The connection may not be immediately apparent, but I think Philip Greenspun's article critiquing Malcolm Gladwell's musings on cranial metrics etc. has some bearing: http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/foreign-airline-safety ...or is at least an interesting read. In observing network operations screw-ups, I've seen a lot that were either caused by, or prolonged by, a culture-of-emergency. Young guys drinking way too much coffee, working a service window at two in the morning, believing they've seen something that needs to be fixed, and winging it. In building networks, I've tried very hard to engineer things such that the operating procedure for dealing with an "emergency" is to note its existence and place it in a work queue to be dealt with by people who are on a day shift, have just come in from a full night's sleep, and are working in a team with senior people who can assist with anything tricky, and make sure that junior folks are following proceedures that have been worked out in advance by people who had plenty of time in a lab, and plenty of time to choose the best of many alternative procedures. In my experience, reducing the frequency of emergencies is most beneficial in reducing the frequency of outages. :-) -Bill