BOW WAVE 410

Bow Wave Issue 410--Mixed Bag Edition

news and views on trade, insurance and risk

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Wavy Line	sam@wavyline.com
(c)2007 WavyLine.com	Issue No 410 01 Oct 07
Published free of charge to Readers
Editor: Sam Ignarski
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In this issue:

1. Welcome
2. Biofuels
3. Powerpoint, Presentations and a Good Notion
4. Loss of the Denden
5. Shipping Forecast's 'Baffling' Legacy
6. And Finally...

1. Welcome

Poem of the Week

Autobiography of the Cab Driver Who Picked Me Up At a Phoenix Hotel to Catch a Four A.M. Flight and Began to Speak in (Almost) Rhyming Couplets

I got two problems. One,
I never see the sun
and two, if I did,
I couldn't take it, never could.
Now, my sister? Out one day
and brown the next. That's the way
my father was. We never
took vacations but he used to steer
on Sundays with one arm
out the window. Get dark as a black man.
Something in his blood, I guess.
Once I bought me a mess
of tanning cream, but something
kept me from using it.
He's been dead a whole
year. They say there's not a soul
on the streets this hour,
but the souls are just now rousing.
Yes Ma'am, when I see daylight I slide
into my coffin and close the lid.
Cooler that way. They say if you can survive
a summer in this heat, you're a native.
My brother's child? She claims to be one,
but I tell her she's got Made in Japan
stamped all over her keister.
Hey lady, you still on Eastern
time? You can have it. Yesterday
the TV reporter in Cincinnati
was three feet in snow. I phoned
my old drinking buddy back home
to rub it in. Lied and said I was out
today without a shirt. Barefoot.
He said you can keep those hundred
degrees. I said you don't have to shovel
a heat wave. Young lady, you okay?
Looks like you're fading. The longest day
I ever lived was the night
I left for Vietnam. What a sight,
would you look at that? Damn
jackhammers at three a.m.
They sure like to play in the dirt here.
Yes Ma'am. It's the same everywhere.
The shortest distance between
two points is always under construction.

Rebecca McClanahan, from Deep Light:
New and Selected Poems, 1987--2007

New Readers this week include:-

Long Beach lawyer Michael L Swain
Alex Gordon of Liberty Insurance
Richard Dunn
Roger Green of QBE
Martin Hubbard of Brokers Tysers

News of Readers

Chris Hewer writes:-

Fred T Lininger

Fred T Lininger, who oversaw the growth of the Liberian ship register from its modest beginnings in 1948 to its position as the largest in the world by the late 1970s, has died, aged 88.

Lininger was an aide to US Secretary of State, Edward Stettinius, who led the American delegation to the Yalta talks near the end of World War II. Following his resignation, Stettinius, who had visited Liberia on his return from Yalta, helped to develop commercial interests in Liberia and appointed Lininger as Vice-President of the Liberian International Trust Company, which was established in 1947 to manage the country’s maritime programme.

From its inception, the Liberian register has been managed by an American corporation, and Lininger remained its Chief Executive until he retired in the late 1980s. He was never the public face of Liberia, but it is fair to say that he is one of the people who laid the groundwork for a system of ship registry which is now accepted as the norm in the shipping industry.

Lininger was born near Martinsburg in Pennsylvania and graduated from Pennsylvania State University in 1940. His wife of sixty years, Nancy Kirkpatrick
Lininger, died in 2005. They had two children,
Mollie L Alkan, F Kurt Lininger. A memorial service was held at Saint James Episcopal Church, Leesburg, Virginia on Friday, September 28, 2007.

Readers Write

From Alan Salsbury

Re your item on car bumper stickers (Bow Wave Issue 408), I saw this on the back of a white van:-

"No tools kept in this van overnight. The driver carries no cash (he's married)"

alansalsbury@btinternet.com

From Sandy Galbraith

I am writing to let you know that I shall be leaving Lloyd’s List DCN on October 12.

As has been explained in a press release, I have declined an invitation to move to Sydney and have therefore accepted redundancy.

The prospect of my having to move north has been in the background for some time and while I like Sydney -- and have been regularly commuting to it from Melbourne over the past year or so -- I have decided not to make the move on a permanent basis, principally for family reasons.

It will be something of a jolt to leave the newspaper, which I have been with in its various guises for most of the past two decades, but I am looking at my departure as an opportunity rather than a setback.

Since I delivered the Boulton Lecture in Melbourne back in 2003, I have been talking to audiences and writing in the paper about the skills shortage that is threatening the broader transport and logistics industries.

So I suppose I live in hope that I have some skills, experience and perspective to bring to the table for others to benefit-- not to mention possibly one of the best contacts lists in the industry in Australia!

So, in closing, I would like to thank you for your assistance over the years and hope that we can remain in contact in the future.

Should you have any thoughts as to how or where I might be able to pursue my career in the future -- and I hasten to add, not necessarily in journalism -- I would be delighted to hear from you.

I can be contacted on

0422 258151

sandygalbraith@msn.com

Note from the Editor

An interesting mixed batch of an edition this week.

Enjoy!

2. Biofuels

Fred Doll writes:-

I had the pleasure of participating in the recent Biofuels Conference in London organised by Navigate Conferences. It was a well-attended (about 150 participants), well-organised event with broad representation including agribusiness, shipping, ports and terminals.

My presentation was entitled "Biofuels and Tanker Markets Overview", discussing:

- effects of January 2007 regulatory changes requiring IMO class chemical tanker transport for vegetable oils - growth in seaborne vegoil trade due to food, oleochemical and biofuels demand
- industry chemical tanker fleet development
- effects on tanker markets.

The presentation can be downloaded at

http://www.dollship.com/Index.asp?Content=Presentations

For those who would like more information, my recent article in Oils and Fats International can be downloaded at

http://www.dollship.com/Index.asp?Content=Press .

3. Powerpoint, Presentations and a Good Notion

How many presentations have we sat through in our lives in this industry which really did the job? Not all too many it seems safe to say.

Perhaps the constraints of Pecha Kucha might help concentrate the minds of presenters. These are mentioned in the current edition of Wired:-

"Let us now bullet-point our praise for Mark Dytham and Astrid Klein, two Tokyo-based architects who have turned PowerPoint, that fixture of cubicle life, into both art form and competitive sport. Their innovation, dubbed pecha-kucha (Japanese for "chatter"), applies a simple set of rules to presentations: exactly 20 slides displayed for 20 seconds each. That's it. Say what you need to say in six minutes and 40 seconds of exquisitely matched words and images and then sit the hell down. The result, in the hands of masters of the form, combines business meeting and poetry slam to transform corporate cliché into surprisingly compelling beat-the-clock performance art."

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-09/st_pechakucha

http://www.pecha-kucha.org

4. Loss of the Denden

We have in the past have had cause enough to extoll the qualities of the Cargolaw e-zine published by LA attornies Countryman & McDaniel. In the casualty gallery of the latest edition, the loss of the MV Denden near Mangalore is described in a rather moving narrative informed with a sense of melancholy loss. See the series of pictures at:-

www.cargolaw.com/2007nightmare_denden.html

5. Shipping Forecast's 'Baffling' Legacy

Steve Cameron sent in this link to an item on the shipping forecast, broadcast four times a day on the BBC. As interesting as the item is, we remember how many moons ago the BBC World Service put out a programme aimed at the world of the Merchant Marine but to its enduring shame it has ever since failed to regularly report and feature the world of shipping, transport and logistics, seemingly oblivious to the fact that in a gloablised world economy, everything depends on transport.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/entertainment/6940597.stm

6. And Finally...

Courtesy of Paul Dixon's Joke of the Day come these incidents from the life of the Help Desk:-

Helpdesk: What kind of computer do you have?

Female customer: A white one...

Hi, this is Celine. I can't get my diskette out.

Helpdesk: Have you tried pushing the button?

Customer: Yes, sure, it's really stuck.

Helpdesk: That doesn't sound good; I'll make a note ..."

Customer: No ... wait a minute... I hadn't inserted it yet ... it's still on my desk... sorry .......

Helpdesk: Click on the 'my computer' icon on to the left of the screen.

Customer: Your left or my left?

Helpdesk: Good day. How may I help you?

Male customer: Hello... I can't print.

Helpdesk: Would you click on start for me and ...

Customer: Listen pal; don't start getting technical on me! I'm not Bill Gates damn it!

Hi good afternoon, this is Martha, I can't print. Every time I try it says 'Can't find printer'. I've even lifted the printer and placed it in front of the monitor, but the computer still says he can't find it...

Customer: I have problems printing in red...

Helpdesk: Do you have a color printer?

Customer: Aaaah....................thank you.

Helpdesk: What's on your monitor now ma'am?

Customer: A teddy bear my boyfriend bought for me in the supermarket.

Helpdesk: And now hit F8.

Customer: It's not working.

Helpdesk: What did you do, exactly?

Customer: I hit the F-key 8-times as you told me, but nothing's happening...

Customer: My keyboard is not working anymore.

Helpdesk: Are you sure it's plugged into the computer?

Customer: No. I can't get behind the computer.

Helpdesk: Pick up your keyboard and walk 10 paces back.

Customer: OK

Helpdesk: Did the keyboard come with you?

Customer: Yes

Helpdesk: That means the keyboard is not plugged in. Is there another keyboard?

Customer: Yes, there's another one here. Ah...that one does work!

Helpdesk: Your password is the small letter a as in apple, a capital letter V as in Victor, the number 7.

Customer: Is that 7 in capital letters? -

A customer couldn't get on the internet.

Helpdesk: Are you sure you used the right password?

Customer: Yes I'm sure. I saw my colleague do it.

Helpdesk: Can you tell me what the password was?

Customer: Five stars.

Helpdesk: What antivirus program do you use?

Customer: Netscape.

Helpdesk: That's not an antivirus program.

Customer: Oh, sorry...Internet Explorer.

Customer: I have a huge problem. A friend has placed a screensaver on my computer, but every time I move the mouse, it disappears!

Helpdesk: Microsoft Tech. Support, may I help you?

Old woman: Good afternoon! I have waited over 4 hours for you. Can you please tell me how long it will take before you can help me?

Helpdesk: Uhh..? Pardon, I don't understand your problem?

Old woman: I was working in Word and clicked the help button more than 4 hours ago. Can you tell me when you will finally be helping me?

Helpdesk: How may I help you?

Customer: I'm writing my first e-mail.

Helpdesk: OK, and, what seems to be the problem?

Customer: Well, I have the letter a, but how do I get the circle around it?

P.S. Thanks to Frazer Hunt for this one:-

Just after giving birth to her second child, the mother looked at the doctor for confirmation that everything was OK.

The doctor paused and said, "I have to tell you something about your baby."

"Oh my god!" screamed the mother, "What's wrong?"

"Well," said the doctor, is nothing we can't handle. It seems your baby is a little different. Your baby is a hermaphrodite."

"What's that?" asked the mother.

"It means that your baby has the... er... features of both a male and a female."

"Oh god!" the mother gasped, "you mean it has a pen!s and a brain?"

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