I have been asking myself that question all day. How would I react if I owned that ship, and employed the captain that sunk it. How would you react?
We now know how Costa Cruises would react because they issued a statement, less than 48 hours after the incident, in which they say that there may have been “significant human error” on Francesco Schettino’s part. There very well may be, but I cringed when I read it. Although understandable, people are looking for someone to blame, as an entrepreneur I would have handled it differently.
The author goes on to paint a picture of a situation where a dispute comes up involving a customer and an employee, in which customer demands firing of the employee, etc. It’s worth a read, and it paints an interesting analog between the two situations. In the end, he criticizes Costa for throwing the captain under the bus so fast instead of waiting out a proper investigation.
While I laud the author’s sense of fair play, I don’t consider it realistic.
The result we all saw was inevitable in my view. Either it was the captain’s fault, in which case there’s no correction to be made, or if the company was the type that cuts corners and deprives its staff of needed equipment they probably aren’t the sort that can see or admit when they’re scapegoating without a really big court judgment by the captain’s lawsuit against them.
Top that off with the pressure they no doubt had from the board/exec staff to “resolve this and quiet the situation FAST”, if they left any uncertainty – like saying “this is under investigation” – the shareholders go berserk because market confidence in the company erodes and the executive staff / board loses $$. Let’s face it – at best, the board and chair and execs of a company whose assets top several billion dollars are probably not known for their risky natures (as not taking immediate and decisive action would be), and at worst in their cynicism made the judgment that the cost of taking no action versus the cost of answering the captain’s possible future lawsuit left no question on the course of action.
If he did nothing wrong, I simply don’t see a possible win for the captain in that situation.
…and will return in February. I’m taking the site offline as a blackout to protest SOPA/PIPA and other stifling legislation that threatens the safety of the Internet. When seven companies can dictate to the world what and how you get to read and view information, that’s a crime.
Full disclosure: although not an active supporter, I am a life member of the NRA.
There are – to use the cliche – two sides to the Gun Control issue, and in my view both sides are wrong. On the one hand, outright banning of weapons doesn’t have a great deal of effect on spur-of-the-moment crime (though I will hold up the Assault Weapon ban of the 90s as an exception to this rule), and on the other, allowing free access to anyone enables terrorists, nutters, and criminals to acquire weapons without any more effort than walking into a Cabelas, Bass Pro, or Dick’s with a couple hundred dollars and leaving with high-capacity semi-automatic weapons.
A suggestion I’d like to float is this:
Gun liability insurance. Just as you have to buy liability insurance for a car in case you are at fault in an accident, which is enforced by the state, you would have to purchase liability insurance for weapons you buy. For example, in North Carolina you can’t even get a driver’s license without proof of insurance. Just as with a vehicle, you’d get discounts for safe practices, long-term accident-free, purchase and use of safe storage / disabling devices, etc., while different varieties of weapon would be subject to different rates. (A high-cap semi-auto would jack your rate up a bit, while a limited-magazine shotgun would be considered a lower-risk.)
Concealed carry permits would amplify the premium, since the individual is increasing his/her risk of accidental shootings. Certified marksmanship would also potentially carry financial benefit to the individual in the form of reduced premiums, and would encourage people to get out and participate at ranges, instead of just buying a gun, letting it collect dust, and then blasting randomly when they actually need to use the weapon.
The purchase of a weapon today is a one-off thing – you buy it and there’s no further cost aside from ammunition and cleaning kit. Making an ongoing cost would remove the impulse buys and certainly reduce “gifting” of unnecessary weapons, so in the end you’d only have people buying them who really needed or wanted the particular gun, and you’d have legitimate cause for seizure or criminal penalty (fine or impound) of uninsured weapons.
Added bonus: you get the insurance industry on board to square off against the NRA, and because this practice makes good common sense, the majority of non-gun-owners and a good portion of responsible gun-owners would sign on (reluctantly, as it is an added expense, but still – I’d be proud of my responsibility). As a gun owner, I recognize the inherent danger that is represented by the use of my weapons, and I would feel a little better knowing I was financially protected against accidents.
Licensing is a second item I would introduce. Where I live, in the Czech Republic, there is also a gun licensing procedure that I think makes a lot of sense. It consists of three steps: the first is passing a written exam that demonstrates knowledge of the laws surrounding the possession and use of firearms, a practical test that demonstrates one’s ability to use a weapon (basically that you can hit what you aim at), and the third is a medical certification that you are physically and psychologically capable of assuming the responsibility. The medical part is required every few years when you renew. Once you have your license, you purchase your weapons and register them with the local police.
While the registration of the weapons is probably not something that would be acceptable in the US, the licensing certainly is a logical requirement. Again to use the parallel to the automobile – you have to prove you’re capable of operating the vehicle before you are legally allowed to drive one (though you can own one and operate it off-road). Demonstrating basic competence and familiarity with your responsibilities in gun ownership is something that owners should be happy to do – I know I am quite content in exercising such.
To put either or both of these requirements in place would do a great deal to neuter the rabid anti-gun lobby, and would also take a lot of the steam out of the constant fear-mongering that the NRA finds so profitable. As such, I would think both sides would probably find this solution distasteful and would fight it…and I consider that a good sign that it would be good legislation. A healthy compromise to bring both sides away from their radical fringe attitudes, and encourage all sides to get back to looking at the problems constructively.
Thoughts?
UPDATE:
During the Superbowl on Feb 5, 2012, this ad ran:
I’m glad to see I’m not the only one looking for sensible solutions to end the NRA’s brain cancer and restore some sanity to the debate.
It’s an argument I’ve heard voiced recently a little more than usual, the creationist diatribe that the Big Bang somehow implies that the universe came from nothing.
Well, for starters, that particular argument is a straw-man – no one says that the Bang came from nothing and just leaves it at that: invariably there are good reasons for the supposition. At the very least they point out that we can’t observe or infer points prior to the Bang at this point. We may at some point in the future be able to determine the course of events prior, but the nature of space and time that we currently understand simply prevent us from gaining additional information about times beforehand. (And the term “beforehand” doesn’t even apply, since space and time began with it.)
But if there were a universe from nothing, what is the problem with that? It seems to me the only people insisting on that, without proof, are the creationists themselves – though in a much less convincing fashion than those physicists who do theorize a beginning ex nihilo. To give you a good run-down on that topic, I turn the floor over to Lawrence Krauss, who gives a much stronger representation than I can in these pages:
Pneumonia was the culprit, though cancer laid the groundwork and set him up for his final fall. Most famous for his vehement anti-religious stance (something that arose to prominence after the last two decades, much like Sam Harris’ and my own), he was aside from that a prolific and excellent author, debater, and a true research journalist.
Although I will admit to not sharing common opinion on every topic of his, most of the substantial ones I agreed with. He was a dedicate of the principle of science, that when evidence confounds your opinion, it is your opinion that must change, and not the world. The most famous of that was his own personal experiment with waterboarding – he submitted himself to be waterboarded [correcting an omission: he was doing it to prove that it was not torture], and immediately and unequivocally admitted “It’s torture.”
I’ve always admired his talent for being direct and not couching his disagreements in worthless platitude. When he thought someone was an idiot, he made sure they knew it. This took on the colloquial nickname, the “Hitchslap.”
So if you’re of the mind, raise a glass of Johnnie Walker Black in his honor.
As usual, someone else is able to say it better:
Even though I never met him, I wish I could have said farewell.
Drinkers of citrus beverages (aka Mountain Dew, etc.), be careful with your quantities. A key ingredient, called Brominated Vegetable Oil, has been shown to have some potentially serious consequences. It’s used in those drinks to keep the citrus flavor in suspension – without it, all the flavoring would float to the surface.
It’s original and patented use? As a flame retardant.
Of course, the horror stories about it revolve around people who consume MASSIVE quantities of it, so one bottle isn’t going to Fukushima your body or anything. But still, most of the folks I know who drink that stuff don’t stop at just one, and often drink the same quantity out of habit for years. And this stuff doesn’t cycle out of your body that fast – it builds up, and ends up in all sorts of unhappy places, like breast milk.
There are no really recent studies, and few applicable to humans, so again I point out that this is only a note of caution, not alarm. But the examples that one can point to include gamers who sit for twelve hours straight, putting away a 20-oz bottle every hour, are not out of the realm of likelihood. That’s about seven liters in a 12-hour period. And gamers are nothing if not repetitive, so it wouldn’t surprise me if that sort of session got repeated a lot.
And drinking almost anything seven liters a day for extended periods, I would think, would cause the drinker to eventually poop out his own liver.
Authors come and go, and as with all of us, eventually they grow old and die. The passing of Anne McCaffrey hits home with me in a peculiar way – her Dragonriders novels were the first real sci-fi I’d read (though now as an adult I see it more as a fantasy bit than sci-fi). I’d read Lord of the Rings as a voracious nine- or ten-year-old, and immediately jumped into the Science Fiction Book Club. Those pulp-paged hardbacks were an amazing value for a kid like me at the time – cheap, good, and durable.
Wandering through the Weyrs and nations of her fictional world Pern gave a geeky kid a great place to escape to – when growing up in an unstable world. We moved every few years back when I was a kid, and having at least those books to return to gave me at least something I knew would be consistent. It didn’t hurt that it was also adventurous, fun, and exciting in a lot of ways.
She was also the first (and to my recollection, only) author I ever wrote fan-mail to. She was living in Ireland at the time, I think, and I remember scribbling some wishful thinking and heaping praise into my letter before sealing it up and sending it on. To my astonishment, I actually did get a reply – though not from Mrs. McCaffrey herself. Instead, her daughter took the time to respond to a little boy who was struggling with his own adaptation to the world, and who found a useful refuge in her mother’s writings.
I never read much of her other work – it didn’t appeal to me, for a variety of reasons I won’t go into here. But suffice it to say, that child is still in here somewhere, and as the adult custodian of him, my gratitude goes out to her family. Her writing was a tremendous gift to me.
The world is a lesser place without her, but a better place for her having been a part of it.
