Pessimal, Baguettes, Metrotextual

A potpourri of small amusements:

New Word of the Day (WOTD): Pessimal adjective : Describes a situation that is the least favourable or advantageous (the opposite of optimal).

---

The Large Hadron Collider has been thwarted again, this time by a bit of sammich baguette, possible dropped by a bird or left by time travelers while they were sabotaging the device.

---

We've been told of metrosexuals - narcisstic, ostensibly hetero men (OHM) that are comfortable using skin care products and who are open to concepts such as manscaping - think David Beckham as the poster boy - but now a London study brings us metrotextuals. Metrotextuals are ostensibly hetero men who are comfortable signing "kisses" in text messages to other (straight) men.

xxxooo
Vannevar

Titular Economy: Buying Jobs and Titles

There's been some buying of jobs and titles.

• for $30,000 you can buy the title of Co-Pilot with Gulfstream Airlines (see previous post)
  
• The New York Yankees have bought another World Series title.
  
• New York City's Michael Bloomberg has bought the title of Mayor for a third term, after buying his way out of the term limits law. We await indications of whether Hizzoner prefers to purchase a fourth term.
  

I am struck by this new business model of buying titles or jobs that were once earned. Why would somebody buy a job? Because the experience or influence is worth much more (to the buyer) than the salary. It's a corrupt situation ripe for exploitation. For instance, for $30K you can be a co-pilot on a Continental Connections flight with Gulfstream.

First I thought: it's terrible, scandalous, unspeakable! Then I realized, maybe I'm just being resistant to change, maybe I should embrace the new perspective. This will inevitably extend into other fields; maybe there's a lot of money to be moved in Jobs for Sale (J4S).

These Jobs-For-Sale can't be jobs where solo performance is crucial. They don't sell the pilot's job, they sell the co-pilots job. The pilot is (theoretically) the grown-up, the babysitter who ensures that the co-pilot doesn't compromise the business. The ideal Jobs-For-Sale position is that of a sidekick or team member - Robin rather than Batman, any of the seven dwarfs rather than the Prince.

I expect that other industries will soon start selling jobs. The trick, of course, is to find a willing buyer with sufficient money. The opportunity must be glamorous. The field will need to have a high cost of entry; in other words, be restricted so that the audience can't easily go out and find the opportunity themselves. It's not going to be "run a lemonade stand" - it's going to be a situation involving scarce equipment, or constrained access.

So there's:

• an economy that is continually shedding jobs
  
• a limited number of jobs that can be successfully sold
  
• a great demand for experience and education
  
• a wealthy older generation that indulges the younger generation
  

I think this is the perfect situation for a widescale rollout of Jobs for Sale (J4S) and a bidding war, eventually followed by a classic investment bubble.

To really roll out the Jobs For Sale paradigm on a wide scale, we're going to need newbie-friendly jobs that are attractive in the common culture, jobs which most people can't screw up too badly. They need to be attractive, dumbed-down jobs, what an insensitive person might call upscale "gopher jobs". They're going to be jobs that almost anybody can do, but that very few people can get to.

What jobs could industry probably sell? Remember, they need to be sidekicks, glamorous, attractive to people with money, high barriers to entry, noob-friendly. Some opportunities might include:

• Attorneys
  
• Photographers
  
• Journalists
  
• Batboys at Major League Baseball games

Kicking it Meta

At a higher level of abstraction, jobs have been bought and sold for a long time but the prices paid were less tangible (and off the books). The producer has the casting couch. The military says: Sell us six years of your life and you'll see the world. The Department Head says: Sell me your loyalty, and you can become Assistant to the Regional Manager. There are opportunities to sell integrity, dreams, and souls. We just need to convert these to cash transactions.

What strikes me about Bloomberg's situation is that he's extended the business concept into the public sector. I think there's a Pittsburgh application here. Pittsburgh has an exodus of younger people who want jobs and who'd prefer to stay here, and we have government that can't afford the payroll and the pension contributions. Ka-Ching! Maybe we can start selling city jobs. Maybe instead of doling them out as patronage, we should recognize the cash value.

I'm just saying. If you're going to sell parking lots to cover salaries and pensions, why not sell the jobs?

If you'd like to suggest a job for the list of "Jobs 4 Sale", please enter it in a comment below.

New Airline / Flight School In Pittsburgh

The Post Gazette brings us the story of Gulfstream International Airlines, which may reintroduce air service from PIT to Harrisburg, DuBois, Cleveland, Indianapolis, and other smallish cities. They're going to fly 19-seat Beechcraft 1900's, which are really nice airplanes.

No less a person than County Executive Dan Onorato said, "We are thrilled that Gulfstream International Airlines is interested in restoring important regional flights to our world-class airport".

On the face of it, it's more good news. It's evident that people are working hard to attract new airline service, and I applaud that. For instance, the recent incentivized/ guaranteed service to Paris, France with Delta - that was a great move.

The thing is: We know Delta Airlines.
We've flown Delta Airlines.
This Gulfstream Int'l outfit is no Delta Airlines.

Gulfstream flies as a Continental Connection carrier. You remember Continental Connection, the umbrella outfit that outsources airline passengers to low-cost contractors, like Continental Connection Flight 3407 which crashed while approaching Buffalo Niagara International Airport recently. The passenger's tickets said Continental, but the airplane and crew were Colgan Air.

From Wikipedia:

Gulfstream International Airlines has been under additional scrutiny due to three recent fatal crashes that all involved pilots that were trained at the Gulfstream Training Academy (its sister company), the last one in February 2009, where 50 died on Colgan Air Flight 3407 near Buffalo, NY.

In May 2009, the federal government issued a fine of 1.3 million dollars against Gulfstream International Airlines after the Federal Aviation Administration found that it had falsified flight time records, allowing crews fly longer hours than allowed by law, and providing below standard aircraft maintenance. The fine is being disputed at this time.

• In July 1997, the airline's entire fleet of Shorts 360-300s were repossessed by the leasing company due, in part, to maintenance irregularities that included the welding of hydraulic lines
  
• Despite its status as a mere stepping stone in the minds of most pilot employees, the company was able to keep whistle blowing in check through selective disclosure of training documents

It's not just an airline, it's an adventure

Gulfstream is not just an airline; it's a flight school. The Gulfstream Training Academy (check the site, very TopGun) teache$ people to be pilots. It's a flight school. Then the graduates can pay to be copilots on your Continental Connection flight! They pay tens of thousands of dollars, get 250 hours of experience as a copilot, and the airline pays them $8 an hour. They are, essentially, taking lessons with uninformed passengers in the back.

Here's the menu: for $25K they'll declare you a co-pilot (aka first officer) in three months; for $48K they'll declare you a pilot in five months. If you don't have any flying experience at all, for $73K they'll make you all that in 14 months. The brochure calls the time you spend flying around (pretending to be a copilot) the "first officer internship". George Orwell would be proud.

Your family sitting in the back of the Beech 1900? Priceless.

It's really a brilliant "business model". In addition to charging passengers for snacks, drinks, headsets, blankets, and checked baggage - hey, let's charge somebody who wants to learn to be a copilot, and let them ride up front!

From USA Today:

Capt. Marvin Renslow, who was at the controls when a Colgan Air commuter plane went wildly out of control and plunged to the ground on Feb. 12, trained with Gulfstream in 2004 and 2005, according to National Transportation Safety Board records. Colgan Air was operating under contract for Continental Airlines at the time of the Buffalo crash.

The copilot on a Comair flight that crashed in 2006 after trying to take off from a dark, closed runway in Lexington, killing 49 of 50 people aboard, also worked at Gulfstream, according to NTSB records. So did the two pilots on a Pinnacle Airlines flight who were joyriding in an empty jet before snuffing out both engines and crashing in Missouri in 2004.

I really do applaud the people trying to rebuild air service. But I've got a message for Dan Onorato: we'd be better off with MagLev. Or Greyhound. Or anybody where the co-pilot isn't an intern, paying for the experience.



Related Posts: 30 Years of Outsourcing Safety.

Google: Exordium and Terminus, aka 2525

On Wednesday Google introduced two new concepts. Concept One is that the beta Android operating system contains free Google mapping. Stock prices for Garmin and TomTom (people that sell GPS mapping) are down. Another industry based on selling arcane information on a retail basis challenged by the Google the Category Killer.

Concept Two is Music Search: when you type a song title into Google, you'll get four results that are Google's attempt to let you hear that song.

I wanted to test drive this, so I Googled the title of a favorite song from my youth: 2525. The song is really titled Exordium and Terminus, by Zager and Evans, but I tried the more obscure '2525' just to see what Google did. (Exordium means beginning, and terminus means end.)

Google returned two videos of the song, and two videos of a television show called "Cleopatra 2525". Not bad in the way of search results.


One of the links was this excellent video, made decades after the song was recorded, and I thought I'd include it here because (1) it's a value-added update to an old fave, and (2) it connects to my previous post about Wired For War.

Without further ado, here is
Exordium and Terminus by Zager and Evans:

Finished Wired For War

Today I finished reading Wired For War : The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century, by P.W. Singer. This was an excellent book that took me an uncharacteristically long time to read, because every few pages I felt filled up with the implications of what Singer is talking about and I'd need to set it down and let it percolate.

Progress is accelerated during wartime, and the country has been at war for 8+ years in two countries, and so logically we should be seeing remarkable technological advances. We are, and mostly on two fronts: improved survival rates of combat injuries, and increased use of automation in the forms of aircraft (mostly in unmanned aerial vehicles {UAVs}) and surface robots.

There's going to be long-lasting social changes because of these wars, and I believe they're in stealth mode because to a large extent the war is not evident to civilians. Demographically, we're building a new generation of wartime veterans (which is a great result from a lousy process), and we're also generating a new generation of wounded vets.

There are remarkable advances being made in aviation, automation, navigation, robotics, telemetry, real-time systems, and weapon systems. Google's new Android operating system, for instance, is being used in the Raytheon Android Tactical System (RATS). Soldiers will be able to see each other's location in the "battlespace".

Just as rifles permitted a soldier to kill an enemy at a new range, today's gear allows a "pilot" in Nevada to kill an enemy in Afganistan. Singer does a great job of teasing out the moral implications of this technowar. For instance, is a contractor operating a Predator drone an illegal combatant? Does that justify an enemy's attack on a Nevada shopping center? When killing becomes a real-world video game, are we producing the same child warriors that we decry in Africa?

I highly recommend this book.