Monthly Archives: February 2013

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Guy Fieri Neglects to Register His Restaurant’s Domain Name; Hilarity Ensues

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In the January/February issue of Risk Management, I wrote about how celebrity chef Guy Fieri’s new Times Square restaurant, Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar, seemed to be finding a certain level of ironic success, despite being panned in a notoriously scathing New York Times review.

Well, yesterday the restaurant has made headlines once again – this time for a rookie marketing mistake that produced hysterical results. It seems that for some unknown reason Guy Fieri’s people never bothered to register the domain name guysamericankitchenandbar.com, instead opting for the shorter guysamerican.com. Their oversight did not go unnoticed, however, and an enterprising computer programmer named Bryan Mytko snapped up the longer domain and put up an amazing parody menu on the site that looks very much like the real thing, until you read about dishes like:

  • Honky-Tonky Double Barrel Meat Loaded Blast: A Sammy Hagar lookalike pushes your face into a leather bag filled with oil and if you eat the whole thing, you get to eat a 13 pound burger.
  • Reno!!!: Popcorn crusted popcorn chicken stuffed inside Guy’s Nuthin’ Fancy meatloaf and superbanged in a volcano of Tabasco butter We pour it into a Lucite heel, smother it with our own special jalapeno sugarbrew, and set it on your lap on a neon sign. Served drunk and on fire. Add a Cinnabon and two more Cinnabons 4.95
  • Football: The Meal: Warm, broken hamburgers, served in a clear plastic bag enclosed in a larger, black trash bag. Thrown at you from 40 yards.
  • Panamania!: Deep fried snake with a printed out picture of David Lee Roth stapled on it and a sparkler sticking out of each eye. Served with a side of Bud Light you have to wring out of a Hawaiian shirt.

There’s even a salad for the health-conscious:

  • The Olive Garden: 22 pounds of wine-stunned Kalamata olives tumbled over chopped iceberg lettuce and served in a trough, family-style. Ranch hose optional, but recommended.

As parodies go, the site is definitely more funny than malicious. But Mytko has already gotten blowback from the internet community when it was revealed that he stole most of the jokes from various people on Twitter. On top of that, I’m sure Guy Fieri’s legal team is taking note.

Of course, the greater lesson here should be obvious by now, but evidently it bears repeating: If you don’t take control of your image online, the internet will be more than happy to do it for you. And you may not like the results.

 

NFIP, TRIA and FIO: Points of Focus for House Financial Services Committee

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The House Financial Services Committee has released its oversight plan for the 113th Congress. This is a nonbinding plan that each standing committee must submit at the start of each new legislative session spelling out the committee’s agenda for the session.

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While much of the House Financial Services’ plan includes review of Dodd-Frank implementation and other banking related issues, it also includes three issues of importance to risk management: extension of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA), the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) and the Federal Insurance Office (FIO).

On TRIA:

“The Committee will examine the private sector’s capacity to assess and price for terrorism risk. The Committee may also consider proposals that would phase out the Terrorism Risk Insurance Program by encouraging private industry to develop dedicated capital for underwriting terrorism risks, and significantly reducing the potential Federal exposure and participation in terrorism insurance over time.”

TRIA is set to expire on December 31, 2014 with many in the industry, including RIMS, pushing for an extension of the program to 2019. The committee’s plan signals that the fight for an extension will not be an easy one.

On the NFIP:

“The Committee will monitor the implementation of the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012, paying particular attention to the reforms that encourage more private sector participation in the flood insurance market. The Committee will also review and consider further reforms to the National Flood Insurance Program with the goal of ending taxpayer bailouts of the program and transitioning to a private, innovative, competitive and sustainable flood insurance market. Since 2006, the GAO has designated the NFIP as a high-risk program because of its potential to incur billions on dollars in losses and because the program faces serious financial, structural, and managerial challenges.

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Due to extraordinary losses incurred following the hurricanes in 2005 and Superstorm Sandy in 2012, the program carries a debt of well over $20 billion as of January 1, 2013.”

The debate over the NFIP, which many assumed was settled in 2012, was renewed following the destruction caused by Superstorm Sandy. Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) has expressed his opposition to the NFIP in the past so it comes as no surprise that the committee plans to continually review the program’s viability and sustainability.

On the FIO:

The committee’s plan also scrutinized the FIO for missing deadlines on several reports to Congress related to the insurance industry. The FIO is being urged to release “these long overdue reports without further delay.” Two of the more anticipated reports include recommendations to modernize and improve the insurance regulatory system and a report on the global reinsurance market.

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Treasury Department Under Secretary for Domestic Finance Mary Miller recently testified before the Senate Banking Committee that the modernization report would be released soon and that the FIO will be releasing other reports in the coming months.

It’s going to be a busy legislative session.

Five Risks Threatening Airline Safety

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At this point, everybody knows that flying is safer than driving. Many Americans still have an emotional fear of the friendly skies, but the numbers don’t lie: more than 30,000 people die each year on the nation’s roads while just 153 perished in plane crashes in the past decade (2002-2011).

Still, just because the death total is low doesn’t mean that airlines and airports should become complacent.

An upcoming article in Risk Management magazine highlights how there were more accidents on the tarmac in 2012 than 2011, and Vernon Grose, a former Boeing employee and National Transportation Safety Board member, believes that the next plane crash might be the worst ever?

Why?

He has several reasons.

Looking forward, there are at least five serious issues affecting airline safety that must be systematically addressed for their inherent risk:

  • Larger Aircraft. The trend in new airliners is increased passenger capacity.  Whether airline safety is measured as fatal crashes per year, deaths per flight, or deaths per flight hour, there is another safety indicator of concern – deaths per crash. The Airbus A-380 with its full, two-deck economy configuration will seat up to 853 passengers. The deaths-per-crash could easily exceed 1,000 should it collide with any other typical airliner. Even if the A-380 experienced fire while on the ground, imagine emergency evacuation from two levels via slides for the elderly, infirmed and small children. The last fatal crash in the U.S. was Colgan Air Flight 3407 near Buffalo in February 2009 – wherein only 50 died.
  • World-wide financial crisis. The financial challenges of this decade have placed airlines in jeopardy, forcing many into bankruptcy or mergers. Four major U.S. airline mergers have recently occurred, creating considerable risk for airline safety. Not only are both passengers and employees losers in this trend, but airline attitude, motivation, and creativity atrophy. Example: airline pilots over-flying Minneapolis for over an hour in 2009 while focused exclusively on discussing their future after a merger.
  • Machines replacing humans. The transfer of aircraft piloting responsibility from humans to machines increases risk. Technological sophistication favors efficiency (e.g., fuel conservation) over judgmental involvement. Example: Air France 447 crash in 2009 due to pilot inability to comprehend automated but inadequate flight status.
  • Cyber-terrorism. The threat of cyber-terrorism is on the rise, and airline operations are vulnerable to potential disruption of networked infrastructure in communications, air traffic control, routing, and weather forecasting. All airborne airliners (1,000+ over the U.S. at any time) are in a 3-dimensional environment that depends on separation, guidance, and location information external to the aircraft.
  • Legalization of marijuana. The most commonly used illicit drug will increasingly impact pilot performance.  Effects of its use include distorted perception (sights, sounds, time, touch) as well as memory and loss of coordination.  In addition, marijuana use can produce anxiety, fear, distrust, or panic.  There are no accepted rules or means for detection as there are with alcohol consumption to govern pilot usage.

After reading this, maybe I will drive for my next vacation.

I’ve never been afraid of flying, but if cash-strapped airlines with glitchy and hackable computers are increasing going to be hiring weed-smoking pilots to fly jets carrying 800 people, maybe taking my chances on I-95 isn’t such a bad idea.

Meteorite Injures 950+ in Russia

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Just one day after we posted about an asteroid coming dangerously close (in NASA’s terms) to earth today, we awoke to news about a meteorite streaming through the sky over Russia’s Chelyabinsk region. So far, it is estimated that the shockwave has caused severe damage to property and just under 1,000 are reported injured, though that number continues to climb.

As NBC reports:

The meteor, which was reportedly 10 tons, cut a blazing ribbon across the horizon, leaving a long white trail in its wake that could be seen 125 miles (200 kilometers) away in Yekaterinburg. The Russian Academy of Sciences said in a statement that the space rock entered Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of at least 33,000 mph, according to the AP. Some authorities in Russia, however, have said that the event was a meteor shower, and not a single meteor.

The following amateur videos are, to say the least, shocking.

And the destruction was documented in an online photo album.

USA Today published an interesting Q&A on the topic, which may help clear up some misconceptions about meteorites.

This wasn’t Russia’s first encounter with a massive meteorite. On July 30, 1908, a devastating explosion occurred in the skies over Siberia with the strength 1,000 times that of the Hiroshima blast at the end of WWII. Today’s blast in Russia is now the second largest meteorite to hit earth. The 1908 event ranks as first.

A clip from the History Channel explains:

This is one random, black swan even that unfortunately cannot be prepared for. As Editor in Chief Morgan O’Rourke pointed out in a 2011 piece in Risk Management, “If a large space rock chooses to head our way there really isn’t much we can do about it, regardless of Bruce Willis’ formidable skill set.” Wired backs that up, stating, “All the advanced air defenses that humanity has invested in? The interceptor missile that are (sometimes) able to stop an adversary missile from impacting? The early-warning monitoring systems that are supposed to give humanity enough time to plan a response? They are useless, useless against a meteorite onslaught.”

No need for risk management here.