. That unspoken pre-condition tends to limit where they can go.

Not Europe, that is a socialist hellhole. India is hot and full of people of the wrong color. China is communist and therefore scary. Russia is too cold. Latin America is strange and mostly socialist. The Middle East is full of terrorists…The list goes on.

I can really only think of a handful of countries that authoritarians might decide match their worldview. The snag is that they are all failed states occupied by corrupt venal and dictatorial regimes. And they are in dangerous parts of the world. In short, they would be a long way down any sensible person’s list of places to visit, never mind places to go live. The other thing that they are also overlooking is that they are never going to be In Charge in any countries run by authoritarians, and if they annoy somebody in the government, they will probably start to disappear in the middle of the night, never to be seen again.

As I said, these kinds of petulant foot-stomping comments are unserious.

 

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The Attention grabbing headline – an example

We can expect 18 months of attempts by political parties and their representatives to impress us with their arguments and positions.
One thing that everybody needs to beware of is The Attention Grabbing Headline. This is some supposed fact that is designed to impress us and get our attention in some way (sometimes, the cynic in me believes that the political entity does not care how we react, it just wants our attention).
However, many of these headlines will, when examined, turn out to be not what they seem, and they will in many cases turn out to be full of logical fallacies such as strawman reasoning, circular reasoning, begging the question, arguments from inappropriate authority, or, as this examination of claims about crime rates in the UK shows, the incorrect comparison of two different sets of data 

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Binary sloganeering

From time to time i see people posting slogans or images over which somebody has plastered a slogan. You know the sort of thing. The slogan is a variant on “If you don’t like this country. leave”. Or “if you don’t love the country, get out”. There are numerous variants of it.
Folks, it is time to grow up and get real. Life is not binary. Things and people are not all bad or all good, with nothing in between. Countries are the same.
The world in which we live is flawed and imperfect because a lot of it is controlled by humans, who are imperfect, inconsistent and prone to flights of everything ranging from love, vivid fantasy through panic attacks, anger and (sad to say) violence.
Dissent is not disloyalty, and blind obedience to some idealized view of a society or country is not progress. It’s actually the sort of requirement placed on citizens in a totalitarian state, the sort of state that treats citizens as mere subjects, peons who should be seen and not heard, and know their place and obey their superiors. In other words, a country remarkably like some of the countries that the Founding Fathers left in order to form the modern-day United States.
Living in this country does not require you to fail to notice its imperfections, nor does it impose any requirement on you to keep quiet about those imperfections. There is a First Amendment for a good reason. There is also no Constitutional right to not be offended.
There are a number of sub-optimal features in the modern USA. From time to time I will comment on them. If you think that makes me “un-American”, “anti-American”, “unpatriotic” etc. etc.. then so be it, but, frankly, it says more about your binary mindset than it does about my opinions. 

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Same-sex marriage – the hysteria of the antis

I once read a discussion on the internet about debate and argument where one of the participants made a statement which I tend to apply. Paraphrased it goes something like this:
“If you want me to respect your ideas and arguments, have good ones”.
I was reminded of this while reviewing the current level of hysteria being promulgated by people who believe that same-sex marriage is a Bad Idea. Those people seem to be competing right now to see who can find the most vapid, illogical batshit crazy argument or assertion. Every time that I think that I have heard something utterly idiotic, somebody comes along and lowers the bar.
James Dobson is working hard to be the owner of the lowest bar. On a radio show, he went into overdrive.

“I would like them to think, just for a moment, about ‘LGBT,'” Dobson said. “The ‘B’ stand for bisexual! That’s orgies! Are you really going to support this?”

Dobson, you clueless bloviating twit, that is not what bisexual means, and you damn well know it.

This is one example of why I am increasingly regarding most opposition to same-sex marriage as fundamentally unserious, and unworthy of serious consideration. In fact, a lot of it is now ridiculous, and worthy only of ridicule.

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The “POTUS is a liar therefore he needs to be removed from office etc. etc.” meme

OK folks, time for an explanation. I am reading yet more of the usual nonsense about how the POTUS should be charged with treason (this idea has been popular amongst many authoritarians and nativists for a long long time).
When I inquired exactly why he should be charged with that crime, the person on Twitter who was firing off all manner of “hang him high” tweets came back with “because he told me I could keep my doctor under the ACA and now I can’t therefore he lied therefore he should be charged with treason”.
Sheesh. Where to begin.
First of all, lying is not treason. There is a specific definition of treason in most legal jurisdictions, and it requires a level of malfeasance (presenting a clear and present threat to the existence of a country) far in excess of simple lying. I don’t think that there is a cat-in-hells chance of charging a sitting president with treason on the grounds that he lied about the ACA.
Secondly, the statement by President Obama was certainly not true. However, I doubt if it meets the definition of a lie based on the evidence. A lie is a falsehood uttered by somebody who knew that it was false at the time that it was uttered. In order to prove legally that somebody lied, you have to provide proof that a person knew that they were saying something untrue when they originally said it. That is a high bar to clear.
Now if you want to start from the assumption that all politicians are liars, or that the POTUS is a liar, then you can define any mistaken utterance as a lie. However, that does not make it a lie. That is you overlaying your assumptions about behavior on other people’s statements.

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Rumors re forced takeover of Sauber F1 team

There are rumors and speculation that the underlying motive behind the attempts by Giedo van der Garde and his lawyers to claim his seat in the Sauber team at the Australian Grand Prix is that it is part of an attempt to force the Sauber F1 team, either into bankruptcy, or to a point where the team has no choice but to accept an offer for it to be bought, or it will go bankrupt.

The theory behind this is that van der Garde’s father in law is the Dutch businessman Marcel Boekhoorn. He is estimated to be worth $1.5bn. If those estimates are anywhere close to true, he could probably buy the entire Sauber team out of pocket change.

One thing I have learned over the years, from reading biographies and news articles, is that highly successful wealthy business people seldom frivolously invest their own money in projects with a low chance of success. Wherever possible, they try to invest other peoples’ money, and limit their own personal exposure. They know the value of money and what it can do, and they are experts at making it work for them.

It is therefore far from obvious to me why Marcel Boekhoorn (or anybody else for that matter) would want to buy the Sauber F1 team. Based on what has been happening to the team over the last 3 years, it appears that the team is struggling to survive. It’s sponsorship revenues have declined as external sponsors depart. The most recent departure was NEC, which sponsored the team last year. NEC left Sauber at the end of 2014, and is now a sponsor for Force India. The only current visually significant sponsor on the car not brought to the team by drivers is Oerlikon, whose name adorns the top of the dorsum next to the engine air intakes.

Rumors in the F1 journalist community have Felipe Nasr’s sponsors providing around $25m this season, and Marcus Ericsson’s sponsors providing another $15m. Let’s add $10m for Oerlikon, and $10m for other smaller deals. That gives a total sponsorship revenue stream of $60m. Now we have to add revenues from FOM. In 2014 this estimate was published about the revenue distribution in 2013. This showed that Sauber may have been paid over $70m in 2013. However, that number will have reduced significantly this year since the team failed to score a point in 2014. Let’s say it is $40m.

This gives total team income in 2015 as $100m. That sounds a lot, but in reality, according to recent stories, to run a properly functioning team takes at least $125-150m a year. That does not include further investment in people and facilities to move the team up the grid over time.

There is also the matter of what debts Sauber has accumulated over the years. If the team owes money to banks or other financial institutions, it will have to fund interest and principal payments on the debt, which will eat into its free cash flow. The fact that Sauber spent a lot of time and effort  in 2013 and 2014 trying to find investors from Russia, prior to finding it’s current drivers, suggests that they were trying to find external investors to stay solvent. It is almost impossible to know what debts the team currently has.

So if Marcel Boekhoorn was to dip into his pocket and buy the team, his committments would be the money to buy the team itself (believed to be owned 66% by Peter Sauber and 33% by Monisha Kaltenborn), and money to pay off the debts. Then there is the ongoing funding of the team. The economic model of F1 currently requires buyers to stump up seriously big money every month just to keep back of the grid teams afloat, since those smaller teams all get low payouts from FOM. The payouts are skewed heavily towards the historically successful teams.

There is also a severe lack of new sponsors in F1. The sponsor changes in 2015 seem to mainly comprise sponsors changing teams (two examples visible are Rexona moving from Lotus to Williams, and NEC moving from Sauber to Force India). There are no new big-money sponsors visible on most cars, and many of the visible sponsors are either brought by drivers, or are companies owned by the team owners.

If Marcel Boekhoorn is serious about buying any F1 team, he had better have a very good business development plan…

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Giedo Van Der Garde vs. Sauber – Part 6

Well, since my last post the soap opera has raced through at least two more episodes…

Episode 1 – Friday

A contempt of court hearing commences in Court 15 of the Victoria Supreme court building. Counsel for Van Der Garde alleges that the Sauber team, having cancelled Van Der Garde’s contract with the Contract Recognition Board in February, are refusing to re-activate it, despite being informed on March 2nd by the arbitrator that he still had a valid contract. Without a current contract, his application for a Superlicense cannot be completed. For this and other reasons, counsel begins to outline his contention that Sauber is committing contempt of court by preventing Van Der Garde from driving for the team at the race weekend. He outlines what will be their request that the court issue a draconian order for contempt, involving the sequestration of team assets, and the possible committal of Monisha Kaltenborn to jail.

While his lawyers continue the contempt of court hearing, Giedo van der Garde shows up at the racetrack in Melbourne to claim his seat. His paddock pass initially fails to work, but eventually he is let into the paddock. Then, with advisers and camera crews in tow, he arrives at the Sauber garage, He enters, and amidst conflicting reports as to whether he has a seat fitting scheduled, or whether a seat ftitting will even take place, he borrows the race suit of Marcus Ericsson, who is only fractionally shorter than him. The suit is quite clearly a tight fit, but Giedo parades around the paddock in it for a few minutes, before handing it back and resuming civilian garb.

Meanwhile, back in court, the contempt of court hearing enters a recess as the court demands information from the Sauber team (namely, a list of their assets) which can only be supplied by their team manager, who is busy due to…a practice for a race.

Back to the racetrack…the Sauber team does not run at all in Free Practice 1. The drivers get into the cars, and the engines are even briefly started, but nothing further happens, and after 30+ minutes the drivers get back out again, and it becomes apparent that Sauber will not run in this session.

Van Der Garde leaves the circuit, having ensured that he was present and available at the start of FP1 to take his rightful seat in a car.

Sauber does run in free Practice 2, their cars turning a wheel under power for the first time this weekend.

Meanwhile, back at court, the hearing re-commences, but is soon adjourned until Saturday morning, as it is announced by the judge that both parties have entered negotiations for an agreed settlement. The first sign of sanity breaking out?

Episode 2 – Saturday morning 

The hearing re-commences in court, but it is immediately announced that the parties have reached an agreement that means that Giedo van der Garde will not drive or attempt to drive for Sauber in Australia. The parties will continue to negotiate a full and final settlment after the Grand Prix weekend.

So…what does this all mean?

Firstly, contrary to some headlines, there has not been a settlement. All that has happened is that Sauber has, probably by making concessions, persuaded Giedo van der Garde to stop trying to drive for the team in Australia, and he and his lawyers have also withdrawn their application for an order of contempt in the Victoria courts. Van Der Garde still reserves the right to claim his seat in subsequent races (starting with the Malaysian Grand Prix in 2 weeks’ time) and, until there is a full settlement of the dispute over the contract, Sauber is still potentially subject to court orders and (if it fails to comply with them) contempt of court rulings.

The cynic in me says that Sauber, which until Friday morning was playing a game of careful, non-provocative non-compliance with the court order, may have been reminded by FOM that while publicity out of season is fine and dandy, an F1 race weekend is about the show on track, and courtroom soap operas undermine the show on track.

The realist in me concludes that (a) Giedo Van Der Garde and his advisors realized that there was little chance of him driving this weekend, mostly due to the Superlicense issue, and (b) Sauber realized that further non-compliance would inevitably result in an order of contempt, probably resulting in the sequestration of its on-track assets, which would prevent it from joining the FOM transport process to Malaysia. This would then require it to freight its equipment separately to Malaysia at great expense, requiring it to pay money up front that it may not have.

Hence the negotiation and announcement of what is merely a temporary truce. (Rumor in the sport is that Van Der Garde has been paid $3m by Sauber for breach of his contract to drive in Australia).

If common sense persists, we may get a full settlement before Malaysia, which will end the elaborate games of legal Whack-A-Mole that we have seen in Australia. However, if insufficient sense materializes, the process of Van Der Garde obtaining local court orders and then attempting to get into the car could continue. He certainly has the money to pursue this course of action, and he has an aribitration ruling, and Australian appeal court decisions in his favour. Sauber, on the other hand, will soon run out of options, to the point where its cars and equipment could end up impounded in a foreign country, which would effectively end its existence as an operating entity. Its sponsors right now are also probably yelling down phones “sort this damn mess out”.

The main impediments to a settlement, apart from possible intransigence by one or both parties, is that Sauber may not have the money in the short term to pay compensation to Van Der Garde for breach of contract. The team is, by all accounts, very short of cash. To be fair, they are not the only team rumoured to have cash flow issues. Lotus and Force India are also short of cash, to the extent that all three teams have been granted advances from FOM of their 2014 prize money payouts to help them in the short term.

 

 

 

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Giedo Van Der Garde vs. Sauber F1 Team – Part 5

Having read the published judgment, there are no more stunning revelations. Because the arguments in the court were confined to the matter of applicability of the arbitration award in Australia, there are no juicy revelations about driver contracts, finances etc.  The rulings are brief, as explained by the judge, due to lack of time.

What is interesting is that the original arbitration ruling on March 2nd was made under UK law, not Swiss law, which is what I would have expected since the Sauber team is based in Switzerland.

The court was not impressed by the argument that because Giedo van der Garde BV (the contracting entity with Sauber for the driver contract) and Giedo van der Garde are two separate entities, that the ruling does not really apply to Giedo Van Der Garde the person. Well yes. If I heard that argument in front of me in a court, I would be tempted to respond “nice try…and do you think I came down from the hillside with the last rainstorm?”

The ruling pretty comprehensively demolishes all of the other arguments from Sauber. It will be interesting to see what new arguments they come up with in the afternoon appeal hearing.

 

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