Piety.

The world is so easy to manage, monitor, run, lead when we fill the ranks with pious, meek, fearful, obedient followers.

Black and white.  The world is so easy to run when we break it up into "black" and "white".

White is "our poster boy/girl".  Perfect, happy, shining people.  Young.  Handsome.  Unflawed in any way.  If they are flawed such as maimed in battle, we turn them into a new kind of poster boy/girl.  We make them into a courageous hero.

Black is someone who does not fit.  Black is messy.  Black means more work, more counselling, more boards of review.

Kelly Flinn was a poster girl.  She made serious errors in judgement.  Mainly, she got psychologically isolated and extremely lonely and probably horny.  How else can you explain getting involved with a pathological liar and married man claiming to be unattached.  All parents know that your kids will be hugely influenced by their peers.  If a woman gets involved with a persuasive pathological liar and she feels lonely and yearns to be wanted and needed and loved, It is a very powerful combination.  The Air Force works hard to make remote bases like Minot active and positive.  That is what MWR is for.  The Chaplain helps to form a parish community.  The commanders do their share by forming squadron "families" who work and socialise together.  But it is touchy when you have a single unattached female in your unit.

I understand how Kelly may have been affected by her environment.  I understand how her base community may not have been able to fill all the voids for her to feel supported and a strong member of that community.  I think that her search for a man-lover-mate could lead to a bad selection as Minot was probably not as rich in pickings as a major population centre.

I also understand that big organisations like IBM, General Motors and the US Air Force, don't like poster boys/girls that could cause them embarassment.  In marketing it's call damage to the brand.  Air Force leaders don't want to admit that their poster boys/girls may have issues with being socially immature.  They want their poster boys to marry former Miss USA's and their poster girls to marry other members of the government, corporate business, civil service, or military of equal rank so as not to cause fraternization issues.  Then they become poster couples.

In ten years, we will find that the Kelly Flinn incidents will be handled with much more finesse and aplomb because society and the military leadership will catch up to new behaviours in our society. There will be more interracial couples; more gay and lesbian couples; more single parents; more blended families.

No USAF Academy graduate on graduation day could have designed the mess that became Kelly Flinn's life.  She was hugely affected by the circumstances in her life.  Chuck Yeager tells a great story about how his wing commander pulled him out of an squadron commander's job in Europe after his squadron tore up an Officers' Mess on a drunken spree.  The Wing commander explained to the protesting Yeager, "If I didn't pull you out of there, the base brass was going to issue punishment".  Now that is leadership!  Kelly Flinn's leadership should have been in constant communication with her and talking through her personal matters as they affected her professional performance.  She had two or three senior officers who could have fulfilled that role.  But she did not get that kind of support.

I say, be balanced in your opinions of Kelly Flinn and count the impact of the environment.

The damage done by call centres

New book

The Power of the Mind, Applied


visualisation
self programming

Book about leadership

More Walk, Less Talk


If you follow your cause and survive or thrive, you have your meaning captured forever even if you don't become wealthy as opposed to not following your cause.

Idea for a book or story...

http://www.pressherald.com/news/nationworld/the-mission-to-boldly-go-to-mars-___-but-not-come-back__2010-11-16.html

The Journal of Cosmology

What happens if the people change their minds?

November 16 

The mission: To boldly go to Mars ... but not come back?

Two scientists suggest a one-way trip to begin colonization

The Associated Press

It's usually cheaper to fly one way, even to Mars. Two scientists are suggesting that colonization of the red planet could happen faster and more economically if astronauts behaved like the first settlers to come to North America -- not expecting to go home.

click image to enlarge

Dr. Paul Davies of Arizona State University holds a book on Mars as he stands in the atrium of the Biodesign Institute building on the ASU campus.

The Associated Press

click image to enlarge

Mosaic image taken by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit’s panoramic camera shows a view of Mars southwest of the rover’s landing site in the Gusev Crater. Two scientists propose sending volunteers to Mars and leaving them there. They say the mission would mark the beginning of long-term human colonization of Mars.

The Associated Press

Select images available for purchase in the
Maine Today Photo Store

"The main point is to get Mars exploration moving," said Dirk Schulze-Makuch, a Washington State University professor who co-authored an article that seriously proposes what sounds like a preposterous idea.

At least one moon-walking astronaut was not impressed.

"This is premature," Ed Mitchell of Apollo 14 wrote in an e-mail. "We aren't ready for this yet."

Also cool to the idea was NASA. President Obama has already outlined a plan to go to Mars by the mid-2030s, but he never suggested these space travelers wouldn't come home.

"We want our people back," NASA spokesman Michael Braukus said.

The article titled "To Boldly Go" appears in the latest issue of the Journal of Cosmology, which featured more than 50 articles and essays on Mars exploration.

Schulze-Makuch and Paul Davies, a physicist at Arizona State University, argue that humans must begin colonizing another planet as a hedge against a catastrophe on Earth. They believe the one-way trips could start in two decades.

"You would send a little bit older folks, around 60 or something like that," Schulze-Makuch said, bringing to mind the aging heroes who saved the day in the movie "Space Cowboys."

That's because the mission would undoubtedly reduce a person's lifespan, from a lack of medical care and exposure to radiation. Radiation could also damage reproductive organs, so sending people of childbearing age is not a good idea, Schulze-Makuch said.

Mars is a six-month flight away, and it has surface gravity, a thin atmosphere, frozen water, carbon dioxide and essential minerals. The two scientists propose the missions begin with two two-person teams, in separate ships that would serve as living quarters on the planet. More colonists and regular supply ships would follow.

Davies and Schulze-Makuch say it's important to realize they're not proposing a "suicide mission."

"The astronauts would go to Mars with the intention of staying for the rest of their lives, as trailblazers of a permanent human Mars colony," they wrote.

They acknowledge the proposal is a tough sell for NASA, with its focus on safety, and suggest the private sector might be more fertile ground.

"What we would need is an eccentric billionaire," Schulze-Makuch said. "There are people who have the money to put this into reality."

Indeed, British tycoon Richard Branson, PayPal founder Elon Musk and Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos are among the rich who are already involved in private space ventures.

Isolated humans in space have long been a staple of science fiction movies, from "Robinson Crusoe on Mars" and "2001: A Space Odyssey" to a flurry of recent movies such as "Solaris" and "Moon." In many of the plots, lonely astronauts fall victim to computers, madness or aliens.

Psychological profiling and training of the astronauts, plus constant communication with Earth, would reduce debilitating mental strains, the two scientists said. "They would, in fact, feel more connected to home than the early Antarctic explorers," they write.

The mental health of humans in space has been extensively studied. Depression can set in, people become irritated with each other, and sleep can be disrupted, studies have found. The knowledge that there is no quick return to Earth would likely make that worse.

Davies' research focuses on cosmology, quantum field theory and astrobiology. He was an early proponent of the theory that life on Earth may have come from Mars in rocks ejected by asteroid and comet impacts.

Schulze-Makuch is the author of two books about life on other planets. His focus is eco-hydrogeology, which includes the study of water on planets and moons of our solar system and how those could serve as a potential habitat for microbial life.

Both men contend that Mars has abundant resources to help the colonists become self-sufficient over time. They write that the colony should be next to a large ice cave, to provide shelter from radiation, plus water and oxygen.

Despite the lack of enthusiasm from NASA, Schulze-Makuch believes many people would be willing to make the sacrifice.

He and Davies believe a Mars base would offer humanity a "lifeboat" if Earth became uninhabitable.

"We are on a vulnerable planet," Schulze-Makuch said. "Asteroid impact can threaten us, or a supernova explosion. If we want to survive as a species, we have to expand into the solar system and likely beyond."