Linkfest

I’m couped up studying for actuarial exams all week (OK, OK – I’ve also played squash for 8 straight), so this post takes the form of a midnight link-fest.  

XC Classic Sprint World Cup 

XC Skate Relay World Cup finish – Petter Northug (not kidding- actually his name)

Jonathan Power – Canadian squash legend

I don’t know how to link to it, but anyone who’s spent time in both Canada and the United States should listen to

Stuart McLean  and The Vinyl Cafe, July 5, 2008.  It’s a podcast, free on iTunes.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/shitload_of_math_due_monday.  I’m not personally blaming the profs, but…

It’s on the link bar, but if you haven’t ever visited Intrade, you should.

Mickey Kaus, of Slate, is a relentless critic of the unions and the US automotive industry, and an entertaining read.

And I’d like to pass along a few words of wisdom from my fellow bloggers, John and Connor….

“when resources are limited, you don’t want to spend them properly”

“So, it is pretty good here … I wouldn’t come back or recommend it”

Same old, same old

Not much news to report.

School continues to go well, but might be a little harder than previously.  My ‘life contigiencies’ course has a language of symbols all its own that was difficult to learn.   Calc 4 is a breeze.  Corporate finance, probability, and econ 4 are interesting and in between.  

All of my current coursework seems to be reliant on a lot of simplifying assumptions, which don’t seem particularly plausible to me.  It makes for straight-forward, clean problem-solving, but skips the really interesting stuff – all the ways to make money.   Assuming an efficient equities market means that there are no arbitrage opportunities, assuming equal borrowing / lending rates means banks are non-profits (they wish right now!), assuming constant marginal cost means there are no economies of scale, etc, etc….  I am being taught conventional wisdom.

Anyway…

I skied a lot over the Christmas break – I even raced against some National Teamers (don’t ask) – but it’s been either too cold or too warm since.   So mostly I’ve been playing squash.   I played in a university tournament a few weeks ago and did OK (3-2).  I also went downtown to watch a pro tournament.  As with anyything, the best guys are very impressive.  I’m getting better.  There are a few real ringers at the university who could very easily kick my ass.  I think I can compete with almost anyone else.   Look out Ricky and Brad!  

I am going to take the SOA P exam in March and the FM in May and will have to devote a significant amount of time to studying for these to be adequately prepared.  Until I’ve done these – and this will be my first chance – there don’t seem to be any real opportunities to work…  I am pondering other summer options.  I could keep plugging away at school, but would then probably have to go into debt – though minor – to finish.   Or I could try to coach.  Or I could find some other work.  I don’t know.   In the end, I will only be happy making progress down a particular path.  I don’t like any of the other options.   Or rather, I do like the other options but think they are distracting.

School is out = time to ski

I am finished with school for the fall.  I think my finals went well, but I await grades for confirmation.  I enjoyed it and learned a lot, and I’m already ready for more.  I have two Ac sci, a statistics, a calculus, and a economics class on tap.

In the meantime, I’ve finally had time to get back outside.  I intended to drive to Chilliwack on Wednesday to run a kayak camp with Ben, but it’s too cold for that, so we went skiing instead…

 Mike Holroyd organized a winter training camp for his minions in Canmore and we joined in.  We stayed at the Alpine Club of Canada.  I highly recommend it.  By paddler standards, it’s 4-star – a big kitchen, gear-drying area, hot showers, a sauna, and a nice common area to play Settlers in.  (That’s all worth 5-stars, but -1 star for having to share space with smelly climbers).   We knocked off a bunch of good workouts too.  It’s -30 C out, so you HAVE TO work hard or you’ll freeze.   Excellent motivation. 

The kids cooked up a feast and then I destroyed them at Settlers and Risk every night.  6 wins in 6 games.  I had to ‘totally screw over’ (his words) Ben in several games to do it.  He might never forgive me, but it was ‘totally worth it’ (my words).  And I once again debunked the myth of the perpetual-motion machine for both Ben and Geoff Hayward – a harder task than you might imagine. 

Mike Shaw took us into the Rat’s Nest – a 5 km. cave system outside Canmore.  Mike, Ben, Jess, and myself climbed up the ‘Laundry Chute’, a tiny, steep tunnel about 20 m. long.  The rest of the group walked around and met us on the other side.  Then everyone went down the Laundry Chute.  I went first, leading the way for Hailey.  About half-way, the tunnel is divided by a rock in the middle.  I couldn’t remember which way I had come up, and chose to go down the right.  Bad decision.  I got stuck, feet dangling out one end, arms fully extended out the other.  Hailey stopped and for a brief panicky moment, I thought she might have to try to pull me back up.  But I eventually wiggled through.   Everyone else smartly went left.   Otherwise, it was really cool and not at all scary. 

Some pics –

One mean sheep.  He chased us out of the parking lot, then proceeded to lick our car tires.

Descending into the cave

 

 

They’re teaching shoveling technique on the weather channel.  And it’s -33. 

Canmore Nordic Center – perfect grooming and still no glide!  Aaarrghhh.

Over the last week, I have re-discovered the scarf.  It saved my face.

Ski time!

Confederation Park is open for business.  

We got a few inches of snow on Monday.  The XC ski clubs went into action and groomed a 1 km. trail at Confederation Park in short order.  Mike, Graham, Haley, Marissa, and I took advantage on Thursday night.  Mike and Paul and I again today. 

The last time I skied was in February.  Ricky and I headed to Manning for the day, only to find the trails covered in a foot of new snow.  We tried to skate for a while, but it wasn’t going to work.  So, we went back to the lodge, rewaxed for classic, and headed back out. 

Unfortunately, I left the clister on my skis until this week and  it made for slow going on Thursday. 

But, problem solved today.  I built a new wax bench downstairs.  Check it out.

Worth saving? Really?

 Executives from GM, Chrysler, and Ford are getting grilled, as they should, by the finance and banking committees of the House and Senate this week, as they plead for a bail-out.

I have a few questions for them myself, albeit almost completely rhetorical:

 

Please describe what constitutes an American automaker and how that’s so different from a foreign automaker.

 

As far as I’m concerned, there isn’t such a thing as a foreign or domestic automaker anymore.

 

Almost every automaker participates in the American market. They build cars in America. They hire Americans to build those cars. They use American parts. They pay American taxes. Their publicly-traded shares can be purchased by anyone in the world. At least some of those shares are American-owned.

 

What does the financial crisis have to do with anything?

 

The American automakers have been struggling for the last 15 years. They build inferior cars that fall apart too fast and use too much energy. They’re behind in developing new, better products. They are poorly-structured. They have tremendous employee costs.

 

And they require massive amounts of capital to operate. GM needs $11 BILLION on-hand. If they put that in a savings account earning 3% interest, they would earn $330 million dollars every year. They haven’t done since 2004!

 

They planned (and especially turn-around planned) for good times, with near-unlimited amounts of cheap capital, low input prices, low fuel prices, and a booming economy. Oops! We don’t have any of those things anymore! But they are not victims of circumstance, they are poor planners.

 

Do we really need your cars? If you do keep building them, who are you going to sell them to?

 

In September, total US auto sales were 956,160, down 27.3% or 359,242 from the same period last year. GM sold 282,000; Ford 116,000; Chrysler 107,000. October was worse still.

 

Based on these figures, foreign automakers have 185,000 vehicles of monthly excess capacity (previous production – current sales), assuming they could currently produce as much as they did last year.

 

They almost are. The automakers are individually and collectively building way more vehicles than they can sell. They’re building up substantial inventories, which is unsustainable. In the event that they all survive, they’re all going scale down operations eventually.

 

However, if both Ford and Chrysler ceased to exist tomorrow, the foreign manufacturers would only need to increase production by 20% to meet the demand surplus, and not at all if GM also contributed. And they would have substantial time to do it as dealers wound down current inventory.

 

It’s harder for the rest of the industry to pick up the slack if GM fails, but, in reality, it’s very unlikely any of the automakers would fail completely. It’s far more likely that they would continue to run at a reduced capacity and / or would sell productive assets to other manufacturers (who would then use them) in a bankruptcy.

 

So, the next question is:

 

What is the best way for the industry to scale down?

 

It’s going to be painful for someone somewhere regardless of how it’s done.

 

The American automakers are, of course, arguing that everyone should take a big hit rather than take a catastrophic hit themselves. That’s basically socialism for business. Far more efficient and better in the long-run is to allow the free market to rein, letting strong competitors survive and weak ones parish.

 

The market approach will disproportionally hurt UAW workers and the states of Michigan and Ohio. However, it will help the South, where the foreign manufacturers are operating.

 

Consider it a reward for good behavior.

 

Whose side are you on, Ron Gettelfinger?

 

I don’t think even Ayn Rand could come up with a better name for the president of the United Auto Workers.

 

Over the last 30 years, the UAW has squeaked every bit of life from GM, Ford, and Chrysler possible. Employees have received consistently higher pay, better benefits, and more job security over time despite ever – worsening performance of the companies they work for.

 

Chrysler’s long-term pension and health-care benefit obligations are so extensive that the company has negative book value. In 2007, Mercedes’ parent Daimler PAID private-equity firm Cerberus about 650 million dollars to take Chrysler off their hands, only 9 years after they paid 37 billion dollars for it.

 

GM currently runs with an operating loss of more than 1 billion dollars per month, with much higher accounting losses (related to so-called ‘one-time’ expenses, like restructuring, which they’ve actually been doing continuously) recently.

 

It’s clear his priority is not to bring these companies back to, or keep them in, financial health. Rather, I think the UAW is mostly worried about making sure their workers get paid – regardless of whether there is work to do or whether they do a good job – and the government looks to have deeper pockets than the auto makers do.

 

It isn’t usually prudent to postpone the inevitable. That’s why the government should fix Medicare and Social Security now, even though they won’t run out of money for 20 years. It’s also why they should not keep the automakers in business (if that’s what you want to call what they do) so they can delay bankruptcy for 2 or 3 more years.

 

There’s a reason they can’t raise money privately.  Investment in GM, Ford, and Chrysler is a bad idea.  If no one is willing to do it, I can’t see why everyone (the taxpayer) should.

My little angle, Theta

Ahhhh!  She’s so acute.

Also, Benoit Peschier is going to race for Greece.  And the ICF approved some rule changes, outlined at http://www.ottawariverrunners.com/detail.php?id_sub=23

xoxo gg

Last Chance Half-marathon + happy birthday to me!

I ran the Last Chance Half Marathon in Calgary this morning and beat my time goal of 1:30.  I went 1:28:34 and ended up 12th overall (of 488).

I’ve been reading some running analysis on http://www.sportsscientists.com/.  Running a ‘negative-split’ race is very difficult  – if you want a fast time, you’re better off to start fast (but not too fast) than to try to finish fast.  So, I started out at a good clip – 20:15 for the first 5K – then tried to settle into a rhythm.  By that point, the herd had mostly sorted itself out.  I was running with another guy and pacing off him, with my sights set on another guy about 200 m. ahead.  It stayed that way through 10K, run in about 41 minutes.  Over the next few km, I dropped the guy I was running with and caught the one in front.  At 15K, about 1:02 in and feeling pretty comfortable, I knew I could put in a good time.  At about 17K, my left calve started to bother me and I had to ease off just a little for a minute or two to stop it from cramping.  I got past by the same guy I’d run most of the race with.  He was surging and I didn’t have it to stay with him.  But we were closing in to the finish and he spurred me on.  I stayed in contact to the line. 

Full results at http://www.winningtime.ca/08/08lastchance/oall.txt

Earlier in the week, snow was forecast for Saturday night and this morning.  But the weather was perfect – about 7 or 8 C at the start and more than 10 by the finish with very little wind. 

Great day.

Yesterday, I turned 29.  You can save all your old man jokes for another year.  I’ve been making plenty myself.

News and notes, week of Oct. 27

School is going well.  I have one more mid-term on Wednesday, but I’m past the crux.  I had 3 big tests over 5 days a week ago, and I aced them all – 97, 100, and 100%.  Aarrghhh…. oh-so-close to perfect!

I also managed to win the flatwater race this week.  It was my first paddle in 10 days and, suprisingly, I felt pretty good.  Last time, I didn’t do a clean run until I didn’t have any heat left and Connor took it.  This time, our roles were reversed.  I was reasonably clean and solid throughout, Connor not so much.  I should get one more race in before it starts to snow for real this year.

Check out this video of wakeboarding at Tacen –

And this picture of a nasty head-on collision in the states.  Make sure to tie your boats on tight…

Also, I’ve devised a fun game to play at the university called Red Rover.  The university version of Red Rover goes like this –

Find a couple in the halls.  It’s best if they’re holding hands, but I suppose any PDA will do.  Someone in front of the couple yells “Red Rover, red rover, I call <insert name here> over” to someone behind the couple.  The person walking behind must then ‘break the chain’, running between the couple.

Who wants to play?

Boom goes the dynamite

From John Hastings –

“When is it okay for an amateur athlete to enjoy the fruits of their labour? More specifically, when is it okay for an amateur athlete to spend their money on things other then training or racing?

This question was derived earlier today from a conversation I had with a supporter of amateur athletes. This individual was expressing their frustration with respect to how amateur athletes sell this image of being ‘starving’ or desperate for money when in reality, they are doing okay…well, good enough to afford various luxuries.

As amateur athletes, we stand united. Our job is to do our sport. Just like a professional athletes, amateur athletes are paid by their ‘fans’. In Canada, the definition of ‘fan’ is very broad as it includes various parties and individuals such as the Government, corporations, and you. The Government, via Sport Canada and the National Sport Organizations, set requirements for us athletes to attain in order to receive their funding/support.   Corporations will only provide money if we produce (or are going to produce) gold medals and are marketable. And finally, you, the fan, will only provide money if you feel we need/deserve it, or you just want to show your support.   Since the Government and Corporations demand performance, to continue to receive funding through these sources, we must perform.   As a fan, you are in complete control with respect to how you spend your money, or give it to for that matter. Therefore, I believe we athletes have carte-blanche as to how we spend it….we can be as responsible or irresponsible as we want. As long we satisfy the stakeholders, no one can really complain! As far as misleading the stakeholders  in believing we are in dire need (as this certain individual pointed out), well, we have all seen what happens to corporations who mislead their shareholders! Cough, cough – Andy Fastow.

So in my opinion, which is what I replied to this individual, if we have the money and we are meeting expectations, well, let us live as frivolous as we want. We are humans too and deserve to enjoy what this world offers.

Boom! Goes the dynamite.”

I could lament that this in not the PR message any CKC employee should be broadcasting, but I’d rather use my time to pick on two other things about John’s diatribe I find aggregious.

Part 1

First, a little history lesson –

Andy Fastow was the CFO of Enron Corp., a big US energy company that cooked their books, defrauding their shareholders into thinking they were making lots of money, when, in fact, they were losing it all.  Enron went bankrupt and Fastow went to jail.

That’s not so different from what Whitewater Canada is doing.

No honest assessment of our sport in Canada in general, or our high performance programs in particular, would find it successful: 

I am estimating, but I would say there are only 300 people in  Canada who own slalom boats, only 150 of those who are acitvely participating in the sport, only 20 of those who are competitive nationally, and only one of those who is competitive internationally, and he’s getting kind of old for this stuff.

I can think of only a few athletes who have made significant progress towards becoming competitive internationally in the last 5 years, and most of them have done so primarily outside the WWC high performance program.  No one in Canada has ‘made it’. 

In the 1990s, Canada had a few who did get there, but they are no more than a distant memory from another era now.  Since, other countries stepped it up, while WWC rested on its laurels and got left behind.

But that’s not what WWC tells  Sport Canada.  

They told Sport Canada in 2002 that we could get a medal and 2 top-5s at the Athens Olympics.  They told them in 2004 that we could get two medals at the Beijing Olympics.  They told them this fall that our underperforming athletes were not underperforming at all –  they’re the best they’ve ever been! 

WWC likes to plead naive or delusional when these claims don’t pan out, but I don’t think that’s the case.  More like dishonest and self-serving.   WWC is cooking the books.

Case in  point –

When I was coaching for the National Team in 2006, the Canadian Sport Review Panel, via WWC, asked me to submit an assessment of the National Team program – how we were doing, what we were doing well and poorly, what we needed to be more successful, etc…  I did, but my assessment didn’t make it back to the CSRP intact.  First, it was picked apart by a certain athlete because it didn’t lend itself to his agenda.  Then, it was picked apart by the WWC slalom director because it didn’t lend itself to his agenda.  Neither contended that I was wrong, only that what I thought wasn’t in their best interests.  Their agendas were mutually exclusive, of course, and neither party could be satisfied by any assessment, much less my honest one.

Instead of trying to defend themselves and their positions , WWC ought to place a lot more emphasis on improving their program, so that it is more legitimately defensible.  If not, they will eventually go the way of Andy Fastow.  I don’t think anyone is going to jail in this case, but it’s certainly possible for the sport to lose part, or all, of its funding.   Lately, I’ve heard rumors that we’ll be cut from 10 cards to 2 or 3 in the next cycle.

In today’s business jargon, credit to WWC is freezing up.  There’s too much counter-party risk.

Part 2

Sport Canada support for athletes does not come in the form of a salary.   It’s more like a social program. 

And, in my opinion, that’s the way it should be.   There is no place for government in funding professional sports.  Just like professional anything-elses, professional athletes just don’t need the government’s help.  They earn salaries according to their utility to others.   

Amateur sports, on the other hand,  provide only very limited utility to others directly.  For this reason, they need government help to survive.  And the government gives it because we attach broader, cultural significance to amateur sports (just like French and art, among other things).  But that help should (and does) come with strings attached, namely that since the public funds the program, the funds the program uses should benefit the public. 

So government funding for sport should go towards, go figure, training and racing.  Sorry John, but it’s not in the public’s interest for you to buy a new ipod or any other ‘luxury’.   They just don’t have any broad cultural significance to the Canadian public.  You’re welcome to buy and do whatever you want with any funds earned in the marketplace – it’s a free market, after all – but a  marketplace amateur sport is not.