Learning About Leadership

In the aftermath of the Lac-Mégantic train crash, people have been talking about the appearance by Edward Burkhardt, CEO of the railway involved.  Pretty much everyone is agreeing it was somewhere between "unhelpful" and "disasterous."

This is something that I find interesting about business.  We tend to mythologise business leaders, seeing them as transformative leaders akin to politicians.  But the more I've learned about business, the more I find that many people high on the corporate ladder are not the inspiring, charismatic type.  Some are more about management, numbers and efficiency.  It's possible to get to the CEO's office with public speaking skills that would embarrass a candidate for junior-high treasurer.

And I think that's the case here.  I doubt Burkhardt is as hard-hearted as he comes across, he just seemed to express everything in the wrong way.  My guess is that:

• He missed the Business School class on how to handle tragedies
• As with many business leaders, he spends so much time in the business world, that he's not used to the idea that you can't use money as a catch-all explanation.

Toronto The Not-That-Bad-Actually

I gave up on Toronto in the early 2000's.  First there was SARS, in which the city seemed to freak over its tourism business, with little concern for the actual people dying.  What do you do after something kills 44 people in your city?  Hold a concert to celebrate!  On the other hand, journalists comparing it to 9/11 didn't help.

But the final straw was the big blackout later that same year.  You may remember Mayor Mel Lastman requesting that Toronto get priority as Ontario's weakened power grid was turned back on and rolling blackouts were a possibility; his reasoning being that the province depends on Toronto as it's economic engine. 

I didn't think much of this; in hindsight I would describe Lastman as being like Rob Ford but without the intellect.  But I was truly shocked when the Toronto Star ran an editorial endorsing his request.  I wrote them a letter to the editor pointing out that by that reasoning, we in Canada should give priority to the U.S. in the power grid restart, since we depend on their economy.  They didn't print it.  With all parts of Toronto's political spectrum apparently united in the idea that they were above the rest of the province, I declared the city (outside of its sports franchises) dead to me.

So this week, as Toronto suffered a freak flood, I was expecting more of the same attitude.  I braced for ridiculous comparisons to the larger Calgary flood or demands that we in the rest of the province donate our electricity and water to areas where the Toronto utilities were shut down.  But I have to admit, I've been pleasantly surprised.  Not only has none of that happened, but I keep seeing and hearing Torontonians humbly pointing out that they realize how fortunate they still are given the hardships of Calgary and Lac-Mégantic.  Even Mayor Ford seems to have acquired an extra seriousness for this issue.  So congratulations, Toronto, you are back in my good books.  I will visit again as soon as I can afford your parking.

I'm With Humid

Sometimes people argue about the use of humidity in temperature prediction.  Specifically the question is whether weather forecasts should give the temperatures with the humidity taken into account.  The argument against it is that the humidex isn't the "real" temperature, so we're only making it sound hotter than it is.

To me, that makes no sense.  My reasoning is right there in the way the meteorologist reads the temperature: "The high is 27, but it will feel like 40."  But obviously, how it "feels" is what I want to know, so just tell me it's 40.  Another way of reading the temperature would be, "The high tomorrow will be a beautiful 27 degrees.  Though it should be noted, if you happen to be a carbon-based life form, it will feel like 40.  But the main story: the majority of objects in the universe would experience tomorrow as 27."

This strange treatment of humidity leads to Canadians' odd understanding of temperatures.  We'll be like, "Man, today was hot.  I like the summer, but this was too much.  What's the weather going to be like tomorrow?  27 Degrees?  Perfect, sounds like a beautiful day."  Completely oblivious to the fact that it was 27 degrees today as well, and tomorrow is going to be just as hellish.  Humidity is sort of like The Silence from Doctor Who: we are terrorized in its presence, then forget about it while we're not experiencing it.

Maybe I Should Sign With A More Popular Blog

So Daniel Alfredsson has signed a contract to play his probably-final season in Detroit, and not in Ottawa where he has played the entire rest of his career.  The reason - as it so often is for athletes whose best earning potential is in the past - is because it gives him a better chance to win the cup that he's never won during his career.

Generally, fans support this sort of thing if it's a veteran declining team with no chance of winning.  It's a bit of a slap in the face given the teams' near-equal records last year, but Detroit's generation-long run of success makes it somewhat understandable (the last time they missed the playoffs was before the Senators existed.) Usually I'm one of the people willing to endorse the move-to-get-a-chance-at-a-cup end-of-career move.  But I'm starting to wonder.  For one thing, this doesn't work an awful lot of the time.  Even if you assume that you could get signed by any team you want, what are the chances you could pick the next year's winner a year ahead of time when they haven't even done with free agents yet?  Maybe one in ten?  Is a one in ten chance at a cup really better than going through your career with one team and an unblemished record as the face of the franchise? 

Furthermore, what are the ethics of parachuting into an already-good team for the express purpose of winning a championship?  I realise that it's not like he'd be a parasite - the veteran newcomer will contribute to the team as much as anyone.  But at what point does moving to a team because it's already good become a greedy strategy?  In a sport that puts such an emphasis on character, it's strange that no one ever questions a player for this decision.

My Enemy's My Friend

In London Ontario there's much weirdness in the London West by-election.  Specifically, the Liberal candidate will be Ken Coran.  That's weird, because Coran led the high school teachers' union during the recent bitter battles over the latest contract.  Battles, that is, with the Liberal government, which tried to pass legislation limiting the union's ability to strike.

What's surprising about this is how not surprising it is.  What other party would he support?  He's not going to be running for the Conservatives; given half a chance, they'd go Wisconsin on the teachers' unions.  Given that potential permanent damage, he'd also be unlikely to consider the NDP; unless he thinks Andrea Horwath can put the party into contention for victory, it would be an expensive principled stance.

It's a great example of how far the strange mixture of realpolitik and idealism in our world has come.  You can be fighting tooth and nail with someone, yet still consider them your closest political ally.

Grown Up vs. Blown Up

I'm getting tired of big-budget blockbusters.  Don't get me wrong, I like quarter-billion dollar CGI explosionfests as much as the next person, but it is getting tiring when another one comes out every week.  I know, you think it's just because I'm getting old.  Well I'm sure most teens can't keep track of whether the giant robots are attacking the White House or Metropolis, or just blowing up London again.

It wouldn't be so bad if these movies ran the half-assed cliched comedies out of the theatres.  But somehow, Grown Ups 2 is finding a few thousand screens this summer.  You'd think that no-effort movies from stars on the downside of their careers would have been pushed back to February releases to make way for the films the studios spent big money on, but no, they found room for both kinds.  So now our summer movie choices are just the latest in special effects, or comedians from twenty years ago.  Or to put it another way, it's either movies that try too hard, or movies that don't try at all.

Now what's the deal with new stars getting caught up in these comedies?  You can understand Sandra Bullock being in a cookie-cutter flick: she's done the blockbusters, won the Oscar, now she's moved to that point in a celeb's life where they're just paying for whatever expensive hobbies, children, ex-spouses, or addictions they've acquired in their career.  But her co-star Melissa McCarthy is supposed to be a rising commodity.  Surely she has something better to do while waiting for Kristen Wiig to finish writing Bridesmaids 2.

And Andy Samburg taking a bit part in Grown Ups 2 is really disappointing.  He looks like he's skipping straight from promising SNL grad to career decline without any stardom in between.  I thought he'd be the next Will Farrell, but apparently he's the next Jon Lovitz.  Lovitz, by the way, is also in Grown Ups 2; take note, Andy.

Not So Amazing

So this Snowden NSA leak thing won't go away.  Surprising, since , as I said previously, the story doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know, nor could have guessed.  A mixture of technology and post-9/11 paranoia greatly increased government surveillance. 

Even some of the claimed effects of the leak are hardly dramatic.  We've been told that terrorists have changed their behaviours based on the information about how surveillance has apparently worked.  For instance, they've stopped using Skype since it was mentioned as a company that worked with the NSA.  Don't worry: any terrorists that assume any communications medium is safe unless they've heard otherwise are not worth worrying about.  Among the things we didn't learn from Snowden's revelations is any evidence of new technology that we didn't already know about, so terrorist with a reasonable knowledge of information technology was already avoiding the media being monitored.

 

The most interesting aspect of the story has been the strange bedfellows it has produced:

• Republicans have had to come to the defence of Obama and big government, lest they be seen as soft on terror.
• Democrats have had to defend the War On Terror, because Obama can't afford another scandal.
• Europeans have fallen out of love with Obama, after seeing him come to the defence of the U.S. government's us-vs.-them attitude.
• People who are critical of government surveillance have been quick to throw Snowden himself under the bus upon seeing the public's largely negative reaction to his actions.

Really there have only been a couple of new things that came out of the leak:

• We're having the public rescission about surveillance, privacy and security that we should have had a decade ago.
• Privacy advocates are learning just how far they have to go in winning over the public.