Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2018 January 11

= January 11 =

US corporate executives in the 1950s versus now
I found this passage in Power Elite, a 1950s sociology book, on the contemporary corporate executive:

"Executive circles do not overlap very much with those of artistic or literary interest. Among them are those who resent reading a report or a letter longer than one page, such avoidance of words being rather general. They seem somehow suspicious of long-winded speeches, except when they are the speakers, and they do not, of course, have the time. They are very much of the age of the 'briefing,' of the digest, of the two- paragraph memo. Such reading as they do, they often delegate to others, who clip and summarize for them. They are talkers and listeners rather than readers or writers. They pick up much of what they know at the conference table and from friends in other fields."

This doesn't strike me as true now. Of course senior executives can't read everything but it does seem like executives spend a lot of their time now reading. Has the job of top corporate executive in the US changed in the last 60 years especially with regard to spending much more time reading? If there was this change, what caused it?

Muzzleflash (talk) 14:54, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Donald Trump, who is as stereotypical a "corporate executive" as any in the modern world, fits that exactly: "Trump’s indifference to the printed word has been apparent for some time, the depth and implications of Trump’s strong preference for oral communication over the written word demand closer examination...He didn’t process information in any conventional sense...He didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim...Trump won’t read anything—not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers, nothing..." from an article in The Atlantic which partially quotes others observations of Trump. Take that as you will, but your quote from the 1950s is commensutate with the behavior of the most famous corporate executive in the world today.  -- Jayron 32 14:59, 11 January 2018 (UTC)


 * One of my company's presidents, not too many years ago, said that he never wanted to see a given piece of paper more than once. And there's a reason a short intro to a more lengthy memo is still called an "executive summary". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:13, 11 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Halfway between then and now, Ricardo Semler says in Maverick that rule in Semco was that no memo should be more than one page. --ColinFine (talk) 16:57, 12 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Brian Krzanich, CEO of Intel: "I don't read. I don't read books. I don't have time". From Successful People who do not Read Books. 21:29, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Planet Names
Searching for the names addressed to the planets Could you help me please. 123.108.244.100 (talk) 16:43, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
 * To clarify, are you asking us what the names of fictional planets are? The pseudoscientist Zecharia Sitchin wrote about a fictional outer planet within our solar system and called it Nibiru. See also the article Nibiru cataclysm, which is about a supposed impending disastrous encounter between Earth and a large astronomical object, Planet Nine, and Planet X. &#40;&#40;&#40;The Quixotic Potato&#41;&#41;&#41; (talk) 16:51, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Right, generally if someone believes in Nibiru you can safely ignore anything they say about astronomy. There was hypothesis that a planet or small star might've been in a huge orbit of 26 million years causing regular mass extinctions like the one 65 million years ago by perturbing comets but it's not very viable. And even if it was 65 minus any number of 26es is not anywhere near now and such a planet would be discovered by infrared space telescopes long before it came close. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 17:39, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Are you interested only in Exoplanets? If so, you may be interested in the article Exoplanet naming convention. The names assigned so far are an interesting bunch, including: AEgir, Amateru, Arion, Arkas, Brahe, Dagon, Dimidium, Draugr, Dulcinea, Fortitudo, Galileo, Harriot, Hypatia, Janssen, Lipperhey, Majriti, Meztli, Orbitar, Phobetor, Poltergeist, Quijote, Rocinante, Saffar, Samh, Smertrios, Sancho, Spe, Tadmor, Taphao Kaew, Taphao Thong and Thestias. Bus stop (talk) 17:44, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

I know its a hypothesis. I am just unable to find the names of the seven satellites illustrated with the nemisis star. Could you help me with this please. 119.30.47.59 (talk) 16:58, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Maybe the article Nemesis (hypothetical star) would have relevant information but I haven't read the article. Bus stop (talk) 17:25, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Top 1% in Top Gun
At the beginning of the movie Top Gun it is stated, that only the top 1% of all pilots are admitted to the Top Gun training programm.

This seems VERY selective to me, given that the average pilot would be from the top 1% of the general population (that is just my assumption).

So selecting the top 1% of the top 1% would be...VERY selective.

I am not sure, if you can objectively distinguish within the top 1%.

Modern IQ-Test fail to distinguish within the very high range, so i would guess this would be the case for fighter pilots too.

A quick google search showed me only references to the movie. Are there official sources that Top Gun only accepts the top 1% of fighter pilots? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.51.158.134 (talk) 21:56, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
 * No. It is a movie (fiction). The real TOPGUN, you know, the United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program cannot afford to be that selective. It would give their opponents a huge advantage. &#40;&#40;&#40;The Quixotic Potato&#41;&#41;&#41; (talk) 22:08, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
 * According to this, there are roughly 10,000 Navy pilots in the U.S. currently. If it were the top 1%, that would mean roughly 100 pilots would be certified by the program.  That seems reasonable.  Furthermore, the U.S. Navy Website itself states directly that 1% of all Navy pilots take the program.  So even today, the quote checks out.  Officially, according to the U.S. Navy, they accept 1% of fighter pilots into the program in any given year.  That would imply that if an average fighter pilot had an active tour of duty of 3 years, then about 30ish pilots per year in the program would give us the 1% number.  I did find the smoking gun, as it were here.  If you go to page 42 of that document, you see that the TOPGUN program takes 39 trainees every fiscal year (or at least was doing so 10-15 years ago, when that document was published).  To a first approximation, that would mean that between 1-2% of active Navy pilots are TOPGUN trained at any one time.  Certainly close enough for our purposes.  The 1% number is essentially correct.  -- Jayron 32 03:57, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
 * You are talking about between 1-2% of active Navy pilots but the OP mentioned top 1% of all pilots, top 1% of the general population, top 1% of fighter pilots... &#40;&#40;&#40;The Quixotic Potato&#41;&#41;&#41; (talk) 04:06, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I've done a mostly Fermi calculation here, so I'm not expecting accuracy within better than an order of magnitude, but according to Navy documentation, which I just cited, TOPGUN takes 39 Navy pilots per year. Since you prodded, I checked my initial assumption of 3 years active duty.  I looked up the actual duty requirements of a Navy aviator, and it is 8 years active duty.  Given that there are 10,000 active Navy pilots, 39 pilots per year over an 8 year span would imply 39*8 = 300ish pilots would be TOPGUN trained; however that would assume those pilots went to TOPGUN as a rookie.  That seems unlikely, as the program only accepts seasoned, experienced pilots.  It's not unreasonable to expect TOPGUN students to have 4-5 years of active flight experience under their belt, which would imply about 3-4 years left.  3*39 = 100ish and 4*39 = 150ish Navy pilots out of the 10,000ish active Navy pilots at any one time.  If the OP wants to work out more scrupulous calculations, the data is in those sources: 39 TOPGUN students per class and 10,000 active Navy pilots.  The "top 1%" quote is a reasonable rough approximation by any measure.  But the raw numbers are there for you to work out.  Its in the sources.  -- Jayron 32 04:15, 13 January 2018 (UTC)