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We all make mistakes, but it seems like rich folks really want to make mistakes to match their wallets. Three items in the news caught my eye yesterday that are pretty funny.
First the marketing genius new CEO of J C Penny decided last year he'd have the iconic, but fading stores scrap the sales that kept them in business lo these many decades and go with 'everyday low prices.' Results: the company's business was down over 20% over the holidays. I guess by next Christmas he won't have a job.
Then there's the billionaire who wants to send a woman and a man on a trip around Mars this decade. Land on Mars? Nope, just a sling shot ride around Mars and hopefully back. Scientific missions? He wasn't planning on it. Does he want to go? Nope, he says he isn't qualified. I don't know of anyone who would be qualified to keep fixing the ship, all the time, as he projected; keep the atmosphere system working for five years; obviously drinking recycled to the umpteenth power water; and eating god knows what. If he's thinking of growing a self-sustaining garden on the ship, we don't have the kind of agricultural technology to be sure it would work that long on nothing but recycled waste. How would you like to be one of the cozy couple? Five years in a cramped apartment with your better-be significant other. Takes hours to suit up to go out and with as no-place-to-go as it gets when you're out. Lot's of things that could break down and kill you slowly. It would be more like five years in a really scary prison than a joy ride. You know there would be people lining up to volunteer and fortunately, for their well being and sanity, almost all of them would not be picked.
Then there's the billionaire who's building a 'replica' of the Titanic. Hey, I get the attraction of having a really neat model, but 1:1 scale is kind of insane even for billionaires. How accurate a model will it be? Well, let's see, the whole idea is to get a ship that will sail. You probably can't get enough of the original kind of metal sheeting to make any exact copy, so you'd have to use something better, more pricey and significantly lighter. What that means is that there has to be significant redesign work or the ship will roll over and sink in the first good breeze. No doubt that's all been done already, so no worries (unless you're paying for it). Unless the billionaire is insane he's certainly chosen to replace the dirty, labor-intensive, hand-fired, coal-burning vertical boilers with either diesel engines or oil-fired steam turbines. (More redesign work for oil storage and the difference in mass and volume of the two fuels.) He'd be nuts to use the original water-tight flotation system even if he doesn't intend to run close to icebergs this time. (More redesign work). He's certainly going to have to comply with post Titanic disaster regulations about lifeboats. (It would be more redesigning, but the Titanic had sister ships that complied. Not original, but close enough.) So what is he going to do with his not-nearly-exact model? Have paying cruises. He does understand that the Titanic was built specifically to cross the North Atlantic, right? And that cruises these days are mostly about visiting cool ports in largely placid waters? Done by ships bristling with cabins with private balconies? He can probably find enough suckers to do two or three crossings each way. But then he's going to have to find something else to do with it. The original Titanic was going to make its real profit carrying mail (RMS = Royal Mail Ship). That ain't gonna happen now. Is he going to tie it up somewhere and sell tickets to tour the wonderfully inexact copy?
First the marketing genius new CEO of J C Penny decided last year he'd have the iconic, but fading stores scrap the sales that kept them in business lo these many decades and go with 'everyday low prices.' Results: the company's business was down over 20% over the holidays. I guess by next Christmas he won't have a job.
Then there's the billionaire who wants to send a woman and a man on a trip around Mars this decade. Land on Mars? Nope, just a sling shot ride around Mars and hopefully back. Scientific missions? He wasn't planning on it. Does he want to go? Nope, he says he isn't qualified. I don't know of anyone who would be qualified to keep fixing the ship, all the time, as he projected; keep the atmosphere system working for five years; obviously drinking recycled to the umpteenth power water; and eating god knows what. If he's thinking of growing a self-sustaining garden on the ship, we don't have the kind of agricultural technology to be sure it would work that long on nothing but recycled waste. How would you like to be one of the cozy couple? Five years in a cramped apartment with your better-be significant other. Takes hours to suit up to go out and with as no-place-to-go as it gets when you're out. Lot's of things that could break down and kill you slowly. It would be more like five years in a really scary prison than a joy ride. You know there would be people lining up to volunteer and fortunately, for their well being and sanity, almost all of them would not be picked.
Then there's the billionaire who's building a 'replica' of the Titanic. Hey, I get the attraction of having a really neat model, but 1:1 scale is kind of insane even for billionaires. How accurate a model will it be? Well, let's see, the whole idea is to get a ship that will sail. You probably can't get enough of the original kind of metal sheeting to make any exact copy, so you'd have to use something better, more pricey and significantly lighter. What that means is that there has to be significant redesign work or the ship will roll over and sink in the first good breeze. No doubt that's all been done already, so no worries (unless you're paying for it). Unless the billionaire is insane he's certainly chosen to replace the dirty, labor-intensive, hand-fired, coal-burning vertical boilers with either diesel engines or oil-fired steam turbines. (More redesign work for oil storage and the difference in mass and volume of the two fuels.) He'd be nuts to use the original water-tight flotation system even if he doesn't intend to run close to icebergs this time. (More redesign work). He's certainly going to have to comply with post Titanic disaster regulations about lifeboats. (It would be more redesigning, but the Titanic had sister ships that complied. Not original, but close enough.) So what is he going to do with his not-nearly-exact model? Have paying cruises. He does understand that the Titanic was built specifically to cross the North Atlantic, right? And that cruises these days are mostly about visiting cool ports in largely placid waters? Done by ships bristling with cabins with private balconies? He can probably find enough suckers to do two or three crossings each way. But then he's going to have to find something else to do with it. The original Titanic was going to make its real profit carrying mail (RMS = Royal Mail Ship). That ain't gonna happen now. Is he going to tie it up somewhere and sell tickets to tour the wonderfully inexact copy?