XPost: rec.arts.comics.strips
From: psperson@old.netcom.invalid
On Mon, 17 Nov 2025 17:37:30 -0500 (EST), kludge@panix.com (Scott
Dorsey) wrote:
>Paul S Person wrote:
>>On Sun, 16 Nov 2025 22:43:07 -0800, Bobbie Sellers
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> All nuclear fission reactors should be under military discipline with =
>>the
>>>technicians and operators fully trained and subject to frequent reviews.
>>
>>Unless they are actually /in/ the military, then the civilian
>>supervisors/managers/executvies/board members will have to be treated
>>the same way.
>>
>>It's not the techs and the ops that are the real danger. It's the
>>idiots-in-charge.
>
>It's also a matter of plants being designed by civil engineers who think
>about failure in a very different way than say, aircraft control system
>engineers.
>
>Every post-1970 nuclear accident can be pretty easily tracked down to one
>big stupid management decision somewhere. Systems should be designed so
>that it takes more than one bad decision to cause a failure, and this is
>a hard thing to do.
Back around 1982, some of my colleagues in the Army came up with the
"SPA theory". An "SPA" is a "Strategically Placed A-hole".
This was that organizational structure does not matter. If everyone is
competent, it will be made to work no matter how badly it was
designed. But if an SPA occupies a vital position, even the
best-designed organization will fail.
There is an obvious counter:
1. Identify the SPAs that are too important to be given a broom and
told to sweep the floor.
2. Put them in charge of something innocuous: inventorying paper
coffee cups, organizing office supplies, stuff like that. Stuff that
can be inconvenient if done badly, but which won't produce a disaster.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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