BOW WAVE 579

Bow Wave Issue 579--New Years Edition

news and views on trade, insurance and risk

Bow Wave homepage
Previous issue (578) / Current issue / Next issue (580)

Wavy Line	sam@wavyline.com
(c)2011 WavyLine.com	Issue No 579 04 Jan 11
Published free of charge to Readers
Editor: Sam Ignarski
Subscribe	Unsubscribe

In this issue:

1. Welcome
2. Lloyd's List Opinion Piece
3. Alert-Latest Issue Out
4. What Happened to the Deepwater Horizon Oil?
5. In The Grip Of A Great Convergence
6. And Finally...

1. Welcome

Poem of the Week

First Light

Graying chest hair emerging from his apron-top in tufts dusted with a snow of flour
above the swelling rondure of his oven belly,
sleeves rolled, arms folded, at ease on the porch steps outside the back door of the bakery

in the lively air of the early hour taking a break while the bread cools on the racks inside
and a breeze picks up off the bay: the mist lifts and the swarming dust of starlight reappears,
the constellations that were given names

beside the hive-domed ovens of Chaldea and of Ur-- near first light, thick arms cradling rolls
and crusty loaves, a gift for late returning revelers, for the derelict who washes in the creek
under the bridge his daily bread at daybreak.

Jim Powell (2009)

New Readers this week include:-

Claims man Benedikt Funke of the Munich Re
Rail Safety expert Andreas Prange of L&B in Germany Eric Baillargeon of the GEICO Insurance Agency in Fredericksburg

News of Readers

Faezeh Tabatabaei, who heads the Fichte & Co office in Tehran has been appointed as the Honorary Consul of Malta with jurisdiction over the territory of Iran. Mrs Tabatabaei will have all rights and duties of a consul, with limitations only relating to issuance of visa, passports and birth/death certificates.

Janna Kochkina has joined JLJ Maritime, the insurance business run from Greece by Jonathan Jones as deputy managing director. Regarded as one of the "first ladies" of Russian marine insurance, she is to relocate to the offices of JLJ Maritime in Athens.

Janna is one of the best known Russian marine underwriters,both internationally and domestically, having been previously managing director of Ingosstrakh marine department and latterly a consultant to Rosgosstrakh--thus having been involved with the two largest insurance companies in Russia.

Readers Write

From Californian lawyer Walter W. Hansell:-

Check out this mind-bulging site providing a continuous sliding scale graphic comparison of the size of things from the subatomic to pan-universal.

[To give an idea of the scales involved, the depth of the Mariana Trench [11 km] appears well down the presentation--ed]

http://primaxstudio.com/stuff/scale_of_universe/

From Neil Abbott:-

In Bow Wave Issue 578 your correspondent Andy Maisey wrote:_

Why produce something which cannot be protected, to produce an income for the creator, which the legal system will not acknowledge as the product of a creative process requiring many hours of labour?

If everyone one had followed Mr Maisey's premise from the dawn of time, we would still be sitting, freezing cold, in cave (or LHR...?) and penniless.

Readers' might wish to read up on the problems patents create with special reference to James Watt and 'his' improvements to the design and operation of steam engines. Industrial power engineering was set back 10 years or more while Watt sat on his patent, and while he paid his lawyers to sue anyone daring to use or improve on his system without dues being paid.

The way to maintain one's income is to carry on being creative and build on your recognised expertise, not try and stifle everyone else's. Witness all the effort still going in to those "Apple vs the rest of the world" lawsuits.

"Share and Enjoy!" (with due respect to Sirius Cybernetics Corp)

mailto:neil.abbott@manumarine.com

From Trevor Harrison

With reference to Andy Maisey's Catch 22 item on protecting the intellectual property in fonts, if he is correct surely all that the designer needs to do is obtain protection for the letter "e" in each case?

Complim_nts of th_ s_ason
(You s__ what I m_an.)

mailto:trevor@trevor-harrison.com

FOB Update

Many interesting people are joining the network. To name but a few:-

Mutual man Ivan Keane
Richard Sayer, dean of maritime lawyers
John Walsh, publishing marketeer
Jan Hoffman, UNCTAD transport official
Bradley Rose, maritime lawyer in California
Peter Hughes, rating analyst
Kevin Burke, maritime lawyer in Ireland
John Orzel, maritime lawyer in New York
Cedric Raths, maritime luxembourgois
Pim Zandee, emergency response expert in South Africa

Registration is gratis for individuals. Businesses can take out a page for a small supporting contribution and we welcome firms prepared to sponsor Group pages or advertise with us.

FOB is a project designed to adapt the new ways of using the internet for the sorts of people who read Bow Wave.

You are welcome to join

http://www.fobnetworking.com

Note from the Editor

Looking out from our window near Smithfield Market to the contrary, this is the week when London goes back to work after a prolonged Christmas break.

And to be fair, where there was for a few weeks a trickle of messages from our Readers, a full torrent has resumed. Bow Wave enters its 12th year of appearance, still in plain text, still an email message. We cling to this format because it is receivable on all manner of devices, from the humble 486 to the latest iPhone.

We have a little look at the future in this edition. The subject of China is mentioned.

Enjoy!

2. Lloyd's List Opinion Piece

Well here it is, your editor's ideas on the times ahead, posted in the first edition of the new year by the paper, for which kindness many thanks:-

Future Tips

Roundabout this time of the year is the time when the scribbling classes unpack their futurological traps to peer into the future. Your correspondent is especially fond of future gazing--it has its uses in life especially if you are right. But you have to go easy on the transformations all the same: that domestic robot and little pill of food I can recall reading about throughout my childhood just haven’t made an appearance .

I remember once meeting a military lawyer when in the company of my American military father when I was aged about 16. He was a tactiturn man, a Major and no doubt bored with the routines of his life. The subject of my future came up and he said I could no better than learn Chinese and International law. This would be the ideal education for the future.This would have been in around 1970. Well here I am, my Chinese Studies and Law degree safely acquired along the way, 55, a rather fun working life in marine insurance, many fascinating years observing the rise of the container industry in Asia and writing opinion pieces for Lloyd’s List. Pity about the maths, all the same.

Here are a few futurological points and queries to muse on:-

We and the organizations we populate have always been viewed in retrospect by those who are looking for the reason and origins of things. In future we will appear to be the sum of the digital footprints we leave behind. 20 years ago most of these footprints were in an obscure box in a backroom called the mainframe. Today they are scattered and impossible to retrieve in many cases. The hyper connected present has only really been going for 10 or 15 years. Just imagine the process accelerating for another 20 years, as it undoubtedly will.

The occupation of data thief will join the top ranks of most occupations. Where once you might say that behind every large fortune lay a great crime, in future you will be able to say that every great success will obscure a trail of data misappropriated or misused and swiped intellectual property.

Sometime in the next ten years the evisceration of the middle of everything will slow and then go into reverse. The constant process of consolidation and centralization, which has changed the landscape of life in developed economies will acquire so many vices that it will fail to provide an easy corridor into profitability. The container industry, the laboratory in some ways of how revolutions in technology and computing devour their children, is a good window to watch.

The next ten years in mature economies will witness a deep reexamination of values in general but in particular there will be quest for "valuta" a unit of accounting or currency which recognizes the shift in the world towards events in Asia and away from what we think of as the center stage of the West.

This reexamination is already underway in all sorts of fields. It can be tracked easily in for instance in the field of education which in many places and in many respects has long been a race between the value which can be gained by cheating, exploiting and playing the system and the intrinsic value of the actual education gleaned . The tools for spotting plagiarized writing and information will improve beyond measure over the same period.

The accumulated value and crucial roles of maritime centres will strengthen. Mixtures of very large and very small maritime players, colocated in places which esteem all things maritime will continue to prosper in their traditional homes. But if you are located in one of these city states, it is likely that you should also have in foot in others, in different time zones lest you fall into the trap which drew the motor industry in Detroit into ruin. There the highly concentrated car companies busily competed against each other for the favour of the American car buying market, while at the same time, the gentlemen from Japan, Korea and Germany took the soup right out of their bowls. Here an industry to watch is the long tail liability P&I Club world. This industry, founded in 19th Century Britain at the peak of her maritime hegemony, rolled out in the post war era to serve the international industry as a whole, transacted in the English language, subject very largely to English law is hugely represented by many long established firms in the historic metropole of London. The current market leader is based in a town called Arendal in Norway.

In the post industrial parts of the world, the vista ahead is what the Governor of the Bank of England described as the Sober Decade--a decade of savings, orderly budgets, and equitable rebalancing. The work which has to be done is only beginning. The targets for "rebalancing" have so far been rather soft. As always the bottoms of the triangles are easier to "rebalance" than the sides. But there is no doubt that large fortunes have been lavished over the past decade on ineffectual regulators, security czardoms and masters of the universe in the financial services industry. These products of the casino years and inflated public budgets mostly still argue that they remain crucial to the well being of international trade.

The next ten years will be famished for innovators and entrepreneurs. The cost of staying with the "business as usual" of large costly establishments, mediocre or declining performance and reducing market shares will be hard to bear. Glory will also be to the accomplished salesmen and women within our ranks.

Easy to say but what changes does this imply? The mind goes back to the wise words of Helmut Schmidt, the onetime German Chancellor who commented on the role of languages in an ever more Anglophone marketplace. It really does not matter if I am selling to you and all you speak is English. But when you are selling to me, you ought to be speaking German. If this is a true measure of customer focus- how focused is your organization?

3. Alert-Latest Issue Out

Brigid Hogan writes:-

The latest Alert! [Issue 25] has appeared.Launched in October 2003, it is a campaign to improve the awareness of the human element in the maritime industry. This is a Nautical Institute project, sponsored by Lloyd’s Register Educational Trust.

As with a successful orchestra, it takes skill and knowledge, teamwork and leadership to operate ships properly. All of these, it will be noted, are intensely human attributes--mere machinery is not enough, no matter how well-designed the ship might be!

Read the current issue here:-

http://www.he-alert.org/

4. What Happened to the Deepwater Horizon Oil?

Courtesy to the much esteemed Dennis Bryant's Maritime Blog, we learn of this Congresssional Report on where all the oil went.

The Report notes that human intervention disposed of approximately 41% of the oil and natural processes disposed of another 37%. This leaves approximately 22% unaccounted for - either remaining in the water column, settled on the sea floor, mixed with sediment, ingested by microbes, or collected during shore cleanup activities.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41531.pdf

5. In The Grip Of A Great Convergence

This rather fine piece appears in the FT by Martin Wolf. He says:

In an influential book, Kenneth Pomeranz of the University of California, Irvine, wrote of the "great divergence" between China and the west. He located that divergence in the late 18th and 19th centuries. This is controversial: the late Angus Maddison, doyen of statistical researchers, argued that by 1820 UK output per head was already three times and US output per head twice Chinese levels. Yet of the subsequent far greater divergence there is no doubt whatsoever. By the middle of the 20th century, real incomes per head (measured at purchasing power parity) in China and India had fallen to 5 and 7 per cent of US levels, respectively. Moreover, little had changed by 1980.

What had once been the centres of global technology had fallen vastly behind. This divergence is now reversing. That is far and away the biggest single fact about our world.

Read the full piece (and the very interesting comments) here:-

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/072c87e6-1841-11e0-88c9-00144feab49a.html#axzz1AAqyYPCz

6. And Finally...

Just in from the House of Frazer Hunt in Sydney, these brief messages:-

If you are "learning" to text, here is some VERY helpful information. Don't thank me (DTM). This is a public service (TIPS).

Since more and more seniors are texting and tweeting there appears to be a need for a STC (Senior Texting Code). If you qualify for Senior Discounts this is the code for you.

ATD: At The Doctor's

BFF: Best Friend Farted

BTW: Bring The Wheelchair

BYOT: Bring Your Own Teeth

CBM: Covered By Medicare

CUATSC: See You At The Senior Center

DWI: Driving While Incontinent

FWB: Friend With Beta Blockers

FWIW: Forgot Where I Was

FYI: Found Your Insulin

GGPBL: Gotta Go, Pacemaker Battery Low!

GHA: Got Heartburn Again

HGBM: Had Good Bowel Movement

IMHO: Is My Hearing-Aid On?

LMDO: Laughing My Dentures Out

LOL: Living On Lipitor

LWO: Lawrence Welk's On

OMMR: On My Massage Recliner

OMSG: Oh My! Sorry, Gas.

ROFL... CGU: Rolling On The Floor Laughing... And Can't Get Up

SGGP: Sorry, Gotta Go Poop

TTYL: Talk To You Louder

WAITT: Who Am I Talking To?

WTFA: Wet The Furniture Again

WTP: Where's The Prunes?

WWNO: Walker Wheels Need Oil

GLKI (Gotta Go, Laxative Kicking In)

P.S.

An attorney was sitting in his office late one night, when the Devil appeared before him. The Devil told the lawyer, "I have a proposition for you. You can win every case you try, for the rest of your life. Your clients will adore you, your colleagues will stand in awe of you, and you will make embarrassing sums of money. All I want in exchange is your soul, your wife's soul, your children's souls, the souls of your parents, grandparents, and parents-in-law and the souls of all of your friends and law partners." The lawyer thought about this for a moment, then asked, "So, what's the catch?"

BOW WAVE is published each week to over 15 500 Readers in the transport,insurance,shipping and finance industries. It is free to Readers but you can support it as a going concern by subscribing as a business member to:-

http://www.fobnetworking.com

Thanks for reading BOW WAVE