Thursday, March 29, 2012

Just Teaching the Controversy

Maintaining a commitment to Young Earth Creationism must be a lot of work...



Refuting their pseudoscience, not so much.

Thanks to Jerry Coyne at WhyEvolutionIsTrue for the links.

Respond to Terrorism

Not with fear but with indomitability...


So reads the conclusion of an excellent post by Bruce Schneier recapitulating his online debate with former TSA administrator Kip Hawley.  The Economist hosted the discussion at their website (interesting format).  It's worth your time.

Refuse the terror.

This Could Be Habit-Forming

I took took my new Dobsonian telescope for a spin around the early night sky...


This month, the last of my 53rd year, I spent some of my holiday gift money on something I've long thought about buying - a telescope.  The Bushnell ARES 5 inch Compact Truss Tube Dobsonian Telescope had many nice reviews for a starter scope and the price was very nice at OpticsPlanet.  Everything cheaper was smaller and had fewer features.  Everything more expensive was a lot more expensive.

I adjusted the collimation of the secondary and primary mirrors with a home made tool this evening and took it outside a little after sunset.  I used the moon as a target to zero the red dot finder scope (I ran out of adjustment; it'll need a shim).  The moon filled the eyepiece and the craters looked like I could reach out and touch them.  By then Venus was shining.  It is almost annoyingly bright and it was only quarter phase.  Then a pinprick of light appeared a fist width below it in the darkening sky.  Yes, it was Jupiter and its four Galilean moons.  I could make out bands of color.  I invited the folks to come have a look and then texted the kids and my sister-in-law, whose gift funded this neat purchase.  As Jupiter descended into the trees to the west Mars was rising above the trees to the east.  I reoriented my little Dobs and had a look at the small orange dot.  Not a bad start for my first night observing the sky in the light polluted suburbs.  This telescope will be a hoot at the cabin this summer.  Fun, fun, fun.


Wednesday, March 28, 2012

What Did You Learn?

Asks a peer at LinkedIn: "If you mentored a security professional in the last 12 months what did “YOU” learn?"


Among other things, I learned that:

Despite being a blogger and the possessor of an iPhone I'm a technological dinosaur.

Young people are smart in ways that are different from me and my fellow Boomers.

Young professionals are never unplugged, and they don't worry about it as much as I do.

That diversity is a opportunity to be leveraged, not a problem to be solved.

And I learned that, while I will inevitably lose the race to my younger and smarters, the only way I can hope even to remain connected with them is to continue to grow myself.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Increasing Violence or Increased Reporting?

Security Technology Executive tells us hospitals are experiencing an epidemic of workplace violence...


What does that mean?  As Marleah Blades assembled her wide-ranging article she interviewed a variety of well-known security practitioners in the hospital security field, Bonnie Michelman, David Gibbs, and Bryan Warren.  As is frequently the case, the underlying studies tell a more complete, interesting, and useful story than the article referring to them.

The Joint Commission

“The Joint Commission’s Sentinel Event Database, which tracks unexpected events resulting in death or serious injury, shows that 2011 had the second-highest reported rate of criminal events since the database’s inception in 1995.”

What is a “sentinel event?” According to The Joint Commission “A sentinel event is an unexpected occurrence involving death or serious physical or psychological injury, or the risk thereof. Serious injury specifically includes loss of limb or function. The phrase "or the risk thereof" includes any process variation for which a recurrence would carry a significant chance of a serious adverse outcome.”

What is the statistical significance of sentinel events? The Joint Commission cautions the its readers “The reporting of most sentinel events to The Joint Commission is voluntary and represents only a small proportion of actual events. Therefore, these data are not an epidemiologic data set and no conclusions should be drawn about the actual relative frequency of events or trends in events over time.”

The Joint Commission’s "Criminal Events" category is titled “Assault/Rape/Homicide.”  As the following Emergency Nurses Association study shows the term ‘assault’ may represent a wide variety of acts. Homicide is unambiguous. One would think the emotion-laden term “rape,” as commonly understood, would be used very carefully. In its Assault/Rape/Homicide category The Joint Commission tells us “Rape defined as un-consented sexual contact.”  The phrase “sexual assault” would seem to be a more accurate description of such behavior.

The Joint Commission recorded 49 Criminal Events in 2011, surpassing the previous high of 45 set in 2008. It has recorded 311 Criminal Events between 1995 and 2011.

Emergency Nurses Association (ENA)

“The Emergency Department Violence Surveillance Study released by the Emergency Nurses Association in Nov. 2011 found that of more than 6,500 emergency department nurses surveyed, 54.5 percent had experienced physical violence and/or verbal abuse at work at some point in the previous seven days.”

The "and/or" is very important to this story.  The details from that survey actually report slightly higher numbers. Of 6,543 nurses responding to the survey 12% had experienced physical violence in the past seven days. Of those nurses experiencing violence 62.2% encountered it more than once in the previous week. Of those nurses experiencing violence 13.4% suffered an injury. The most common act of physical violence was being grabbed/pulled (48.3%), slapped/punched (41.3%), spit on (35.8%), pushed/shoved/thrown (27.6%), or kicked (25.8%). The most common injury sustained by a nurse was bruise/contusion/blunt trauma (60.0%), abrasion/scratch (51.4%), sprain/strain/spasm (20.8%), and exposure to bodily fluids (20%).

In the previous seven days 53.7% were subjected to verbal abuse. Common forms of verbal abuse took the form of being sworn/cursed at (89%), yelled/shouted at (89%), called names (68.2%), threatened with legal action (51.8%), harassed with sexual language/innuendos (22.7%), and threatened with physical violence/weapons (19.8%).

Not quite half of ED nurses who responded to this survey (45.5%) experienced no violence in the previous seven days.

International Association For Healthcare Security & Safety (IAHSS)

“Workplace violence is part of an epidemic in healthcare now, and line staff — regardless of what unit they work in — must have at least a basic knowledge of how to recognize potential warning signs and how to react appropriately when an incident occurs.” – Bryan Warren, Senior Manager of Corporate Security at Carolinas Healthcare System and president of IAHSS.


We're told the IAHSS 2010 crime and security trends survey referred to in the article states "reported that in four categories — sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault — violent crime in hospitals increased by 200 percent from 2004-2009."  It's behind a membership wall (anyone out there have a copy they can share?) so we can't see their data, but there are some statistical clues we can draw from the very detailed analysis of the Emergency Nurses Association survey data.

In the Emergency Department the patient is the perpetrator of 97.8% of physical violence and 92.3% of the verbal abuse.

Events occur in the patient’s room 82% of the time.

The verbal abuse or violence occurs while triaging the patient (40.2%), restraining/subduing the patient (34.8%), or performing an invasive procedure on the patient (29.4%).

When the verbal abuse or violence occurred many patients were under the influence of alcohol (55.7%), under the influence of illicit/prescription drugs (46.8%), or a psychiatric patient (45.2%).

Perpetrators of physical violence were lucid 73.1% of the time (or not lucid a quarter of the time).

This is what the phrase "Workplace Violence" means in the health care setting.  Violence in hospitals is committed almost exclusively by patients, usually while receiving care in their rooms.  They are frequently intoxicated, medicated, or being treated for psychiatric disorders (they are not even lucid 26.9% of the time).  Much of the verbal abuse and/or violent behavior occurs while the patient is being assessed, while they are being restrained (already violent), or when they experience discomfort during an invasive procedure.  These risk factors have been well-understood by OSHA for some time now.  I submit these events have little to do with security hardware budgets; they have everything to do with the complex issues arising out of professional staff levels, working conditions, concerns about patients' rights, the number of psychiatric beds, and the cost of medical care.

Under-reporting of harassment, bullying, verbal threats, and simple assault by employees is a serious concern, so efforts to increase management awareness of these issues is important to those of us responsible for providing a positive and productive work environment.  For better or (mostly) worse the phrase "workplace violence" has become synonymous for workplace mass murder.  Using the phrase when you mean anything else, simply because everyone pricks up their ears when you say it, is unseemly and unprofessional.

We need to be careful with our data collection, interpretation, and communication.  When we survey populations we can expect those with negative experiences to respond more than those who are not troubled. When employee awareness and incident reporting program kicks in we can expect to hear from team members who never said anything about being uncomfortable or fearful at work before.  Increased reporting is not the same increased violence.

Sources:

Emergency Department Violence Surveillance Study, November 2011

Guidelines for Preventing Workplace Violence for Health Care & Social Service Workers

The Joint Commission - Sentinel Event

The Workplace Violence Epidemic

Summary Data of Sentinel Events Reviewed by The Joint Commission

Sentinel Event Data Event Type by Year 1995-2011, pg. 7.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Like Jelly Bean Recipes

Sometimes challenging podcasts are best consumed in unlikely little handfuls...


I got a little depressed the other day listening to Jeffrey Sachs LSE talk titled The Price of Civilization.  Bitter, but worth it.

Then I had a helping of About Time, which partly lifted the weight of Sachs' gloomy analysis.  Hmmn, better.

I added a Lean Start Up talk by Eric Ries for a taste of creative destruction and reflective leadership, which mixed with About Time to create a sense that there are many smart people with good ideas that can help us dig our way out of our current troubles.  Hopefully spicy.

Topping it all off with The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalised, by Owen Flanagan left me feeling balanced and sufficiently suffonsified.  A smooth finish.

They don't look like they'd go good together, but they become something special once you start chewing.  Try it, you might like it.  Better yet, share your creative learning recipes with the Eclectic Breakfast. 

Seriously, someone make grass, dirt, and soap flavored jellybeans?  Yes, apparently they do...blech!

Image credit: Michelle Hume






Like a Mere Orange Peel on a Giant Orange of Metal

Mercury is a giant ball of iron...


The Messenger robot explorer has been orbiting the planet Mercury for a year now.  The innermost planet in our solar system looks a little like our moon on the outside, but looks are deceiving.  Under its thin crust Mercury is mostly iron.  Like most of my interest in astronomy, this doesn't affect day to day life here on planet Earth very much I suppose, but understanding the cosmos and our place in it is always a good thing.  That, and having a reserve of nerdy cocktail party trivia worthy of Cliff Claven can come in handy from time to time (or so I'm told).   

Image credit: Case Western University by way of Discover Magazine

From Your Lips To God's Ears

The business of security has shifted from protecting companies from risks, to being the new source of competitive advantage . . .


Phil Wood is the head of Security Studies at Buckinghamshire New University and a prolific blogger at bucks new uni security.  He reminded us of an excellent paper by Rachel Briggs and
Charlie Edwards published in 2006 by Demos titled The Business of Resilience: Corporate Security for the 21st Century.  If you want to participate in a paradigm shift that is badly needed in the security industry read this paper in detail. 



Thursday, March 22, 2012

The Price of Civilization

Economics and ethics after the fall...


Marvelously challenging and more than a little depressing podcast (or video if you prefer) of a lecture presented by Professor Jeffrey Sachs at the LSE in December 2011 (I'm catching up on my podcasts steadily but slowly).  Sobering stuff, but what choice have we got?

UPDATE: Another interesting LSE lecture (a panel talk actually) titled, About Time, examines some of our social and economic assumptions about the length of the work week in western nations.  It feels a little like a counterpoint to Sachs' talk and is a little less dire.  This one was recorded in January of this year.

Photo credit: http://theenvironmentshow.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-sachs-sustainable-economist.jpg%20

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Proto Scouts

In the late 19th and during the first half of the 20th centuries some ambitious military armorers did some interesting work making their standard bolt action fighting rifle a more handy implement...


The M1894 Swede was another handy fighting carbine that fails to make scout weight.  Not that the Swedes were much for fighting during the service life of this handy little rifle.


At the close of the 19th century some of the US Krag carbines (1896, 1898, and 1899) missed what some regard as the maximum standard 3.5 kg mark by fractions of ounces. 


Another interesting case was the Springfield 1903 Bushmaster Carbine created when the Oklahoma National Guard bobbed the barrels and furniture of their 1903 rifles while stationed in Panama during WWII.  The wood was cut back and the barrels shortened to 18 inches.  4,725 were so modified, but no good deed goes unpunished.  In 1945 all of them were recalled to the armory, stripped of reusable parts, and what remained dumped into the ocean.


The Enfield No.5 Jungle Carbine was called out by name in the Colonel Cooper's musings on the scout rifle concept.  Unlike the Bushmaster or the Swede, the No.5 almost "made weight" at 3.1 kg unloaded, and that with plenty of steel where a fella might to choose to remove it these days.  It was also the most numerous of such full-power fighting carbines, with some 250,000 manufactured until production was ended in 1947.


After having made the M1 Garand needlessly large and overweight - by insisting it be produced as a 30'06 rather than the 276 Pedersen for which it was developed - the US War Department experimented with a shorter version, the T26.  Too little, too late.  It came to naught.


I'm not sure the Spanish FR8 is properly considered a proto scout.  The FR8 and the FR7 - same idea but built on the 1916 small ring action - served as trainers for the Spanish military until they had enough CETME selfloading rifles (HK91 precursors) to go around.  They were not built to be lightweight fighting carbines like some of the other proto scouts, but they were shorter and lighter than the full length predecessor from which they were assembled.  Those I've seen were rougher than a cob and the rear sight looked like a "C Minus" middle school shop project.  They were made into the 1950s.

But for these examples, it seems that most armies of the world forget the value of handiness in the century between the American Civil War and the Second World War, but Colonel Cooper noticed, and added their merits to his scout rifle concept.

Monday, March 19, 2012

Did You Choose To Read This Post?

Experts disagree...


The Chronicle of Higher Education has posted a neat little collection of essays regarding the concept of free will.  Read them, or don't.  It's your decision.

UPDATE: Here's an interesting analysis of five of the papers, written by the author of the sixth.

Image credit: René Descartes' illustration of dualism courtesy of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism_(philosophy_of_mind)

Friday, March 16, 2012

The Birds, and Zombies, and Monsters

Oh, my!


Cassie and I went to see The Birds at the Guthrie's Dowling Studio Wednesday evening this week.  Based on Daphne du Maurier's short story of the same name, not Hitchcock's 1963 masterpiece, this play by Conor McPherson departs from both in significant and important ways.  It evokes the claustrophobic "survivors stuck in a stranger's house" trope fleshed out by George Romero in the years since du Maurier and Hitchcock.  It could have been angry birds, killer bees, zombies, or alien invaders outside; the effect of being confined in the house peels the veneer off the terrorized inhabitants all the same.  In time one begins to wonder whether the real monsters are outside the house or hiding inside it.  It's not perfect - it sags from time to time in its intermission-less 95 minutes - but it has its moments, and live theater is always its own sort of special treat.  This production of The Birds even comes with a study guide.  Public rush seating costs $20 Sunday through Thursday evenings and all matinees, and $25 Friday and Saturday evenings.  This will save you $9-14 per ticket.  The Dowling Studio is general admission so show up early and choose a seat that's exactly as good as that secured with full price ticket.  It runs through April 8.

The Walking Dead season finale is this Sunday (already, what is it with these 13 episode cable TV "seasons" with their halfway hiatus anyway?).  I have mixed feelings about the series, but it's the only fresh zombie show in town.  It seems mostly a parable about how difficult it is to protect your family and maintain a sense of community when the chips are down.

Even the spiritually minded Krista Tippett dipped into the genre in a 1 December 2011 On Being episode titled Monsters We Love.  Not her best or most focused work.  It was frustrating to listen to the usually divine Ms. Tippett and her guest, Diane Winston, discussing shows one or the other had not seen.  That, and they got all gaga about vampires, the monster female victims most hope to encounter.

Why do we love apocalypses?  Why are we fascinated with disastrous turns of nature?  What is the attraction of once human monster who now lack personality and volition but present a deadly threat to the living?  Why do we watch - or choose not to watch - Doomsday Preppers or Hoarding: Buried Alive?

Some possible answers have been offered over the years.  Are we embracing the unifying effect of fear, regardless the sort of horror entertainment we're watching?  Indulging our fear of the Other?  Fretting over a fear of loss of control (although that's usually more of a shape shifting werewolf's concern)?  Do our psyches seek release after bearing the numbing weight of terror, war, and recession for more than a decade?  Are we rehearsing our responses to fear and uncertainty?  Or are we engaged in a survivalist revenge fantasy, in which all our frustrations with family, friends, and neighbors can be solved with a head shot, like some real world "first person shooter" video game?  Don't look too close unless you really want to know the answer.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Why Are There More Security Issues With Each Passing Day?

Asks a LinkedIn peer who lives and works in Pakistan...


I won't presume to speak to the realities on the ground in Pakistan, but here in the States I wonder sometimes whether there really are more security problems, or are we simply being told about issues we were never told of before?

The voracious 24 hour news cycle and the explosion of social media present stories – large, small, and obscure - to us with such urgency that it's easy to imagine things are worse.


I find that not watching news programming commercial television or listening to commercial radio drive time talk shows helps a lot.


When we look at the Google news aggregator there may be thousands of reports on a single topic but almost of them are based on the same wire service story.


When selecting the form and quantity of social media to consume we should be careful not to choose sources and communities with which we always agree.


Otherwise we risk being led into an echo chamber where group think and confirmation bias reinforce our human tendency toward cultural cognition of risk which create a sense of dread that is deeper than the facts call for.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Specialization Is For Insects

To borrow a phrase from Robert A. Heinlein, I try not focus too narrowly on any given topic; it's the surprises that are most interesting...



For those of you who do not have access to my LinkedIn "Reading List by Amazon," here are some of my non-fiction shooting, hunting, fighting, and warfare favorites:

1776 by David McCullough

A History of Warfare by John Keegan

A Rifleman Went To War

Archaeological Perspectives on the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Douglas D. Scott, Richard A. Fox Jr., Melissa A. Connor, Dick Harmon
Cooper on handguns by Jeff Cooper 

1754-1766 by Fred Anderson

Dispatches by Michael Herr

Herodotus: The Histories by Herodotus *

Hiroshima by John Hersey
Hit Or Myth by Louis Awerbuck

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell


Horned Death by John Burger

Instinctive Shooting by G. Fred Asbell

Kursk: The Clash of Armour by Geoffrey Jukes


Rifles For Africa by Gregor Woods

Roman Warfare by Adrian Goldsworthy

Safari Rifles by Craig Boddington

Sharpshooting For Sport And War by William Wellington Greener

Shots at Big Game by Craig Boddington


Stalking & Still-Hunting by G. Fred Asbell

Street Smart Gun Book by John Farnam

That Every Man Be Armed by Stephen P. Halbrook

The AK47 Story by Edward Clinton Ezell

The Art of the Rifle by Jeff Cooper

The Rifle in America by Philip B. Sharpe

Up North (Outdoor Essays & Reflections) by Sam Cook

Use Enough Gun by Robert Ruark

With British Snipers to the Reich by Capt. C. Shore 

* Okay, Herodotus was pretty fanciful, less so than Homer - who was clearly a storyteller without pretense, but not nearly so careful as Thucydides - the West's first serious historian.

UPDATE: As of late March 2012 I have discovered Goodreads and have moved many of my reading details here http://www.goodreads.com/michael_brady

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Leadership Books I've Found Useful

A recent LinkedIn thread asked for recommended leadership and team-building books.  These were my mine..


Business Ethics: Ethical Decision Making and Cases by O. C. Ferrell, John Fraedrich, Ferrell

Cigars, Whiskey & Winning: Leadership Lessons from Ulysses S. Grant by Al Kaltman

Coaching, Second Edition: Evoking Excellence in Others by James Flaherty

Creativity is Forever by Gary Davis

Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within (US Business & Management Series) by Robert E. Quinn

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

Lead by Example: 50 Ways Great Leaders Inspire Results by John Baldoni

Making Sense of Leadership: Exploring the Five Key Roles Used by Effective Leaders by Esther Cameron, Mike Green

Moral Intelligence: Enhancing Business Performance and Leadership Success by Doug Lennick, Fred Kiel

On Leadership: Essential Principles for Success by Donald J. Palmisano

Opposable Mind: Winning Through Integrative Thinking by Roger L. Martin

Shackleton's Way: Leadership Lessons from the Great Antarctic Explorer by Margot Morrell, Stephanie Capparell, Alexandra Shackleton

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu, Gia-Fu Feng, Jane English, Jacob Needleman

Technology in America - 2nd Edition: A History of Individuals and Ideas by Carroll W. Pursell

The Art of War by Sun Tzu - Classic Collector's Edition: Includes The Classic Giles and Full Length Translations

The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels by Michael Watkins

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable (J-B Lencioni Series) by Patrick Lencioni

The Leader of the Future 2: Visions, Strategies, and Practices for the New Era (J-B Leader to Leader Institute/PF Drucker Foundation) by Frances Hesselbein, Marshall Goldsmith

The Leader's Edge: Six Creative Competencies for Navigating Complex Challenges by Charles J. Palus, David M. Horth

The Lost Art of War: Recently Discovered Companion to the Bestselling The Art of War by Sun-Tzu