Against Fatuous Advice to Beginning Astronomers

Last night, the Austin Astronomical Society sponsored an “Out of the Box Clinic” for new astronomers with unused or under-used instruments.  The event was held at our Canyon of Eagles “Eagle Eye” Observatory near Lake Buchanan, about 80 miles northwest of Austin. (I did not attend.) Following that, today the club president issued an email to make further recommendations based on the interactions between newbies and sages. He was wrong on every point.

"1) A decent finder is crucial: Some of your scopes had no finder.  Others had the old fashioned tube finders that are very hard to calibrate with their three thumbscrews.  I recommend you pick up an inexpensive Red Dot Finder for your beginner scopes.  We can help you install it or swap it with your tube finder."

A.   I started as a kid with the old-fashioned tube with crosshairs and six screws: three front and three back.  It was easy to use and the crosshairs were a reliable reference for moving the telescope up-down-left-right when I lost the object under higher magnification. (See #3.) I now have a new, modern telescope with a Red Dot Finder. It is a pain in the neck, literally. I usually sit on the ground to look through it.

B.   Nothing is ever where the dots may (or may not) line up. Do this for yourself: Use your index fingers pointing upward about a foot apart, and not lined up with your eye. Now, sight some object in the room and move your head back and forth until both fingertips line up with it. You are off-center. You are not lined up. But you think you are.  With the little red dots and the little bright stars, it happens all the time.

C.   The best thing for me is to put some bright star in the telescope center and then align the viewer to it, using the two insufficient screws to set it. I say insufficient because two points make a line, but three are needed to fix a plane and the viewing field is planar

D.   You will need their help installing a new finder because you will have to drill holes in your telescope, mount screws washers and nuts – and not drop anything down the tube to damage the mirror or lens.

"2) Calibrating the view in your scope to the view in your finder is a necessary first step.  With some of you, we spent time trying to dial it in during the daylight hours so you'd be prepared when the sun went down.  For those of you without finders, you experienced a lot more challenges getting your tubes pointed at the objects you want to see."

A.            Turn Left at Orion.  The sages with their huge Dobsonian “light buckets” often do not have finder scopes at all. They know the sky and “star hop” to find what they want to see.

B.            Because my Red Dot Finder is so useless, I often sight up along the tube to locate an object.  You get close then make small moves. That was the advice that Ellie Arroway’s dad gave her with the ham radio, and which she followed as an astronomer: small moves.  (See Contact by Carl Sagan.)

C.            The sages should have been pretty good at teaching this because it is what they do with their own Dobsonians. (See A above.)

"3) Get a low-magnification eyepiece.  For beginner scopes, nothing beats a good 40mm Plossl-type eyepiece.  Most of you showed up with a 24mm or a 20mm eyepiece as your lowest magnification eyepiece.  There's nothing wrong with those magnifications.  However, you will find it easier to bring your target into view with a low-magnification eyepiece.  Once your target is identified, then you can swap to your higher-power eyepiece(s) for viewing."

A.            Now you tell me. (And what is a "Plössl"? Note the umlaut-o: "Play-sell.")

B.            I bought a beginner telescope, a Celestron 130-EX refractor. It came with a 20mm ocular and a 10mm ocular.  Then I bought a box of eyepieces for beginners. The biggest is 32 mm.  But, you know what, my first telescopes were not much different. I never had a big eyepiece. I learned with the little ones – not the littlest; admittedly, the largest of them; and the middle one. The laws of optics are against high magnification on a little telescope.

C.            Speaking of the laws of optics, the diameter of the ocular is only one factor in the equation of magnification.  M = f/d. The Magnification is the focal length of the telescope, divided by the diameter of the ocular lens. So, a small telescope with a 24mm eyepiece will have lower magnification than a larger (longer) one. Lower magnification is easier to work with when hunting objects – especially without a finder scope. But that is not just a function of the ocular.

D.            Moreover, the other factor is the light-gathering area of the main lens or main mirror, the “aperture.” A 10-inch mirror gathers four times as much light as a five-inch mirror: area increases by squares.  So, a beginner with a 3-inch telescope will gather 40% more light than a beginner with a 2-1/2 inch instrument. 

E.             That’s nice to know… but if you did not buy a 3-inch telescope but got the smaller one, then the point is moot. The reason for the “Out of the Box Clinic” is supposed to be to help you get the most from your instrument, not make you wish that you worked at Mount Palomar.

F.             And once you have your object in the low-power field of view, moving to higher power is also another thing to be learned. If you are off center by little bit, when you drop that higher power eyepiece in the viewer, you may well have to start over finding the object.  There is no way around it. It is not like flipping TV channels with the remote.

G.            Finally, the AAS should have had eyepieces at the ready. These things are pretty standard and come in only a few diameters. That would have been more productive than telling people what they should have done.

"4) Several of you asked about choices for your next, "better" scope.  We have some suggestions on an FAQ page on austinastro.org.  http://austinastro.org/index.php/f-a-q/#bestscope"

A.            Buy the most telescope you can afford. It is like any other tool. Any mechanic, craft worker, or technician will tell you the same thing. None of the advice I saw actually explains that when you buy a telescope, you are getting three things: a telescope, a mount, and a tripod. 

B.            Every instrument I have seen for consumers is a collection of junk because compromises are made for the production of each component.  But it does not need to be that way. 

C.            For the AAS magazine, Sidereal Times, I interviewed a member who is a mechanical engineer. He broke the problem down and bought the best telescope, the best mount, and the best tripod that he could afford, each from a different source.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Turn Left at Orion

Astronomy 

Asterisms

Monsters from the Id

Burnham's Celestial Handbook 

The Drunken Astronomers

Astronomical Symbols on Ancient and Medieval Coins

Meteorites

Extreme Ownership

Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, St. Martins Press, 2015.

“So, there I was, knee deep in hand grenade pins…”  The authors claim that this is not a string of self-glorifying war stories, the kind that old men grow in the retelling.  But, in fact, every teaching point is illustrated with a real war story. The authors assure us that the reports are sanitized so as not to violate operational security (OPSEC). Business briefs follow the battle scenes. Again, the details are altered to protect the client. Unfortunately, that reduces these white papers to blank pages. Although the Navy SEALs are realistic, the business people all sound alike. Lacking depth, the executives and managers are cardboard characters. Despite those flaws, the teaching points are valid. 

The thesis of the book is easy to understand. Extreme Ownership means taking full responsibility for your experiential world. If your boss does not understand your circumstances, then the failure is yours: you did not make it clear enough. I was reminded of a scene in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. Some thuggish architects are complaining to each other about the hero, Howard Roark. Face it, one admits. You are just mad because he doesn’t even notice you. “He’d notice me if I bashed his head with a club.” No he wouldn’t: he would just blame himself for not avoiding the club.

The other lessons are equally unarguable.

No bad teams, only bad leaders.

You must believe in your mission.

Check your ego. (In other words, control it, block it, like checking your luggage at the departure gate.)

Cover and Move means that teams protect each other, leap-frogging forward.

Simple commands are easier to carry out. Complex missions must be simplified to their essentials.

Prioritize and execute.  You cannot do everything all at once. Attempting the wrong task will cause other goals to be missed. Know what is most important and do that.

Decentralize command. It is old advice. Nonetheless, delegating authority can be a matter of life and death in an urban warzone. In every organization, span of control means that each decision-maker ideally has only about five people reporting.  I was reminded of how ships –especially warships – are run: each department depends on all the others, and each expects the others to run their shops effectively. The captain cannot do it all from the bridge. Each section is responsible for its own performance.

Plan.  This shocked me: the US Navy SEALs devote more time – much more time – to creating and presenting PowerPoints than they do fighting in combat.  As I came close to the end of the book, I had a long weekend training drill at Texas State Guard headquarters. I chatted with another ex-pilot about software development. Pilots spend as much time or more planning flights than actually flying. But software developers seem to all just bang out code with no planning. The results are all around us. If code really blew up, or if systems really crashed, programmers would do more planning.

Leading up and down the chain of command is a direct consequence of extreme ownership. It takes some finesse to lead the people above you, but it is no less necessary than leading those under your command. You are responsible for your environment. If your boss does not understand your situation, it can only be because you failed to communicate.

Decisiveness and Uncertainty are easy opposites. Leaders make decisions, usually right ones, if they are good leaders. Leaders who waver, postpone, and procrastinate are not leaders at all, but managers who are in deep water (or worse) over their heads.

The chapter on Decisiveness and Uncertainty introduces the final chapter: Discipline equals Freedom. This chapter actually goes into Aristotle’s “golden mean” without naming it explicitly. The authors run down a list of opposites and counsel moderation in all things: leader and follower; confident but not cocky; humble but not passive; competitive but a gracious loser; and so on.  Through the course of the book, the tension between opposites powers much of the narrative. In Chapter 8, the authors explain that Decentralized Command is possible only when the Commander’s Intent is communicated clearly.  

Books on management and leadership are easy to find. A book that announced radically new truths would be rare. The guidance here is not radical. Shorn of the war stories and business briefs, this might be a 20-page essay.  They are nonetheless 20 very valuable pages.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Primary Leadership Training 

Leadership 

Profiles in Courage 

Entrepreneurship 

Sweet Deal: Epic Honey

The Central Texas Bee Rescue was at the Wheatsville Co-op on Sunday, June 19. I sampled the wild honey and the raw honey and chose the latter. 

Wild honey comes from feral bees. When the bees are in danger from construction or are a bother to homeowners, the Central Texas Bee Rescue relocates them. In their new home, the bees continue to do their work, making raw honey. While wild honey has a lot to commend it, I found the raw honey to be full of overtones. We were almost out; so, I bought a jar.

 

Almost gone (left) and new jar of Raw.

“Since 2012, we have provided beekeeping courses to children ranging in age from elementary school to high school. Currently, we have hives at Lanier High School, Austin Achieve Public School, and the Austin Montessori School.”  -- http://honeybeekind.com/our-work/

“In the state of Texas, if a homeowner possesses 5 acres or more of property, with at least 6 beehives on the property, the resident can become eligible to have up to 20 acres tax exempt. This exemption can save thousands of dollars per year.” -- http://honeybeekind.com/honey-co-op/

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Central Texas Bee Rescue

Sunday at the Co-op

Biohackers

The Scientific Method

Whitman’s Coin Collecting Quantum Crossover

Question: What do you get when you cross a Red Book with a Whitman Folder?

Answer: A Search and Save book dedicated to the new collector.

Well known traditional support for collectors. 

Whitman Publishing is the leading producer of products for coin collectors. This year, they released a new entry in the marketplace, their Search and Save booklets.  They will open the doors to numismatics for another generation of numismatists – young and mature alike.  

New products for new generations.

 The median age in coin collecting is about 58, and has been for decades. These numismatists began as kids, often with paper routes.  If you could set aside a nickel worth eight cents you made a 60% profit from your knowledge. When inflation of the 1960s and 70s destroyed circulating coinage, the thrill of collecting from pocket change disappeared along with silver coins… and Buffalo Nickels, and Indianhead Cents.  But the rewards can be found again in two new series from the US Mint celebrating the 50 states (1999-2009) and their “America the Beautiful” national parks (2010-Present).  In addition, two series of dollar coins can be had: Presidents and Native Americans.  

Historical narratives that are richer than
the brief paragraphs in the Red Book.

These Whitman products deliver the structure to collecting that can draw the new numismatist.

All federal money is legal tender.  A Jefferson nickel from 1938 is just as spendable as one from 2008. And you can find those 1938 5-cent coins in circulation if you look at your change. The new collector will eventually go to a coin store to find a silver 5-cent coin from 1942 to 1945.  But that decision can be made later.  In the mean time, five different Jefferson Nickels are easy to find in circulation, as are eight different Lincoln cents (four others will be inexpensive at a coin store).

How to hold (and not hold) a coin.
This illustration is in all Search and Save books.

Literature is the key to value. Collectors who think that they are smart will chase this coin or that, but their greed begs a question: How did they know that the coin was worth pursuing?  The fact is that they were told (often second-hand) by researchers who published articles in numismatic magazines.  A scant few aficiandos read those.  Then the facts made their way into books.  Some few more touts and buffs found out about the rarities and values. They hit on dealers to see who had what in stock. Eventually word got out.  We find it unusual today, but in the 1930s, a US $3 Gold sold for a margin over bullion spot: they were not regarded as rare. A hundred years ago, no one cared about mint marks.  In our lifetime, repunched dates and repunched mint marks have joined doubled dies as the rewards for searching your pocket change.

The 50 State Quarter book only has 11 spaces to fill,
one from each year of issue. Pick your favorite coin.

Now, these Whitman products combine the tree-top view of literature with an attainable goal for novice collectors.  You can find 50 State Quarter coins in change. You can fill this book with eleven of them: you do not need all 150 (50 states, 3 mints). Keep your eyes open because nice lightly circulated examples are still out there.  The same applies to Jefferson Nickels and Lincoln Cents.  

These tools support "type collecting." Rather than one coin from each Mint from each year of issue, you only need to find one of each type, regardless of year or Mint.

Former ANA President and former Krause Corporation president Clifford Mishler had a stump speech that he delivered at conventions.  Collectors are a type of person, he said.  He called it “a gene you do not inherit.” The children of collectors may not be collectors: it is a small tragedy that we know. The grandchildren just want the money from the coins: they do not care about the coins. But we do. And some of our grandchildren and great-grandchildren may well, also.  These Whitman products can open the doors to coin collecting, the most popular hobby in the world.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Whitman Publishing: Fact and Value in Numismatics 

Numismatics Informs Economics 

Numismatics: History as Market 

Debt: the Seed of Civilization  

Hurricane Tejas

The State of Texas ran an exercise to simulate a Category 4 hurricane strike at the Rio Grande Valley.  The main events ran Wednesday and Thursday, June 8 and 9, according to the news media. However, the execution depended on deep planning running back to January of this year. For myself, as a headquarters support staffer, I arrived at 9:00 AM on Sunday, June 5. I made my last call (from home) at 6:30 PM on Friday. My job was to run the WebEOC emergency operation center computer. Despite the short days on Sunday and Friday (8 hours each), I put in 74 hours in five days. So did a couple hundred other people.

• Department of Public Safety Trooper Robbie Barrera says the drill began Wednesday and runs through Thursday.  (CBS news Dallas-Fort Worth here.)

Loading up on Monday morning for the trip
down to the Rio Grande Valley. This team
gathered evacuees and shepherded them to safety.

•  AUSTIN – The Texas Department of Public Safety’s (DPS) Texas Division of Emergency Management (TDEM), in coordination with local, state, federal and private sector partners, is conducting a full-scale air evacuation exercise in response to a hypothetical hurricane scenario in which the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) is evacuated. This exercise provides the emergency management community an opportunity to practice and evaluate local, state and federal emergency plans by evacuating a sample group of approximately 300 “general and medical evacuees” (exercise volunteers) from the lower Rio Grande Valley to the sheltering jurisdictions of San Antonio, Austin, Fort Worth and Irving. The exercise began on June 2 and concludes Thursday, with air evacuations and sheltering taking place today and Thursday.  (K-Star Radio/KVST 99.7 FM, Huntsville, Texas, here.)

The Texas Maritime Regiment (TMAR) practiced
search and recovery.

Of those 300, the Texas State Guard provided 226. Among those were evacuation responders who transported people out of danger, sheltered them and returned them to their homes.  We also had search and recovery rescuers. 

Our joint operations liaison officer
(Texas air component lieutenant colonel, left)
confers with our Battle Group non-commissioned officer in charge
(Texas army component) while a sergeant (Texas army component)
in the background configures
emergency evacuation handheld computers.

In addition, we worked with state agencies such as Public Safety and Emergency Management, of course, but also with the Department of State Health Services, the local city Community Emergency Response Teams (CERTs), and many private responders, including the American Red Cross and the Amateur Radio Relay League. 

“There were 156 unique stations participating. Of these, 89% reported an ARES affiliation, 17% reported a MARS affiliation and 30% reported a RACES affiliation. 48% reported being Winlink capable. 44% reported having backup battery power, 43% reported having a generator and 6% had solar recharging capability. …“I received a total of 108 ICS-213 forms during the exercise.” (ARRL South Texas here)

ICS Form 213 is a general message for any Incident Command Structure.  The ICS is the standardized FEMA methodology for managing events and incidents.  (An event is planned: baseball game; birthday party. Incidents include hurricanes, wildfires, floods, tornados, and traffic accidents with toxic waste spills.) The ARRL report to members cited here is an indication of the volume of traffic that these volunteers handle when they launch and boot up communications networks to remediate for the infrastructure that is lost during a disaster.

Texas maritime seaman reports
the completion of her assignment
 for a Texas army component sergeant
at the Tactical Emergency Operations Center.

If you have a Facebook account you can see more on the TXSG official pages here.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

Volunteering in an Emergency: What to Expect 

CERT: Community Emergency Response Team 

Texans Serving Texans 

Firefighters 

The Fourth Star

“Even those who learn from history are surrounded by those who are doomed to repeat it.” – Chuck B. on Twitter, April 12, 2016.

The Iraq War tested four four-star generals: John Abizaid, George Casey, Jr., Peter Chiarelli, and David Petraeus. This is their story. (The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the United States Army by David Cloud and Greg Jaffe, Random House, 2009.) Each of them had a correct view of the challenges and answers. However, without being able to work together, their efforts could not support and reinforce each other. They were not in conflict against each other. Rather, their assignments – and their acceptances of those roles – left them distanced in space and time from each other. Beyond the specifics of the Second Gulf War, this is a book about leadership, leadership styles, and the natural limits to the complete fulfillment of our goals. The narratives here are richly detailed. The writing is tight and active. The authors were the Pentagon correspondents for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the  Washington Post.

Each of these four generals is an outside-the-box creative thinker. Each is competitive, driven, focused and intelligent. All hold advanced university degrees. Though Petraeus and Casey are connected by family ties within the military general staff, Abizaid and Chiarelli came from blue collar homes. Whereas Casey and Abazaid graduated from West Point, Chiarelli and Petraeus earned their commissions through ROTC. On their way to the top, each took detours within the military. Chiarelli and Petraeus taught in the social science department at West Point. “Sosh” is a fraternity of strategic planners and political thinkers whose connections in the Pentagon allow them to help younger peers get their careers back on track with assignments to combat brigades. Interestingly, Lt. George W. Casey, Jr. first met Lt. David Petraeus through their mothers. Casey’s father was a two-star general. That put Elaine Casey in the same social set as Peggy Knowlton, also the wife of a general, and George Petraeus’s mother-in-law. When Casey was finishing Ranger School, his mother called him and told him to introduce himself to Petraeus who was headed to the 509^th Parachute Infantry, the unit Casey had just left. (page 21) 

USA Today

Ethnically Syrian, Gen. John Abizaid is a second-generation American whose foreign language in school was French. He learned Arabic later, completing his MA from Harvard in Middle Eastern Studies with a year at the University of Jordan in 1979-80. In 1985, Major Abizaid was assigned to a UN mission during the Israeli occupation of Lebanon. His experiences gave him an understanding of the problems that the US would face in Iraq. He believed that sectarian divisions, discord, and violence are endemic to the Middle East: no military solution is possible. He accepted the Powell Doctrine: crush the conventional forces of a conventional opponent and get out before you get bogged down in another Vietnam. As the commander of CENTCOM, Abizaid was responsible for the work of the other generals who were charged with delivering a successful conclusion to the invasion of Iraq.

Gen. George W. Casey, Jr. earned his BS in International Relations at Georgetown in 1970. An ROTC student, he expected to repay the army with four years and then go to law school.  Instead, he followed his father, Brig. Gen. George W. Casey, Sr., who was the commander of the 1^st Air Cavalry Division when he was killed in Vietnam. (His father also attended Georgetown, earning an MA in international relations in 1958 before completing an MBA at George Washington in 1965. Much more in Wikipedia, of course.) Casey, Jr., went on to complete his MA in international relations at the University of Denver in 1980.  “George had become an expert in navigating the middle ground between his Georgetown friends and his family. He generally supported the war [in Vietnam], but wasn’t the kind of person to get in arguments or begrudge his friends their opinions. Neither was his dad.” (pp. 6-7)

NBC News

Serving in Kosovo in 2000 was Casey’s experience in peacekeeping and counterinsurgency. Having labored to broker a ceasefire for one village, he saw the truce shattered when rifles and hand grenades were found in the home of the village mayor who had been on the negotiating committee. It taught Casey that the US military cannot keep the peace in a country that does not want the peace. But, like all soldiers, he served those who called.  “Just three months before the invasion [of Iraq] he assembled a small group of active and retired officers that was rushed to the Middle East to deal with electricity generation, clean water, and other expected postwar problems.” (p. 162)

Tasked with restoring the nation while fighting the insurgency, Casey’s plan was to draw the resistance into the government to defuse them, to make them part of the solution, and let them hassle out their problems within the structure of the government. That, too, failed.

Western political theory accepts majority rule that is always limited by constitutional law and tradition. That did not apply in Iraq. The authors do not mention that Saddam Hussein ruled like other strongmen by balancing his opponents against each other, while also favoring his power base. That meant oppressing the majority Shiites and minority Kurds, and giving power to the Sunnis. The fall of Saddam Hussein left the Sunnis at the mercy of the merciless Shiites who now controlled the government of Iraq.

Also here, the reader today can see the roots of the ISIS Caliphate. Back then, moderate Sunnis united with the Shiite authorities to fight radical Sunni Islamists from Al Qaeda who were making life hell for everyone. But it was too little, too late.

Conservative Treehouse

Peter Chiarelli earned his BS in political science at Seattle University where he did his ROTC. (He later completed a master’s in public administration at the University of Washington in 1980. He was granted an MA in national security strategy from Salve Regina University. Wikipedia.) Rejected three times for law school - poor at standardized tests, apparently - he entered the army. Sent on orders first to earn the master’s, Chiarelli was tapped for the social science department at West Point. He loved the challenge of teaching. He did not have to take a position personally in order to advocate it. In one class, he said that the US invited the attack at Pearl Harbor by encircling the Japanese and threatening them. Disagree as they did, the cadets were only allowed to argue back with facts. It was good training, both for them, and for him. 

Chiarelli’s goal in Iraq was to win the war by rebuilding the economy. Instead of big-ticket projects to highly-placed defense contractors like Bechtel, Chiarelli wanted many small projects paid for immediately to clean the streets of garbage, to restore electricity to neighborhoods, and to distribute clean water.  He was successful. Sunni fighters left their guns behind to do the simple and dirty work of civil engineering in their neighborhoods. When the money stopped, they went back to being insurgents, and life got worse for everyone. The Sunni grievances were real. Shiite death squads under the cover of government legitimacy as police and security forces pushed the Sunnis out of mixed neighborhoods. The government closed the only bank in Sadr City, forcing Sunnis to travel through deadly Shia territory. Gen. Chiarelli’s rebuilding faltered.

The Telegraph (UK)

General Petraeus was the most conventional of them though his winning strategy was contrary to the wisdom of the time. (Petraeus completed his doctorate from Princeton while he was teaching in the social science department at West Point.) Petraeus pushed for the deployment of 21,000 additional troops – called “The Surge” – to bolster the failing occupation. However, rather than stationing them in huge bases with swimming pools, and a BX the size of a Walmart, he placed them in 120 small detachments close to the civilians. They also worked as advisors and supporters to the Iraqi police and army who were tasked with keeping the peace. The first advantage was that the Iraqi people, civilians and military both, would stop seeing the occupying force as distant and aloof, but in and of them as collaborators. Moreover, the soldiers would come to know the people, not only gaining valuable intelligence, but also becoming less likely to stereotype the locals. More to the point, the strategy came with an exit policy: eventually, the US forces would minimize, and the Iraqi role would strengthen. The first happened. The second did not.

In the Middle Ages, military authority and civil authority were identical. As Europe reawakened, the military was subordinated to civilian control. Ever less often did dukes, kings, and emperors lead their troops into battle.The capture of Napoleon III at Sedan in 1871 was the dunce’s after school lesson. And military dictatorships are notoriously unsuccessful. So, the modern army carries out the orders it is given. The Second Gulf War was not just winnable: it was won. The fifth largest army in the world melted and evaporated. We then met them again in a new fog of war, a war that could not be won. Sometimes, being brilliantly intelligent is just not enough.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Leadership

Primary Leadership Training

Texas State Guard Basic Non-Commissioned Officer Course

Independence Day 2012

BNOC: Texas State Guard Basic Non-Commissioned Officer Course

BNOC is required of all non-commissioned officers seeking promotion from E-5 (“buck” sergeant) to E-6 (staff sergeant), in my case from Petty Officer 2^nd Class to Petty Officer 1^st Class.  The training is offered online, but I elected to take the live classroom presentation specifically because it is delivered by the US Air Force Joint Base San Antonio Leadership School at Lackland AFB.  That course was recommended to me by one of the Master Gunnery Sergeants in TMAR, the Texas Maritime Regiment of the Texas State Guard. The class exceeded my expectations.

In all, we had seven different presenters. Each was an expert in one or more fields, but all were instructors at the school and each had volunteered to work with us, in addition to their regular duties.

One of the Many Sights to See at Lackland AFB

The lectures were generally interactive. Questions were always encouraged. On the second day, we had more live exercises.  In many ways, these were similar to other management classes, a comment made, also, by one of my classmates who is working on another master’s degree, this one in administration. The focus, however, was on the military. Some of it was a bit foreign to the TXSG. Although about half of us are prior federal service, what we do seems to draw little from the Warrior Ethos. We take care of people.  However, in our battle books, taken from standard military reporting forms, we do list an enemy: the hurricane, flood, or wildfire. The introductory lecture pointed out that depression is an intangible enemy.

• Are leaders born or made?
• What are the characteristics of a good leader?
• What are the characteristics of a good follower?

Another Sight to See at Lackland AFB, 
Gateway to the Air Force

We explored the interactions between leaders and followers as we learned about contingency theory, skills theory, and transformation theory. We inventoried intrinsic and extrinsic values.

• What is personal power?
• What is positional power?
• What a referential leader? 
• How can you increase or decrease power? 
• If all else fails, can you play Rock, Scissors, Stripes?

We learned about Vision Statements and Mission Statements and were encouraged to look up the ones written by and for our own commands.

Team dynamics is an ongoing process involving interaction of individuals (within a team) to achieve a desired result.

Straight out of management theory we were presented with the six stages of a project: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, (Adjourning), and Transforming.  That transformation occurs to the team, its wider organization, and to the individual members of the team.

Everyone else in the class seemed pretty sure that we were a team because we had the same goal, passing the class.  I was not so sure.  For one thing, if that sergeant over there did not take good notes, if she let it go in one ear and out the other, I could still pass the class. More to the point, the set and setting did not provide either a motive or an opportunity to help that other noncom to be successful in this class.  It was a problem that I slept on.

Of course, we explored out own personality types. This class used the “True Colors” or “Four Lenses” temperament theory proposed by Don Lowry, which is apparently based on the Myer-Briggs.  I came out Green: independent, non-conforming, head over heart, data-driven, non-decisive, curious, complex, abstract, and logical. When we Greens created a poster to show our type, we started with an ice cube at the lower left taken by an arrow to a lightbulb at the upper right. Between them were the Starship Enterprise and CDR Spock, a broken heart, and a computer. “Ah!” the instructor said, “you Greens do not have feelings.” Oh, we have feelings, our leader replied. “We just don’t care about yours.”

Making Friends: Two of us were from TMAR

Then we had to devise a no-smoking campaign targeted at our opposites, the feely-squishy Blues.  “No one else is smoking,” we said. “And when you die, you will make everyone else sad.”

Coming back to Earth, we discussed the Oath of Enlistment and the Non-Commissioned Officer’s Creed, and how they define the core values of the profession of arms.

Finally, we debated several either-or propositions, such as “What happens TDY [temporary duty] stays TDY.”  At first we thought of the analogy to Las Vegas, but do we keep commendations secret? We also examined ethical traps such as relativism and the loyalty syndrome.

This was the most professional set of presentations that I have had in the Texas State Guard. My wife thought that I was there to teach. Explaining to her that I was there as a student, referring to the instructors, I called them professors.

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