The Return

I've been dormant for a long time, but wanted to post a quick update. The previous post is a link to an article I've been meaning to share for some time, but just never quite got around to until now.

I've also revamped the "What I'm reading" widget to be more accurate. Now it just shows what's on my night stand. Which am I reading on any given night? Your guess is as good as mine.

I took a break from non-fiction for a while and polished off two good novels:

I'd seen the movie, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I hadn't really thought about reading the book though. Then the wife got a copy. So I decided to read it.

I wish I hadn't seen the movie. (Almost cliche:) The book is immensely better. Multiple points of view, particularly the 'fountain scene' at the beginning. Much more characterization. Very much enjoyed it. Just made the movie seem thin by comparison.

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This one I had some bittersweet feelings about reading. It's been on the shelf for a long time, but I've avoided it. You see, I just didn't want to face the fact that I was done with the series.

The book was as good as I'd hoped. I guess in the grand scheme of things, it even ends on what could be considered a final note. Captain Aubrey finally called back to duty to get the flag he so desperately desired.

It still left me wanting more though... I've used this series over the years to 'rest' from more serious reading. I started reading Master and Commander probably in about 1998. It took me about three tries to get through the first book. Then I was hooked. I generally seemed to read them in batches or two or three. You can look on our book shelf and see when we moved to England, because the series shifts from the U.S. edition to the U.K edition (buy the UK edition if you can. They have extra bits at the end: essays and such). The lovely wife even indulged me with three companion books.

It's a wonderful series (needless to say). I found I had to kind-of 'skim' the technical details of the sailing for a while. The companions helped, but after a while the terms just started to make sense. (Let me caveat that by saying 'they made sense academically. If you wanted me to point some of the things out on a actual ship...or use them... You'd be disappointed.)

If forced to pick one book as the best? It would be this one.

ValuJet 592

This is an old article, but a good one.

Think about it some time. Especially this part:

Administrators can think up impressive chains of command and control, and impose complex double checks and procedures on an operating system, and they can load the structure with redundancies, but on the receiving end there comes a point—in the privacy of a hangar or a cockpit—beyond which people rebel. These rebellions are now common throughout the airline business—and, indeed, throughout society.

It raises some interesting questions about the efficacy of safety systems, and our reactions to accidents/ mistakes by adding more requirements onto a system. As we add more safeguards and redundancies, the system becomes more opaque and the feedback loops less obvious.

It's interesting to look at some of our submarine forces accidents in this light. Does the very existence of multiple redundancies breed complacency? A thinking of: "I don't really need to check this, because some one else will catch any mistakes."