Reading
A couple of books I've finished lately:
Inviting Disaster: Lessons from the Edge of Technology by James R. Chiles
This is a book about catastrophes, mostly technological, and some of the reasons they happen. It was originally published in 2001, but this edition has a new introduction that talks about the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. The author does a terrific job of describing the details of disasters like Three Mile Island, Apollo I, the Hubble Space Telescope, Chernobyl, the Texas City explosion and many others. It's not about 'who the bad guy is' as much as it's about how these things happen and why. It's sobering to realize that so many big disastrous moments had much of the information available, just waiting for someone to use it.
And it's vastly sobering to me to realize that while there are certain crises I'm very good at, in the something-goes-wrong-that-doesn't-seem-important-at-the-time category, I'd be so the person that ignored the warning signs or jury-rigged a temporary solution because a deadline was looming or something equally bad in retrospect.
The book sums up well in this paragraph:
Even the best-run systems always have something off-line or running out of tolerance, out there in the wilderness of high-pressure piping, wires, and cable trays. No force on earth can get everything to stay in balance all the time. To insist on perfection is to shut the whole thing off. And the people who run the systems wouldn't pay attention, anyway. As sailors say, this would be seen as another stupid order from "the beach," meaning from people who don't know how the machine works out in the theater of action and haven't the courage or will to master it.
There's no such thing as perfect safety and pretending that there is can get us in much deeper trouble than facing up to the issues at hand in the first place.
Chiles tells us that Admiral Rickover, who was responsible for developing, testing, and deploying the Navy's nuclear submarines, had seven principles for the safe operation of reactors and they apply pretty well to a lot of other things:
- Have a rising standard of quality as time goes on, well beyond the minimum required for licensing or permitting
- Have highly capable people trained for all conditions by people who've actually 'been there'
- Face bad news when it comes
- Have a healthy respect for the dangers
- Train constantly and rigorously
- All functions--repair, quality control, safety, and technical support--must fit together (and, like, you know, talk to each other)
- The organization must have the ability and willingness to learn from mistakes of the past.
Too bad we can't put him in charge of the 9/11 investigation.
Also read:
The Introvert's Advantage: How to Thrive in an Extrovert World by Marti Olsen Laney
I have always been the introvert's introvert. In fact, a few years ago, I realized that I am much smarter when I've been in a cabin by myself for a week, with limited contact with other people. In fact, toward the end of the week, I'm damned brilliant.
There's a science fiction short story (which I'm sure someone out there knows the title of) where an astronaut heading to Mars discovers that parasites have been sitting in his brain. They drop out when he leaves Earth's (atmosphere?, gravitataional pull?) and he's delighted and astounded at how easy it is to think with them gone, how clear everything seems. He's planning how to transform all of Earth by getting rid of these brain leaches when he enters the influence of Mars and discovers these parasites live on other planets too.
That's how I feel when I get time alone and how it feels when I come back--like I was brilliant for a little while, but can't be brilliant any more.
The Introvert Advantage talks about the 'why' of this, about the need for energy renewal that extroverts get from other people and introverts get from not-other-people. It also explains to me (finally) why I can't answer questions like, 'what's your favorite movie,' or 'name three things you like about Christmas.' There's not a lot that's totally new to me here, though I found the theories about different brain workings in extroverts and introverts very interesting.
Introverts need a lot of 'down time.' Laney says, "If you feel any of the sensations listed below, take time out to restore yourself."
- Anxious, agitated, irritable, and snappish
- Unable to think, concentrate, or make decisions
- Confused and discombobulated, as if you are dashing from thing to thing in a blur
- Trapped and wondering what is the meaning of life
- Drained, tired, put-upon, and pooped
- Disconnected from yourself
I say--Ha, ha, ha! Welcome to my life, baby!
Comments
You read the best bloody books. I am always impressed. Just wanted to say that.
I might pick up the introvert book. I'm a classic one. I activate a social simulacrum that I've developed to deal with situations like parties while the actual me stays safely inside. It's like an android exoskeleton. If I have to wear it for too long, I get mental. (When I read about Asperger's syndrome, I see a lot of similarities. Functional autistics teach themselves how to respond appropriately to social stimuli--how to *appear* to react the way other people seem to react from a genuine emotional response. Fascinates me, the way Asperger's people are often fascinated by Data on Next Gen.)
I took the Meyers-Briggs (sp?) personality thing years ago, when it was administered at a church vestry retreat by a vestrywoman who was a professional psychologist/profiler. What I learned there about how introverts draw energy from solitude and how extroverts draw energy from being with people was a revelation to me. I totally need that downtime, and I will never be quick on the uptake in social situations, no matter how well I develop that simulacrum.
I want to know more about the difficulty of answering those questions (three favorite things about Xmas, favorite book, etc.). In interviews, I have so much trouble summoning answers to things like "What's your favorite part of your book?" that I may start keeping index cards with some answers for quick reference. Sounds like that may be an introvert thing, too.
Posted by: TM(tm) | December 21, 2002 11:24 AM
Hey, TM, nice to see your comments here again! :-)
You should see the stack o'books I have that I never get to read. I buy them because they look fascinating, but I can't ever _get_ to them!
You should definitely look for this book. I think you'd like it.
Here are a couple of quotes that seem particularly appropriate:
Many introverts don't feel as if they know enough about a subject until they know almost everything...this happens for three reasons. First, introverts can imagine the vastness of any subject. Second, they have had the experience of their brain locking, so in an attempt to avoid that awful blank-mind moment, they overprepare by accruing as much information as they can. Third, since they often don't talk about what they are thinking, they receive no feedback to help them gain perspective about how much they already know.
And...
Introverts walk around wiht lots of thoughts and feelings in their heads. They are mulling--comparing old and new experiences. They often have an ongoing dialogue with themselves. Since this is such a familiar experience, they may not realize that other minds work in different ways. Some introverts aren't even aware that they think so much, or that they need time for ideas or solutions to "pop" into their heads. They need to reach back into long-term memory to locate information. This requires reflection time without pressure.
Posted by: debco | December 21, 2002 08:16 PM
(First post...)
Heh. I saw that book while browsing the shelves of the local book store today, and it immediately drew my attention, extreme introvert that I am; I'm now considering ordering it (it's cheaper online). I searched for the author's name on Google, and that brought me here. Heh.
So many of those situations described in the book and in your blog entry sound all too familiar to me.
Incidentally, many of my closest friends are introverts (I'm always glad to find someone who understands what I'm talking about!), and all of them encounter some difficulty when answering questions about their favorite (or, for that matter, least favorite) items in some particular category. Naturally, it's something with which I have a lot of trouble as well.
Posted by: codeman38 | December 21, 2002 08:54 PM
Glad you stopped by, codeman!
I've read some about introverts before, but the brain-lock/recall issue and the way-the-brain-works information in this book was new to me and very interesting.
The 'what's your favorite movie' issue (as in not being able to come up with one) has always fascinated me because other people make it seem so easy, like such a natural question and it always totally stymies me--even if I've just been having a conversation where I've said something like, [such and such] was one of my favorite movies. Coming up with that in context, in the middle of a conversation is easy, but if someone says, 'what are your top five all-time favorite movies'--Ack! Total brain lock.
Interestingly, many of my friends over the years have been extroverts, which is good for me or else I might never go out of the house. I've been curious what they get out of the friendship, but it's the things that are more natural to introverts than extroverts--the quiet and the contemplation (I know it's not my cooking or my housecleaning :-)
Posted by: debco | December 22, 2002 02:05 PM