The Jerk Coefficient

I bet I don't have to explain this one.  But just in case:

When I worked for a mining company for a summer in Arizona (I was in grad school and needed summer work), fully half the individuals in the building where I was based were people you would duck into an office to avoid having to pass in a hallway.

Jerk Coefficient: 0.5

When I joined the US Geological Survey, I was impressed that people with BS degrees supervised people with PhD's, and that everyone was helpful to a fault.  "How do I get the plotter to do this?"  "Here, let me show you."

Jerk Coefficient: 0.02

Being a jerk correlates very closely with selfishness. Variants including being pushy, being a manipulator, or just being the wrong end of a small mammal (what my Dad once called my futile attempt to grow a beard on my acne-scarred face).

The Jerk Coefficient can dramatically ramp up when there is stress. When Mount St Helens erupted in 2004 and we were all routinely working 80 - 90 hours weeks, I noticed several different kinds of changes. Some people became grouchy, some people became manic-depressive, some people would shout and yell at others, some people just went home because they were exhausted and uncomfortable in the changed environment. My Administrative Officer was typical of the majority: she was just as quiet and kind and hard-working as at any other time. She didn't change. I was new as a chief scientist at the time, and a wiser and older volcanologist reassured me "It ain't a real eruption unless there's a fist-fight."

Jerk Coefficient: 0.10 (temporarily)


How do you deal with a jerk?  There are really only two ways: avoidance whenever possible, and when it's not possible, then screw up your courage and confront the jerk.  I call this the Sting.  A bully can beat you up because he's bigger, but if every time he beats you he gets stung - he feels pain - he will stop.  Usually, a bully needs the Sting just once.  The surest way you know you are safe is when the bully switches from physical intimidation to an ad hominum attack: foul language directed at you.  You can relax then.  

Good people also change when stressed: office downsizing, a tornado, a divorce (but perhaps there is a Chicken-vs-Egg thing with this one).  Some people are sociopaths, however.  Once there was a guy, passed over for the volcano chief scientist job in favor of me, who then spent the next three years trying to take over the job by subterfuge, taking advantage of the vague position descriptions written into our two jobs.  Speaking behind my back, undercutting me in any way possible, tasking people below me who would assume that the instructions came from me.  You know the type.  I finally had to confront him.  He backed down several times, but wouldn't quit - just tried something new - and I finally had to bring in higher management.  It took months, but I was tasked to re-write the position descriptions, the bully was spanked, and a year later he left the organization, glass-ceilinged. Afterwards I was amazed at how many people had really, really angry words about him... and only then did I realize that I wasn't the only one he had beaten up on.  I was just the last one.

I am sure that I became a less pleasant person during that stressful time, though I really tried hard to be kind and patient with everyone, especially the humbler people on the staff.  When one of those quiet, hard-working, but underpaid people was dying of cancer, I would take turns with many others in the office and stay at his house overnight.  We would do this in case he started choking, to help him take his meds, to walk with him.  He opened up with me then like he never had before - I've notice there is a shyness in many people when around Authority - and he told me how much he appreciated me as his bosses' boss.  He thanked me for being the first person in 20 years who had made the effort to increase his humble grade 7 to a grade 11.  I had done this out of a sense of honesty: he was doing the work that later took three people to handle.  On those long walks together, Dave shared things with me about his time as a LURP squad leader in Vietnam - things that just blew my mind.  My respect for him as a smart, kind, hard-working person, already high, went stratospheric.  I took copious notes - which I re-read every anniversary of his death in August.

You will be happier in life if you always look for the quiet, humble person - seek them out, listen to them, help them... and be enriched.

This is how you can lower the Jerk Coefficient.  Does this sound familiar?

~~~~~

Cory Drowned

What?

Cory Drowned.  (pause)   He's OK, but... he really drowned.

I had just gotten in from the Iraqi border, where we were working with a drill log to set screens for a huge water well, and had walked into the house at 3pm to get my keys to the office.  I found Louise asleep, which seemed odd, and when I lifted the keys she sat bolt upright and told me this.

Where?

He's in Erfan Hospital...

I don't remember the drive to Erfan in downtown Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, but Louise tells me that she just barely managed to jump into the passenger seat before I took off at high speed. I DO remember somehow finding our 14-yr-old siting upright on his hospital bed with a big grin on his face, and I also remember climbing up on the bed and giving him a huge hug.

It turns out that after you drown - assuming you are successfully revived - the next 48 hours are critical.  Louise had spent the previous night on the tile floor of the hospital room listening to Cory's breathing, which explained why she was asleep at 3pm the next afternoon.  I spent the next night on the floor myself, so Louise could sleep.  The reason I hadn't heard about this when it happened was the USGS mission chief had decided not to tell me, being fairly certain that I would take the helicopter and fly home.  He was probably right.

How did he drown?  He hyperventilated and tried to beat my hold-your-breath-underwater record (2 minutes 10 seconds). But Cory had been in the deep end of a pool - and had passed out.  His older sister suddenly saw him lying on the bottom of the pool at around three and a half minutes (she had been timing him and had gotten distracted), with his eyes and mouth open and his lips blue.  She hauled him out, dragged him over the lip of the pool, held his butt up to drain the water and blood out of his his lungs, rolled him over and started CPR.  Cory was one of those rare 2% (higher in children) who actually revive under CPR without intervention by First Responders.

~~~~~  

After one of our geologists was chewed up very badly by a bear (she lived but lost both hands and an arm; I had dinner with her one evening and helped cut her food into bite-sized portions), USGS geologists working in Alaska did research on what were the greatest risks to geologists working in the field.  Bears came in #7.  Shooting yourself with your own weapon came in #3.  Hazard #2 would probably not surprise you: helicopter accidents, which killed my boss in Ketchikan Harbor in 1986.

The Number One Killer of geologists in Alaska is... drowning.

I almost became one of those statistics myself.  After a hot day (for SE Alaska) of geophysical profiling, and covered with dust (pretty rare in Southeast), I had put on some nylon shorts and jumped off the end of the long pier into the Fjord at Klawock, Alaska, where we were staying.  The outside temperature was  85F/30 C but the water was about 34F/1C, and I went into hypothermic shock as soon as I hit the water.  I couldn't control my arms I was shaking so hard, and only when I ducked my head underwater did the shaking stop.  I can recall three steelhead trout hovering, watching this skinny white seal thrash its way underwater back to the closest piling.  The water was high enough - high tide - that I was able to reach the pier and pull myself up onto it with the last ounce of strength remaining in me.  I rolled over onto my back and stared at the rare blue sky and realized: I almost became another statistic.

Where am I going with this?  My oldest son is divorced, and his ex-wife doesn't swim. She also apparently doesn't think it's important to learn how to swim, and Jared and his younger brother Cory are intensely focused on this. Whenever our grandson Mason is allowed to visit, they quietly talk and make sure he gets some swimming practice.

I know too many people who have lost a small child to drowning in a swimming pool.  One mom we knew in Saudi Arabia went crazy afterwards...  The first order of business in MY family around water is to secure PFD's (personal flotation devices), and make sure that everyone no matter how young knows how to survive for long stretches in the water.

There is absolutely no excuse for a small child not to know how to swim.  There is absolutely no excuse for a child drowning.  A drowning is something that you will not be allowed to forget for the rest of your life.  

And Cory?  He's a professional lifeguard supervisor and trainer, an Associate of Ellis & Associates, the national agency certifying water parks - and propagating the most militant lifeguard techniques.  I challenge you to find a lifeguard at a pool in the United States who is talking with someone while sitting in a chair.  Not on Cory's watch, not if the pool facility expects to get the certification required for insurance.

You probably wouldn't be surprised to learn that the founder of Ellis & Associates lost a child to drowning, and founded the organization to make sure that that terrible tragedy, if possible, would never happen again.

MAKE ABSOLUTELY SURE YOUR KIDS CAN SWIM.  
RENEW THAT TRAINING EVERY YEAR.
NEVER, NEVER ASSUME THAT SOMEONE ELSE IS WATCHING YOUR CHILD.

~~~~~

Gun Philosophy

That's right.  The philosophy of gun-ownership.
Actually, more like the philosophy or gun-usership.

I'm sure that everyone has seen the bumper sticker:

Nobody Ever Raped a .38

Police statistics, however, say that in over 80% of the cases where a woman had a pistol in her hand during an attack, the pistol was used against her.  That is a truly bad percentage.

Why?  It's a latency issue: we hesitate.  This is because upwards of 98-99% of us are not sociopaths: we're not instantly prepared to kill another human being. For me, as I'm sure is the case for most of the people reading this, it's just not a natural thing to blast even your pathologically belligerent sister's ex with a pistol.

In the interest of full disclosure: I own a Sig-Sauer pistol and a 115-year-old Mauser 7.57 rifle used during World War I.

I also train every few years on shotguns, .44 Magnum pistols, and (my preferred) .47-70 carbine.  This training is required in order to check out a firearm from the USGS Armory to work in Bear Country (mainly but not exclusively Alaska).  This training is especially required because for a few years after one of our geologists had both her arms chewed off by a bear that weighed less than she did, quite a bit more USGS scientists were injured in the bush by their own dang weapons than were injured by bears. Think: holstering a .357 Magnum while the hammer is pulled back.  I've seen it.  

As a Jujitsu Sensei, I require of all my students testing for Shodan (black belt) to take a firearm safety course.  It's not just me, this is a requirement of the American Jujitsu Association. This is because if they plan to defend themselves or someone else against a firearm, they sure better be familiar with what one feels like, and what it could do to your hands if you grab it.  There is a more important point here however, and that is the SAFETY ISSUE.

Another full disclosure: I am the webmaster of the American Jujitsu Association.

Because I have three sons, and I live in the United States where over 100,000,000 handguns exist by individual right (in an interpretation of the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution), I have always felt it was important to make sure that they knew how to handle a firearm, and more importantly, that they knew the four basic rules of hand-gun safety:

1. ALL firearms are ALWAYS loaded. 
2. NEVER point a firearm at something you are not willing to destroy.
3. NEVER put your finger in the trigger-guard until the weapon is pointed at the target.
4. ALWAYS be sure of your target and what lies beyond it.

I'll add a 5th Rule:
NO weapon should be operational and ANYWHERE NEAR ammunition in your home.

Number 1 always leaves a dull ache within me.  About a year after I moved from Denver to Virginia, a young man I had taught for two years - had driven him a hundred times to the Church, had coached him as one of our Explorer Scouts - was playing with a .22 rifle with a friend.  The friend pointed it at him and it went off.  Scott took a single shot behind his right ear and died within a few minutes.

Guns bother you?  No problem; you have that in common with quite a lot of people including several of my family members.  There are several alternatives:


1. Pepper Spray.  This certainly causes an attacker to re-prioritize his intent.  The downside of Pepper Spray however is that an attacker is all over you by the time you start to blast - and you become a double victim.  Same with a stun-gun.

2. A better solution is to get a $25 expandable steel baton (a police ASP baton will cost upwards of $70).  The downside is that you need some training in how to safely use one... such as never using it above an elbow. A baton can hang from your belt with the bottom half in your Jeans pocket.  Black baton and black Jeans translates as unobtrusive.  A police officer will pick up on it right away, but not the average person.  A baton is to a knife like a knife is to a spoon: so over-powering that it ain't fair.

3. A third solution is a civilian C2 Tazer.  The downside of this is the unit costs several hundred dollars, is not very concealable, and a single cartridge is upwards of $35.  There is an important upside to a Tazer, however: people who would hesitate to use a firearm on another human being generally require less than a nanosecond to zap someone they know is a bad guy about to do a bad thing.

None of these solutions help very much without some basic self-defense training.  This doesn't mean a year contract with a store-front babysitting martial business, wearing a dragon-and-phone-number advertisement on your back.  In nearly every municipality there are people willing to teach self-defense for a nominal fee or even nothing.  There are also some charlatans out there; I watched one guy teach students for two hours how to kick someone in the gonads.  ANY person of the male persuasion who has made it through Junior High School has learned reflexively to deal with this sort of thing.  So check around, and ask your local YWCA, YMCA, or local police department.

Assaults on women begin in very predictable ways, and you can quickly be taught how to deal with these.

~~~~~

Finances

Ugh.  What an unappealing title.  I'd rather link physics with philosophy.  In fact, I would rather talk with my teenagers about sex than with my adult children about finances.  When you have an in-grown toenail, however, the painful surgery is only temporary, so here goes.

My youngest daughter returned from serving a mission and got her first job.  She called me the first day for advice: "Dad, I'm filling out forms.  How much should I put in towards retirement?"

How much CAN you put in?

"Ten percent is the max that EDS will match."

Put in ALL 10% then.  You won't notice the difference up front because you haven't gotten used to a fat paycheck yet.  You WILL notice it if you turn 50 and suddenly start wondering what you will do when your back won't let you do that hard stuff anymore.  Ya may FEEL immortal now, but ya ain't.

She did as I suggested.  How do you spell RELIEF?

~~~~~

We moved back as a family from a four-year tour as diplomat-scientists in Saudi Arabia, and the US Geological Survey had opened up a new retirement supplemental program for people on the system that I belonged to.  It's hard enough to re-adapt to house payments and state income tax all at once, so the first year we put in just 2%.  The next year we got a cost-of-living allowance of 2%, so after talking it over, we up'd the ante to 4%.  As expected, we didn't really notice the difference.  As each year came with a new COLA, we up'd the ante until we arrived at the maximum the USGS would permit: 11%.

When I compare my gross income with my net, I'm always amazed at how little is net: quite a bit less than half.  However, a lot of the withdrawal is savings allotment, so intellectually I know that it's not as bad as it looks.  Intellectually I look at it slightly differently anyway: if it wasn't for grand-kid visits to Quebec, Iowa, Utah, and Australia, the savings allotment might even increase over time.  ;=)

Here's Dad's recommendation:

A.  Carve out 10% for tithing immediately; it's really an investment with a higher rate of return than anything else.  The taxes come to over 20% after that ("The price we pay for civilization."), then another 7% to the retirement system, then another 11% to the retirement supplement.  We also have an allocation automatically deducted towards savings.  I figure if I don't see a steady increase in savings, I'm not doing things right: there WILL come a time when the roof needs replacement, and not doing so will NOT be an option... your house will be ruined if you don't have this stashed in the can, waiting.

B. You don't have to jump the tiger all at once - creep up on him!  Increase your savings each year by another 2%.  You will be amazed what it does, even in these low-interest days.

C. ANY loan for a car, or for a roof repair, is paying a huge chunk towards that fancy bank furniture you see every time you go into your local branch.  I know what Wells Fargo's CEO takes home, too, and that's another powerful incentive not to take out a car-loan.  It's not that I don't care for the guy that much (I don't), it's just that I con't care to buy his yacht for him.  Here's the take away: Stumpf is paying himself with penalty money from the financially-challenged (the people who say "I just have to have that new car!"... "Oh I just have to buy a Lotto ticket!").

Do YOU think John Stumpf deserves $21,300,000 each year?

D. Take pride in how far you can drive that old junker car.  For one thing, no one wants to steal it.  No one would even consider breaking into it for that old but perfectly good car-stereo.  The jerk on the freeway in the BMW, trying to cut in front of you, will definitely be more cautious!  I drove my last car till it had 209,506 on it; it had broken down once too many times on a bridge and once on a railroad track.  The replacement car I bought had 40,000 miles/60,000 km on it.  I don't have a warrantee, but I'm not paying 20% for the new-car aromatic chain smell either.

E. Enjoy the following:
- I can retire anytime I want.
- I can visit grandkids any time I want.
- I can continue living like I've always lived.
- I don't worry that I'm a paycheck from foreclosure.
   (I watched that several times with neighbors, and it is truly awful).
- I don't have to work until I die if I don't want to.  If the boss leaves and the new person has a
   Jerk Coefficient above 0.5, well, I'm a member of the KMA Club.

I'll work 'til I die anyway, but that's something my kids have known forever.

~~~~~

Diversity

My personality-type is classified as "ESTJ".  This is an abbreviation for a heat-seeking problem-solving missile who naturally talks better than he listens.  It doesn't mean I'm a bad person, however.


The classification stems from Carl Jung's 1921 book "Personality Types" (English edition: 1923).  It was developed further during WWII by Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers, and a free test to classify people is now called a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test.  There are four pairs of distinguishing personality sets, and the ESTJ stands for Extrovert, Sensing, Thinking, Judgment (not judgemental).  The full M-B explanation for my personality is:


"Practical, realistic, matter-of-fact. Decisive, quickly move to implement decisions. Organize projects and people to get things done, focus on getting results in the most efficient way possible. Take care of routine details. Have a clear set of logical standards, systematically follow them and want others to also. Forceful in implementing their plans."


Ahem.  This type is sometimes called "The Guardian"  ...and they are usually handsome, brilliant... and irritating to a knife-draw for their apparently genetic inability to listen very well.  


My wife's personality is the polar opposite in all of the four categories.  You might wonder how this might affect the survivability of a marriage, but we're homing in on 43 years together.  Not that our marriage like any other has been easy: success has more to do with two people being unselfish than just about anything else.  


I once took the four-week-long, management-bootcamp-on-steroids training offered to senior Federal managers called the Federal Executive Institute.  This was one of the real game-changers in my life, and re-oriented me in a lot of ways.  While there I was grouped with an-8-person cohort, called a Leadership Development Team.  We began the first day with M-B testing, then spent several days analyzing the results.  We actually spent little time on the results per se, but we spent a LOT of time analyzing what they MEANT in terms of how we relate to people of other types.  This training opened my eyes to a completely different appreciation of Diversity.  Our LDT was tasked with doing something.  We brain-stormed, listed out on a white-board many different ideas and approaches.  They were very different.  Abruptly, a high-level NASA PhD said "I really like Jeff's idea."  He then offered something I never would have thought of to improve it.  Among the eight of us, other ideas then came into play, some were rejected, others bent - and the final result was just amazing.  The sum was truly greater than the parts.


Our trainers were steering us to just this observation: that Diversity is not just a GOOD thing, but an ESSENTIAL thing.  The NASA executive had just one M-G character trait in common with me: we were both extroverts.  He was naturally built to see things differently than me.  He picked up on things I had missed.  


Here's another interesting thing: Ed and I remain best friends to this day, with a difficult experience in common and an abiding appreciation of the other's talents... and treasured differences.




--> The polar opposite of appreciating diversity is manifested in some of the greatest horrors of the 20th century: 

Treblinka.  Jim Crow.  Bosnia.  9-11

 


Have you ever heard this expression:  
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" ??


Sometimes attributed to Patrick Henry, this eloquent defense of tolerance and freedom of speech apparently originated with the French writer Voltaire, that master of liberal philosophy renowned for his satirical wit.


BTW: 
Voltaire was a great admirer of Blaise Pascal, his own polar opposite.

~~~~~

Eyes that Don't See

When I first started Scuba diving in the Red Sea, the pattern was this:  head out along the reef, and when the regulator showed I had used up half my air, turn back. Later I saw some slides of that same reef taken by a master diver, and they were enthralling. When I asked him what his secret was (I was sure it must be his late-model camera with its $10,000 underwater housing), he said: "I just hold still and look. After awhile I can start seeing things. After awhile longer, I see even more things. Then I press the button, and then I look at my regulator-gauge."

I was walking with my wife down a forest path several days ago when she abruptly stopped and said "Beauty!" This is still disconcerting to me after all these years: conversation interrupted, rhythm broken. I turned back and she was bent over looking at the ground.  "What," I asked?

"A spider."  A who?  Sure enough, there was a tiny, elegant black wolf-spider on the ground. With a pine needle she spurred it off the path, because a family with several children approached.

I can be walking with Louise most anywhere, and she will abruptly stop and take a photograph. She will see things that I do not, and when I stop and reorient my mind, it's always a pleasant surprise to me.

I've not always been so focused on the task at hand to miss the beauty surrounding me. After spending graduate school and post-PhD working frequently in the desert, I came to appreciate the beauty there. What someone from the forests of Virginia might find desolate, I could find immensely aesthetic.  Like the iconic twilight-bioluminescence transition in the movie Avatar, after awhile you can become aware of more than you first see.  My recollection of the Venezuelan jungle is like this, and I only regret that I didn't take more photos while I was there.

The point I wish to make here is that wherever we are - walking, sitting still, in a conversation - we can still choose to be more aware of our surroundings. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to see the elegance and beauty in a grasshopper, but Louise is already there.  On my part, it usually requires stopping, something not natural for a very linear, ESTJ personality.  I'm always trying to get somewhere.  I invariably miss what I'm traveling through in the process, and there is a lot more in between than there is at the end.

Hold still a minute.  Breathe.  Look again.  See.

~~~~~

Always a Parent

For three years, my Mom and sister were estranged: my sister wouldn't speak to our Mom. My Mom more or less reconciled herself to this fact after awhile, but confessed to me once 
"You know, you can't stop being a parent.  You always worry about your kids, always want to protect them.  Especially when you can't."


Once, while we were living in Saudi Arabia, we received a letter from our son, Jared, who was serving as a missionary in the Slovak Republic at the time. In it, he described symptoms of tetanus including rictus and lock-jaw. Oh, I know it wasn't tetanus, because he's alive today, but it must have been pretty bad, whatever it was.


But here's the point: the letter was dated two weeks earlier. As I read it, I knew that my son was either alive or dead - and I had no way of knowing. There was nothing I could do except re-read his words and stare at the wall. Unless you're a parent, you can't understand how truly helpless you can sometimes feel about your kids.  A major lesson in the Book of Life is how to deal with not being able to control your life.


I've learned that my Mom's observation was bang on. As my kids grow older, become their own people, marry, and have children of their own, it actually gets harder: the traps are so much deadlier now, and I can do so much less to protect them:
- The I deserve this toy trap
- The I'm young-and-immortal trap
- The I'll save for retirement later trap
- The I must work furiously to get ahead trap
- The I'm smart enough to figure this out myself trap
You may notice that these all start with an "I".  Been guilty of all but one myself.


 All I can do is place my kids in the hands of my God, and work on exercising faith.  

~~~~~

My Mom also said some other things that have proven to be very wise - even prophetic:


1. "Oh, it's just a case of poor potty-training."  This was said to me when I was exploding with anger over what someone had done to me. It gave me pause: if you can see where someone's behavior may have come from, it's easier to deal with. It's easier to forgive: 


"My disciples, in days of old, sought occasion against one another and forgave not one another in their hearts; and for this evil they were afflicted and sorely chastened.

Wherefore, I say unto you, that ye ought to forgive one another; for he that forgiveth not his brother his trespasses standeth condemned before the Lord; for there remaineth in him the greater sin."

2. "Someday, somewhere, I hope you have thirteen 13-year-olds, all at the same time!"  I don't recall what I had done that made her so angry with me at the time, but it certainly must have been when I was thirteen years old. Years later I was in Sterling, Virginia, teaching a Sunday School class of 13-year-olds. One of the young women dared a young man with whom she was always skirmishing to "Oh, go jump out the window."  Scott looked at her, then took a running leap and jumped through the sharp-edged aluminum frame of one of those pull-out-at-an-angle building windows. He slithered through the 20-cm opening, ran off across the lawn, jumped the fence, and ran into the back door of his house. I looked at the window frame and saw a piece of fabric and some blood there. I turned back and for some reason counted: 
...there were thirteen 13-year-olds left.

~~~~~