Episode #399 of This American Life discusses this.
I feel like this link was posted because last (current latest) podcast was this episode.
Yes this aired nationally on radio a few days ago and the poster failed to attribute. Faux pas.
Letters of Last Resort
21–30 of 53 posts
Re: Letters of Last Resort
#22Now that's a great job interview question, because it's sort of a programming problem that also shows how a candidate thinks: formulate a letter of last resort. Knowing they'd have to work for a range of unexpected catastrophic situations, what are the priorities going to be and how will you make sure they're implemented if nobody's there to oversee them?
Re: Letters of Last Resort
#23Out of curiosity, if some nuclear adversary decided to first-strike and wipe out England, how messed up would the UK be? It's a small, dense country, and (call me stupid), one armed nuclear sub could be wiped out fairly easily if we're talking about a power like this, right? Would all four, if armed, be able to do much damage back? I find the idea of letters of last resort fascinating...
Worth noting that the UK's nuclear deterrent is based in Scotland, not England. To get some idea of the likely outcome of a nuclear war for the UK I can suggest watching Threads : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threads One interesting thing about Threads is that it is based on a rather optimistic attack scenario based on an exercise called Square Leg: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Leg
"Worth noting that the UK's nuclear deterrent is based in Scotland, not England."
As a "Yes" voter I'm hoping we'll be able to send them back to England, preferably somewhere on the south coast.
Re: Letters of Last Resort
#24Now that 's a great job interview question, because it's sort of a programming problem that also shows how a candidate thinks: formulate a letter of last resort. Knowing they'd have to work for a range of unexpected catastrophic situations, what are the priorities going to be and how will you make sure they're implemented if nobody's there to oversee them?
In the last year, I've interviewed 7 different people in my company (4 engineers, two ISDs, and 2 SMEs). I've been wanting to improve my interview skills for quite some time, so I've been trying to add an open-ended question of this nature to my interviews. Each and every single person that I've interviewed, even when told in advance "This is a critical thinking question, there is no wrong answer" have failed to even speculate at an answer.
:(
Re: Letters of Last Resort
#25Now that 's a great job interview question, because it's sort of a programming problem that also shows how a candidate thinks: formulate a letter of last resort. Knowing they'd have to work for a range of unexpected catastrophic situations, what are the priorities going to be and how will you make sure they're implemented if nobody's there to oversee them?
In the last year, I've interviewed 7 different people in my company (4 engineers, two ISDs, and 2 SMEs). I've been wanting to improve my interview skills for quite some time, so I've been trying to add an open-ended question of this nature to my interviews. Each and every single person that I've interviewed, even when told in advance "This is a critical thinking question, there is no wrong answer" have failed to even…
I guess it depends on the mood of the rest of the interview. If it's all about getting a slew of technical quizzes right, chances are people will be intimidated or pissed-off by an open-ended question at the end. However, if the interview is more a "getting-to-know-each-other" thing that is free-form in general, this works much better. And I might be biased, but I think that's also a more productive style to interview in general.
Getting tech knowledge right is something that doesn't transfer well between interviews and real work, so having them code and work under real-life conditions is a preferable procedure anyway. Like I said, I might be biased, but the best predictor for good work is, you know, good work ;) So in a shop that follows this philosophy, the interview becomes more of a first stage to determine if it makes sense to do one or more test work days.
Re: Letters of Last Resort
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
one armed nuclear sub could be wiped out fairly easily if we're talking about a power like this, right? No. The idea of ballistic missile submarines like this (and those also operated by the US, France and Russia) is that they should be impossible to find when on patrol.
It's a bit embarrassing that a UK and French ballistic missiles submarines actually collided while on patrol: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Vanguard_and_Le_Triomphant_... A US missile submarine also collided with a Russian attack submarine in 1992: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_Incident_off_Kildin_i...
That suggests they are hard to find, if they can't even see each other?
Re: Letters of Last Resort
#27After the Hundred Years' War, it's kind of ironic to see that one of the possible orders for the last-resort British weapon is to place itself under French command.
Things have changed quite a bit in the past 600 years.
Re: Letters of Last Resort
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Worth noting that the UK's nuclear deterrent is based in Scotland, not England. To get some idea of the likely outcome of a nuclear war for the UK I can suggest watching Threads : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threads One interesting thing about Threads is that it is based on a rather optimistic attack scenario based on an exercise called Square Leg: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Leg
"Worth noting that the UK's nuclear deterrent is based in Scotland, not England." As a "Yes" voter I'm hoping we'll be able to send them back to England, preferably somewhere on the south coast.
I doubt the voters in the constituency's in the areas hosting the bases will be very happy at losing a very well paid jobs
And I am sure that some of the depressed areas of southern England woudl welcome these jobs with open arms - theres already suspicion that English dock workers where made redundant to protect Scottish jobs.
Re: Letters of Last Resort
#29Hennessy's book also mentions the possible involvement of the RAC or AA (can't remember which, but presumably the RAC) as part of the comms network for controlling the UK's nuclear capability.
Off the top of my head, I think the idea was that, if the PM was out and about, he would make use of an RAC phone box (just like the police had TARDIS-like phone boxes, so did the breakdown rescue organisations) to issue instructions. A typically British, cobbled-together solution to some otherwise complex requirement.
Re: Letters of Last Resort
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the last year, I've interviewed 7 different people in my company (4 engineers, two ISDs, and 2 SMEs). I've been wanting to improve my interview skills for quite some time, so I've been trying to add an open-ended question of this nature to my interviews. Each and every single person that I've interviewed, even when told in advance "This is a critical thinking question, there is no wrong answer" have failed to even…
I guess it depends on the mood of the rest of the interview. If it's all about getting a slew of technical quizzes right, chances are people will be intimidated or pissed-off by an open-ended question at the end. However, if the interview is more a "getting-to-know-each-other" thing that is free-form in general, this works much better. And I might be biased, but I think that's also a more productive style to intervie…
If it's all about getting a slew of technical quizzes right, chances are people will be intimidated or pissed-off by an open-ended question at the end.
^ That would be a really annoying shift of gears in an interview, particularly if the sudden open ended question seemed to have no relevance to the gig being interviewed for.
At least I would probably be pretty annoyed and give really ridiculous answers/possibilities. But having interviewed people myself, I tend to grade my interest in a job by how the interview is given, and will cut the line if I think the person in charge of interviewing doesn't know what they are interviewing for/why they are asking the questions they are asking.