Why Daydreaming Makes You Smarter and More Creative

Monday, June 11th, 2012

Jonah Lehrer explains why daydreaming makes you smarter and more creative:

a hundred and forty-five undergraduate students were given a standard test of creativity known as an “unusual use” task, in which they had two minutes to list as many uses as possible for mundane objects such as toothpicks, bricks, and clothes hangers.

Subjects were then given a twelve-minute break. During this time, they were randomly assigned to three different conditions: resting in a quiet room, performing a difficult short-term memory task, or doing something so boring that it would elicit mind-wandering. Following this interlude, the subjects were given another round of creative tests, including the unusual-use tasks they had worked on only a few minutes before.

Here’s where things get interesting: those students assigned to the boring task performed far better when asked to come up with additional uses for everyday items to which they had already been exposed. Given new items, all the groups did the same. Given repeated items, the daydreamers came up with forty-one per cent more possibilities than students in the other conditions.

What does this mean? Schooler argues that it’s clear evidence that those twelve minutes of daydreaming allowed the subjects to invent additional possibilities, as their unconscious minds pondered new ways to make use of toothpicks. This is why the effect was limited to those items that the subjects had previously been asked about—the question needed to marinate in the mind, “incubating” in those subterranean parts of the brain we can barely control.

On a more practical note, the scientists argue that their data show why “creative solutions may be facilitated specifically by simple external tasks that maximize mind-wandering.” The benefit of these simple tasks is that they consume just enough attention to keep us occupied, while leaving plenty of mental resources left over for errant daydreams. (When people are left alone, such as those subjects forced to sit by themselves, they tend to perseverate on their problems. Unfortunately, all this focus backfires.) Consider the ping-pong tables that now seem to exist in the lobby of every Silicon Valley startup. While it’s easy to dismiss such interior decorations as mere whimsy, the game turns out to be an ideal mind-wandering activity, at least when played casually. Another task that consistently leads to extended bouts of daydreaming is reading Tolstoy. In Schooler’s earlier work on mind-wandering, he gave subjects a boring passage from “War and Peace.” The undergraduates began zoning out within seconds.

Although Schooler has previously demonstrated a correlation between daydreaming and creativity—those who are more prone to mind-wandering tend to be better at generating new ideas, at least in the lab—this new paper shows that our daydreams seem to serve a similar function as night dreams, facilitating bursts of creative insight. Take a 2004 paper published in Nature by the neuroscientists Ullrich Wagner and Jan Born. The researchers gave a group of students a tedious task that involved transforming a long list of number strings into a new set of number strings. Wagner and Born designed the task so that there was an elegant shortcut, but it could only be uncovered if the subject had an insight about the problem. When people were left to their own devices, less than twenty per cent of them found the shortcut, even when given several hours to mull over the task. The act of dreaming, however, changed everything: after people were allowed to lapse into R.E.M. sleep, nearly sixty per cent of them discovered the secret pattern. Kierkegaard was right: sleeping is the height of genius.

Posted in Science | No Comments »

Stand, Move, or Seek Cover?

Monday, June 11th, 2012

Stand, move, or seek cover? What works in a gunfight? Greg Ellifritz decided to run a little experiment — using “Code Eagle” brand paintball cartridges in .38 revolvers:

In the first phase of the experiment, shooters were given orders to fire their two rounds at each other as quickly as possible after a surprise start signal was given. I instructed the students to remain stationary during the simulated gunfight. Absolutely no movement of the feet was allowed. Phase two was identical to the first phase, except that students were allowed free movement (forward, backward, or lateral) after I gave the surprise start signal. In phase three, students started a step away from one of two fifty-five gallon steel drums. These drums were to simulate cover. On the start command, students were instructed to move to their steel drum and use it for cover while engaging their respective adversaries.

A total of nineteen students participated in the experiment. One hundred fourteen rounds were fired, with thirty-eight rounds fired per phase. I tracked and compared hit percentages during all three phases, differentiating between hits on the torso and the more peripheral hits on the arms and legs. The data are as follows:

Phase Hit Rate Torso hits
Standing 85% 51%
Moving 47% 11%
Using Cover 26% 6%

The students who participated in my study were as surprised by the results as I was. We all expected that movement and the use of cover would reduce the hit rates of the rounds fired. We were astonished, however, at how much difference moving and seeking cover made. The difference in hit rates between standing and moving cannot be explained away by a lack of skills by the shooters. Each shooter had extensively practiced shooting on the move, with most being able to hit a twelve-inch steel plate on demand any distance inside of fifty feet while moving. Similarly, these students are adept at hitting a moving target while standing still. The critical factor seemed to be the difficulty the shooter experienced in hitting a moving target while moving his own body at the same time. This clearly identifies a need for additional training and highlights the critical importance of making yourself a moving target during a gunfight. If highly trained shooters hit their opponents’ torsos with only eleven percent of rounds fired, imagine how much worse the average street thug with no training and minimal experience will perform under similar conditions!

It is also clear that when students used cover they fared even better than they did while moving. The hit rates would be far less than reported if several students didn’t break cover and retreat after running out of ammunition during the drill. Most of the hits occurred when this happened. Proper use of cover almost eliminated the chance of being hit.

One other critical statistic needs to be noted. Thirteen percent of the hits across all phases of the experiment struck the hands or guns of the person at which they were fired. This indicates a strong focus on the threat being directed against the shooter and a lack of attention to the front sight, creating some implications for future training. These shooters are strongly indoctrinated in the use of their weapon sights for most shooting situations. Even when shooting fast, they generally utilize a “flash” sight picture when shooting on targets. Even with extensive practice, very few students reported seeing their sights in this experiment. Not wanting to bring up the dreaded “point shooting versus sighted fire” debate in this forum, I’ll simply say that we as trainers need to do some more work. We need to find a better solution to allow our students to hit their targets with a greater percentage of rounds during the stressful, fast-evolving nature of a gunfight. Whatever that solution is, be it training in point shooting techniques, an enhanced sighted shooting curriculum, or stress-inoculating scenario-based training, it is our collective responsibility as trainers to find it.

It was interesting to note that some of the shooters in the above experiment shot with only one hand despite doing the majority of their training from a two-handed platform. When asked why they had done this, most were unaware that they had fired one-handed. Their bodies seemed to be on autopilot, self-selecting what was perceived to be the fastest way to get their guns on target. This fact, combined with the prevalence of hits on the hands or guns of the shooters indicates that we should focus much more of our time training one-hand shooting, hand transitions, and support-hand shooting techniques. We should also emphasize the importance of carrying secondary weapons in case our primary gun becomes inoperative after taking a bullet.

Posted in War, Weapons | No Comments »

How a Zombie Outbreak Could Happen in Real Life

Monday, June 11th, 2012

Ed Grabianowski suggests how a zombie outbreak could (semi-plausibly) happen:

In virtually every zombie scenario, zombies are able to function despite increasing levels of physical deterioration due to injury or decomposition. There has to be some mechanism for transmitting neural impulses from the brain to various body parts, and for providing energy to muscles so they can keep operating.

The most common science fictional explanation for zombie outbreaks is a virus — but viruses and bacterial infections are not known for building large new physical structures within the body. So let’s count viruses out. Instead, the need for a mechanism to activate deteriorating body parts actually provides the cornerstone of what is, in my opinion, the strongest theory: fungal infection.

We know that fungi can infect humans. We also know that fungal networks exist in most of the world’s forests. These mycorrhizal networks have a symbiotic relationship with trees and other plants in the forest, exchanging nutrients for mutual benefit. These networks can be quite large, and there are studies that demonstrate the potential for chemical signals to be transmitted from one plant to another via the mycorrhizal network. That, in turn, means that fungal filaments could perform both vascular and neural functions within a corpse.

This leads us to the following scenario: microscopic spores are inhaled, ingested, or transmitted via zombie bite. The spores are eventually dispersed throughout the body via the bloodstream. Then they lie dormant. When the host dies, chemical signals (or, more accurately, the absence of chemical signals) within the body that occur upon death trigger the spores to activate, and begin growing. The ensuing fungal network carries nutrients to muscles in the absence of respiration or normal metabolism.

Part of the fungal network grows within the brain, where it interfaces with the medulla and cerebellum, as well as parts of the brain involving vision, hearing and possibly scent. Chemicals released by the fungi activate basic responses within these brain areas. The fungi/brain interface is able to convert the electrochemical signals of neurons into chemical signals that can be transmitted along the fungal network that extends through much of the body. This signal method is slow and imperfect, which results in the uncoordinated movements of zombies. And this reliance on the host’s brain accounts for the “headshot” phenomenon, in which grievous wounds to the brain or spine seem to render zombies fully inert.

Posted in Media, Science | 3 Comments »

10 Best Changes Game of Thrones Made to A Clash of Kings

Sunday, June 10th, 2012

Charlie Jane Anders lists the 10 best changes Game of Thrones made to A Clash of Kings. I’m not as impressed with the changes.

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Training vs. Experience

Sunday, June 10th, 2012

The FBI put out Violent Encounters: A Study of Felonious Assaults on Our Nation’s Law Enforcement Officers after identifying 40 cases of serious attacks on police officers and then interviewing both the officers and the attackers in each case about the training they received, the weapons they used, their practice habits, and their attitudes towards violence:

The first thing that the researchers learned is that our assumptions about criminals not training are wrong. Nearly 40% of the criminal attackers in this study had received FORMAL firearms training (mostly in the military). More than 80% of the criminal attackers regularly practiced with their firearms, with an average number of 23 Practice Sessions Per Year! They conducted these practice sessions in trash dumps, wooded areas, back yards and “street corners in known drug trafficking areas”. What that means is that the practice sessions were taking place in realistic environments, under conditions similar to those the attackers were likely to face in combat.

[...]

The cops involved in these incidents all had some type of formal training at their departments, but on average, only fired their guns 2.5 times per year. All of that training was conducted on a static shooting range that had little relevance to the environmental conditions where the cops actually fought.

[...]

More than 40% of the criminals identified in the study had at least one gunfight experience before attacking the officer. 25% of the attackers had been involved in more than five gunfights!

[...]

Take a look at this guy. He was 29 years old when he was killed by a homeowner during a home invasion. He had previously been shot in 10 other incidents and survived! Do you think that he might have picked up a few insights about gunfighting during some of those shootings?

I train cops for a living. Its my job to talk to cops about what works and what doesn’t. I don’t currently know a single cop who has been involved in 10 on-the-job gunfights.

The officers in the Violent Encounters study had far less actual experience. Less than 25% of the officers had been involved in a shooting incident before their attacks. The largest number of shootings in which any of the officers had been involved was three. On average, each officer had been involved in four incidents in which they were legally justified in shooting a criminal, but they chose not to shoot.

Both groups had different attitudes as a result of their differing levels of training and experience. The officers went out of their way to avoid gunfights. The study noted “It appeared clear that none of the officers were willing to use deadly force against an opponent if other options were available.”

Contrast that with the attitude of their attackers. The report noted “Offenders typically displayed no moral or ethical restraints in using firearms…In fact, the street combat veterans survived by developing a shoot- first mentality.”

Posted in Crime, Weapons | 1 Comment »

Patio Man and the Sprawl People

Saturday, June 9th, 2012

Before he became a “conservative” columnist for the New York Times, David Brooks wrote pieces like Patio Man and the Sprawl People:

If you stand on a hilltop overlooking a Sprinkler City, you see, stretched across the landscape, little brown puffs here and there where bulldozers are kicking up dirt while building new townhomes, office parks, shopping malls, AmeriSuites guest hotels, and golf courses. Everything in a Sprinkler City is new. The highways are so clean and freshly paved you can eat off them. The elementary schools have spic and span playgrounds, unscuffed walls, and immaculate mini-observatories for just-forming science classes.

The lawns in these places are perfect. It doesn’t matter how arid the local landscape used to be, the developers come in and lay miles of irrigation tubing, and the sprinklers pop up each evening, making life and civilization possible.

The roads are huge. The main ones, where the office parks are, have been given names like Innovation Boulevard and Entrepreneur Avenue, and they’ve been built for the population levels that will exist a decade from now, so that today you can cruise down these flawless six lane thoroughfares in traffic-less nirvana, and if you get a cell phone call you can just stop in the right lane and take the call because there’s no one behind you. The smaller roads in the residential neighborhoods have pretentious names — in Loudoun County I drove down Trajan’s Column Terrace — but they too are just as smooth and immaculate as a blacktop bowling alley. There’s no use relying on a map to get around these places, because there’s no way map publishers can keep up with the construction.

The town fathers try halfheartedly to control sprawl, and as you look over the landscape you can see the results of their ambivalent zoning regulations. The homes aren’t spread out with quarter-acre yards, as in the older, close-in suburbs. Instead they are clustered into pseudo-urban pods. As you scan the horizon you’ll see a densely packed pod of townhouses, then a stretch of a half mile of investor grass (fields that will someday contain 35,000-square-foot Fresh-Mex restaurants but for now are being kept fallow by investors until the prices rise), and then another pod of slightly more expensive detached homes just as densely packed.

The developments in the southeastern Sprinkler Cities tend to have Mini-McMansion Gable-gable houses. That is to say, these are 3,200-square-foot middle-class homes built to look like 7,000-square-foot starter palaces for the nouveau riche. And on the front at the top, each one has a big gable, and then right in front of it, for visual relief, a little gable jutting forward so that it looks like a baby gable leaning against a mommy gable.

These homes have all the same features as the authentic McMansions of the mid-’90s (as history flows on, McMansions come to seem authentic), but significantly smaller. There are the same vaulted atriums behind the front doors that never get used, and the same open kitchen/two-story great rooms with soaring palladian windows. But in the middle-class knockoffs, the rooms are so small, especially upstairs, that a bedroom or a master-bath suite would fit inside one of the walk-in closets of a real McMansion.

In the Southwest the homes tend to be tile and stucco jobs, with tiny mousepad lawns out front, blue backyard spas in the back, and so much white furniture inside that you have to wear sunglasses indoors. As you fly over the Sprinkler Cities you begin to see the rough pattern — a little pseudo-urbanist plop of development, a blank field, a plop, a field, a plop. You also notice that the developers build the roads and sewage lines first and then fill in the houses later, so from the sky you can see cul de sacs stretching off into the distance with no houses around them.

Then, cutting through the landscape are broad commercial thoroughfares with two-tier, big-box malls on either side. In the front tier is a line of highly themed chain restaurants that all fuse into the same Macaroni Grill Olive Outback Cantina Charlie Chiang’s Dave & Buster’s Cheesecake Factory mélange of peppy servers, superfluous ceiling fans, free bread with olive oil, and taco salad entrees. In the 21st-century migration of peoples, the food courts come first and the huddled masses follow.

Posted in Urbanism | No Comments »

A Parent’s Guide to School Shootings

Saturday, June 9th, 2012

Most schools have settled on the “lockdown” as the centerpiece of their strategy for responding to a shooting:

Lockdowns are generally helpful if the school is located in an area with a rapidly responding police force. They provide temporary marginal protection for students and teachers and deny some areas to potential shooters. They also allow rapidly responding police officers to find and neutralize the threat in the school. Lockdowns can also be used to protect students from a threat that has not yet entered the school. They are often triggered to deny entry to an armed criminal who is fleeing from police in the vicinity of a school.

The problem with lockdowns is not with the concept, but with the execution. Most schools do not train for any exigency except the lockdown. They lock students down in poorly defensible positions and don’t tell students and teachers what to do if the lockdown fails or is breached. In essence, there is no “Plan B.” If the students can’t quickly lock themselves down or a police response is delayed, there is no other plan. Students and teachers must just cower in fear and hope that they will be rescued. That’s unacceptable.

Lockdowns have failed in the past. The shooter in Red Lake, Minnesota killed an unarmed security guard purposely to trigger a lockdown. He wanted the lockdown so that he could easily find and target the victims he most wanted to kill. After the lockdown was triggered, he went to the classroom where he knew his victims would be hiding, shot a hole in the glass window of the door and entered the locked down room. He then killed the teacher and five students before he was shot by police.

Students at Virginia Tech attempted unsuccessfully to lock down individual classrooms once they knew a shooter was prowling the halls. Only one classroom out of the three that attempted this tactic was able to deny entry to the shooter.

Some other issues that come into play (but are rarely considered by school administrators) are the following:

  • What if the classroom door cannot be locked from the inside?
  • What happens if the shooter pulls the fire alarm during a lockdown?
  • What should teachers do if the shooter has a hostage and is threatening to kill him or her unless the lockdown is breached?
  • How should severe medical emergencies be handled in a locked down classroom?
  • Is there any plan to evacuate gunshot victims safely?
  • What should the teachers and students do if the door to the locked down room is breached by the shooter?
  • What are teachers instructed to do if the shooter kills a staff member and takes a master key or ID card that gives him access to the entire school?
  • How would a school administrator respond if an armed student orders the administrator to give the “all clear” signal to end the lockdown?
  • Some school shooters have utilized explosives to augment their primary weapons. What should locked down students do if the school becomes structurally unstable due to the effects of any bombs that the shooter has placed?

As a parent, you should confer with school officials to verify that they have plans to address any such contingencies. If they don’t, your child isn’t likely to be safe in the event a shooter enters the school!

In studying every school shooting that has occurred in the United States, as well as many that have happened in other parts of the world, I have come to the conclusion that escaping the school is the best option for individual students in a school shooting situation. Virtually all students who get out of the school (even if they have already been shot) survive.

In the Virginia Tech shooting, the students who did not get shot were those who jumped out of a window or ran to another part of the building. Most of the students who attempted to lock down the room, hide, or play dead were shot. There are many other examples of fleeing students surviving while their counterparts who locked down in a room were shot.

[...]

You must also teach your children to avoid denial. In Virginia Tech, students rationalized the sounds of gunfire as construction noises. Students in Columbine initially thought the gunfire was caused by firecrackers being lit as a student prank. The students at Beslan, Russia, thought balloons were popping. Students and teachers in shooting events universally express the thought that “I couldn’t believe it was happening.” This denial and rationalization leads to a paralysis. The waiting for verification of actual gunfire takes time that can better be used to escape.

Instruct your children that if they are in a school and think they hear gunfire, they shouldn’t await instructions. They can’t delay while trying to figure out what’s happening. If they think it’s gunfire, empower them to ACT! Immediately escape! The people in active shooter events who wait around to be sure that the noises they are hearing are actually gunfire typically delay so long that they no longer have any viable options except locking down.

I’m pretty sure I heard firecrackers going off and balloons popping any number of times in my childhood, and streaking toward cover was (thankfully) never the correct response.

Posted in Crime | No Comments »

UFC’s Nick Ring breaks up mugging

Saturday, June 9th, 2012

UFC middleweight Nick Ring recently broke up a mugging:

“I was leaving Starbucks last night in Calgary, and I see a big group of, uh, I don’t know what you want to call them — wannabe gangster guys — beating up a couple,” Ring told MMAjunkie.com Radio. “It was a boyfriend-girlfriend. They were beating them up and robbing them, basically. It was 10 against two. It didn’t look right. I pulled the car over and everything to see one of them kneeing a girl in the face. I’m not even joking. It was so hardcore, I can’t even tell you.

“I get out of the car, and I yell, ‘What’s going here?’ The girl takes off, rips this other girl’s backpack away from her, and the whole group of them, the 10 of them, they run down the street. I went to check on the two, and they got their faces cut open, and they’re bleeding everywhere. It was me and another stranger who just arrived on the scene.”

Once Ring established that the victims weren’t facing life-threatening injuries, he made a split-second decision, but one he said really didn’t require much thought. Ring and the stranger took off after the assailants.

“We just looked at each other, and we said to each other, ‘Let’s go get them,’” Ring said. “We ran after them. We tackled one of them, and we called the police. The police came, and I got into another little foot chase with them as I was on the phone with the police.”

Ring, who said the assailants appeared to be in their late teens, said the group stayed close by while waiting to learn the fate of the one member of the group who was tackled. That allowed Ring to direct police in their direction, as well as aid in a secondary chase. Seven of the 10 attackers were eventually nabbed.

“They need to be straightened out,” Ring said. “This is not behavior that can be condoned. And you know what? Turning a blind eye to it, and this goes for everyone in society, don’t turn a blind eye to it. If you see something wrong, you go out there, and you straighten it out. The cops are there to help out, as well, but you’ve got to call them.”

Posted in Crime, Martial Arts | 2 Comments »

Sinking the Yorktown

Friday, June 8th, 2012

Yahachi Tanabe, former Lieutenant Commander in the Imperial Japanese Navy, explains how he sank the Yorktown at Midway:

Abaft my beam, each about 1,000 yards distant, were a pair of American destroyers, one to port, one to starboard. I-168 had safely pierced the protective screen of escorts; I could now give the order to fire.

Then I took another look. Yorktown and her hugging destroyer filled my periscope lens. I was too close! At that moment I estimated my range at 600 yards or less. It was necessary to come around and open up the range.

What I had to do now was try to escape detection by those destroyers above us and get far enough away so that my torpedoes, fired from a 60-foot depth, would have enough running space to stabilize themselves at a 19-foot depth for hitting. Whatever was the reason, enemy sound detectors could no longer be picked up by our equipment, I knew the destroyermen above were not asleep.

I kept I-168 in a right-hand circle, easing the rudder a little so that I could return to my original track at a point about one mile from Yorktown. I didn’t dare put up the periscope until the compass showed us back on our original course. So I concentrated instead on a torpedo tactic I wanted to use. Though some submarines in 1942 had Model 95 torpedoes — underwater versions of the very powerful Model 93 “Long Lance” used on surface ships — my torpedoes were an older type. Model 95′s had 991-pound warheads, mine had 446-pound ones. So I planned to make two torpedoes into one.

If I followed the usual procedure and fired my four torpedoes with a two-degree spread, they would cover six degrees. But I wanted very badly to deprive the Americans of this carrier. I intended to limit my salvo to a two degree spread I would fire No.1 and No.2 first, then send No.3 and No.4 in their wakes, on the same courses. That way, I could achieve two large hits instead of four small ones. I could thus deliver all my punch into the carrier’s midsection, rather than spread it out along her hull.

When I was back on my approach course, I took another look, and wagged my head at how the destroyers still seemed unaware of us. Either they were poor sailors, had poor equipment, or I-168 was a charmed vessel. At a range of 1,200 yards, my periscope up, I sent my four torpedoes away as planned. I did not lower the periscope then, either. The wakes of my torpedoes could be seen, so their source could be quickly established. And, if I-168 was going to die, I at least wanted the satisfaction of seeing whether our fish hit home.

Less than a minute later we heard the explosions. “Banzai!” someone shouted. “Go ahead at full speed!” I ordered, then, “Take her down to 200 feet!” My conning tower officers were surprised when I ordered speed cut back to three knots a short time afterward, but by that time we were where I wanted to be, directly beneath the enemy carrier. I didn’t think she would sink at once, so had no fear of her coming down on us. And one of our torpedoes had run shallow and hit the destroyer alongside Yorktown. There would be men in the water. Her destroyers wouldn’t risk dropping depth charges for awhile, for fear of killing their comrades. Meanwhile, I hoped to creep out of there. I ordered left rudder, and tried to ease away at three knots.

My plan didn’t work.

Posted in War | No Comments »

Triangle Of Death

Friday, June 8th, 2012

A police rumor had it that street gangs were going to shoot cops at night by aiming at the Triangle Of Death, the bright white patch of t-shirt above the bulletproof vest:

On the indoor range of his department, Mundelein (IL) PD, an agency of 50 sworn in a suburb northwest of Chicago, [Cmdr. Michael Richards] positioned a 6 ft.-tall mannequin target, buttoned a blue uniform shirt on it, and slipped a sheet of white, legal-sized paper behind the shirt so that just enough was exposed at the top to simulate a bit of T-shirt.

He then dimmed the lighting to resemble “what you’d find in an older residential neighborhood, with some streetlamps and a lot of heavy trees,” he told Force Science News. “You could make out the target, but you had to strain to really see what was going on.” In other words, a lot like normal nighttime patrol conditions in many areas. From the control booth, Richards says, “the contrast between the patch of white paper and the dark shirt was really obvious.”

One at a time, he brought in a series of randomly selected officers he knew, as the department’s rangemaster, to be “average” shooters. “They typically qualify with low numbers, don’t necessarily like to shoot and go to the range only because they have to,” he explained. “I figured they’d be like the typical suspect who gets into a shooting with an officer — not overly proficient with a handgun. I didn’t want any of the top shooters involved.”

Explaining only that this was a “quick course in low-light shooting” so as not to tip off the true point of the test, Richards led each officer to a spot about 10 feet in front of the target. He told each to draw at the sound of a timer buzzer, step to the left or to the right, come up on target, fire 3 rounds as fast as possible, then scan the area. By incorporating movement, scanning and time pressure, “I wanted to distract them from thinking too much about the target.”

Each officer fired a total of 18 rounds (6 sets of 3 shots apiece), using his duty pistol (either a .40-cal. Glock or a Sig). After an officer finished, the “T-shirt” was changed before the next test subject was brought in.

“The shot placement was shocking” when he analyzed the results, Richards says. “On our department we train to shoot center mass, usually using flat, 2-dimensional targets on a fully lit range. In training, our shots consistently tend to go to the center. If officers are shooting at high speed, their rounds may drop down toward the stomach, but they don’t often go higher.”

In his low-light experiment, by contrast, more than 80% of the shots across all the officers and all sets of fire hit in or immediately around the Triangle of Death simulated by the peek of white paper. In other words, Richards concluded, in low light they overrode their training and focused their shots on what was most vividly visible. All the officers confirmed in a post-shooting debrief that the patch of white had drawn their aim.

They switched to dark t-shirts. (The other option would be to put a brightly colored symbol over their armor.)

Posted in Crime, Weapons | No Comments »

Will Truckers Ditch Diesel for Natural Gas?

Friday, June 8th, 2012

Diesel prices are up, and natural-gas prices are down.  Will truckers ditch diesel for natural gas?

Rising diesel costs last year forced Waste Management Inc. to charge customers an extra $169 million, just to keep its garbage trucks fueled. This year, the nation’s biggest trash hauler has a new defensive strategy: it is buying trucks that will run on cheaper natural gas.

In fact, the company says 80% of the trucks it purchases during the next five years will be fueled by natural gas. Though the vehicles cost about $30,000 more than conventional diesel models, each will save $27,000-a-year or more in fuel, says Eric Woods, head of fleet logistics for Waste Management. By 2017, the company expects to burn more natural gas than diesel.

“The economics favoring natural gas are overwhelming,” says Scott Perry, a vice president at Ryder Systems Inc.,  one of the nation’s largest truck-leasing companies and a transporter for the grocery, automotive, electronics and retail industries.

The shale gas revolution, which cut the price of natural gas by about 45% over the past year, already has triggered a shift by the utility industry to natural gas from coal. Vast amounts of natural gas in shale rock formations have been unlocked by improved drilling techniques, making the fuel cheap and plentiful across the U.S.

[...]

Although the U.S. has loads of natural gas, adoption of natural gas vehicles has been spotty. Less than 0.1% of vehicles on American roads burn the fuel today and the percentage sagged slightly from 2005 to 2010, when federal policies encouraging their use waned. The number began edging up last year, lifted by market forces.

Meanwhile, in the Asia-Pacific region, natural gas vehicle sales have grown at an average annual clip of 42% during the past decade, according to NGV Global, a trade group formed in 1986 to promote gas-friendly policies. Pakistan led the list in 2010 with 2.7 million natural gas vehicles, though many are tiny tuk-tuks, out of a total of 13 million natural gas vehicles worldwide. The U.S. came in 14th with 112,000 natural gas vehicles.

[...]

The potential market is enormous. The 3.2 million big rigs on U.S. roads today burn some 25 billion gallons of diesel annually. Almost 7 million single-unit trucks, such as UPS or FedEx Corp. trucks, consume another 10 billion gallons of diesel.

Converting even a modest number of these trucks, which often get 5 to 8 miles a gallon, to natural gas could save significant amounts of money. Tailpipe emissions also would drop, since natural gas burns cleaner than diesel or gasoline.

If large numbers of fleet operators decided to embrace natural gas, it could rev up truck manufacturing, which slowed dramatically during the recession. North American heavy duty truck sales peaked in 2006 with 360,000 units, just ahead of tighter emission standards, and plunged to 110,000 units in 2009.

Noel Perry, principal at Transport Fundamentals Inc., a trucking research company in Lebanon, Penn., says one disadvantage of natural gas is that it isn’t as dense as diesel. CNG is only 25% as dense and LNG is 60% as dense. That means trucks need more tanks or bigger tanks to go as far, or they must refuel more often. That’s not a big deal for city buses or delivery trucks that go back to home base each night, where they can refuel. But it’s a problem for trucks that drive unpredictable routes or venture out into the hinterland.

As a meta note, I find it interesting how the vital information — the list of trade-offs between diesel and natural gas — comes at the end of the article.

Posted in Business, Technology | 1 Comment »

An Alternate Look at Handgun Stopping Power

Thursday, June 7th, 2012

Greg Ellifritz has been interested in handgun stopping power for some time, and now he’s done his own research:

I think the most interesting statistic is the percentage of people who stopped with one shot to the torso or head. There wasn’t much variation between calibers. Between the most common defensive calibers (.38, 9mm, .40, and .45) there was a spread of only eight percentage points. No matter what gun you are shooting, you can only expect a little more than half of the people you shoot to be immediately incapacitated by your first hit.

The average number of rounds until incapacitation was also remarkably similar between calibers. All the common defensive calibers required around 2 rounds on average to incapacitate.

Something else to look at here is the question of how fast can the rounds be fired out of each gun. The .38 SPL probably has the slowest rate of fire (long double action revolver trigger pulls and stout recoil in small revolvers) and the fewest rounds fired to get an incapacitation (1.87). Conversely the 9mm can probably be fired fastest of the common calibers and it had the most rounds fired to get an incapacitation (2.45). The .40 (2.36) and the .45 (2.08) split the difference.

It is my personal belief that there really isn’t much difference between each of these calibers. It is only the fact that some guns can be fired faster than others that causes the perceived difference in stopping power. If a person takes an average of 5 seconds to stop after being hit, the defender who shoots a lighter recoiling gun can get more hits in that time period. It could be that fewer rounds would have stopped the attacker (given enough time) but the ability to fire more quickly resulted in more hits being put onto the attacker. It may not have anything to do with the stopping power of the round.

Another data piece that leads me to believe that the majority of commonly carried defensive rounds are similar in stopping power is the fact that all four have very similar failure rates. If you look at the percentage of shootings that did not result in incapacitation, the numbers are almost identical. The .38, 9mm, .40, and .45 all had failure rates of between 13% and 17%.

For Ellifritz there really isn’t a stopping power debate:

All handguns suck! If you want to stop someone, use a rifle or shotgun!

What matters even more than caliber is shot placement. Across all calibers, if you break down the incapacitations based on where the bullet hit you will see some useful information.

Head shots = 75% immediate incapacitation
Torso shots = 41% immediate incapacitation
Extremity shots (arms and legs) = 14% immediate incapacitation.

No matter which caliber you use, you have to hit something important in order to stop someone!

Here’s some of the data:

.22 (short, long and long rifle)
# of people shot – 154
# of hits – 213
% of hits that were fatal – 34%
Average number of rounds until incapacitation – 1.38
% of people who were not incapacitated – 31%
One-shot-stop % – 31%
Accuracy (head and torso hits) – 76%
% actually incapacitated by one shot (torso or head hit) – 60%

.380 ACP
# of people shot – 85
# of hits – 150
% of hits that were fatal – 29%
Average number of rounds until incapacitation – 1.76
% of people who were not incapacitated – 16%
One-shot-stop % – 44%
Accuracy (head and torso hits) – 76%
% actually incapacitated by one shot (torso or head hit) – 62%

.38 Special
# of people shot – 199
# of hits – 373
% of hits that were fatal – 29%
Average number of rounds until incapacitation – 1.87
% of people who were not incapacitated – 17%
One-shot-stop % – 39%
Accuracy (head and torso hits) – 76%
% actually incapacitated by one shot (torso or head hit) – 55%

9mm Luger
# of people shot – 456
# of hits – 1121
% of hits that were fatal – 24%
Average number of rounds until incapacitation – 2.45
% of people who were not incapacitated – 13%
One-shot-stop % – 34%
Accuracy (head and torso hits) – 74%
% actually incapacitated by one shot (torso or head hit) – 47%

.357 (both magnum and Sig)
# of people shot – 105
# of hits – 179
% of hits that were fatal – 34%
Average number of rounds until incapacitation – 1.7
% of people who were not incapacitated – 9%
One-shot-stop % – 44%
Accuracy (head and torso hits) – 81%
% actually incapacitated by one shot (torso or head hit) – 61%

.40 S&W
# of people shot – 188
# of hits – 443
% of hits that were fatal – 25%
Average number of rounds until incapacitation – 2.36
% of people who were not incapacitated – 13%
One-shot-stop % – 45%
Accuracy (head and torso hits) – 76%
% actually incapacitated by one shot (torso or head hit) – 52%

.45 ACP
# of people shot – 209
# of hits – 436
% of hits that were fatal – 29%
Average number of rounds until incapacitation – 2.08
% of people who were not incapacitated – 14%
One-shot-stop % – 39%
Accuracy (head and torso hits) – 85%
% actually incapacitated by one shot (torso or head hit) – 51%

Rifle (all Centerfire)
# of people shot – 126
# of hits – 176
% of hits that were fatal – 68%
Average number of rounds until incapacitation – 1.4
% of people who were not incapacitated – 9%
One-shot-stop % – 58%
Accuracy (head and torso hits) – 81%
% actually incapacitated by one shot (torso or head hit) – 80%

Shotgun (All, but 90% of results were 12 gauge)
# of people shot – 146
# of hits – 178
% of hits that were fatal – 65%
Average number of rounds until incapacitation – 1.22
% of people who were not incapacitated – 12%
One-shot-stop % – 58%
Accuracy (head and torso hits) – 84%
% actually incapacitated by one shot (torso or head hit) – 86%

Posted in Weapons | No Comments »

Grade Inflation

Thursday, June 7th, 2012

Grade inflation runs rampant in American colleges and universities. The average GPA at private schools — on a four-point scale — has risen from 3.09, in the 1991–2 academic year, to 3.30, in 2006–7.

Over the same period, public school GPAs inflated from 2.85 to 3.01.

Now, after five more years of progress, I can only imagine what’s average. Actually, no, I can do more than imagine; I can project with some confidence:

Over the last 50 years, GPAs have increased by roughly 0.1 to 0.2 per decade (on the high end for private schools and on the low end for public schools), a rate that is consistent with the trends over the 16 years noted in the first figure.

Posted in Education | 3 Comments »

Fahrenheit 451 Misinterpreted

Wednesday, June 6th, 2012

Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is often misinterpreted:

He says the culprit in Fahrenheit 451 is not the state — it is the people. Unlike Orwell’s 1984, in which the government uses television screens to indoctrinate citizens, Bradbury envisioned television as an opiate. In the book, Bradbury refers to televisions as “walls” and its actors as “family,” a truth evident to anyone who has heard a recap of network shows in which a fan refers to the characters by first name, as if they were relatives or friends.

In a video interview on his site, he says:

Fahrenheit is not about censorship. It’s about the moronic influence of popular culture through local TV news.

(I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating.)

Posted in Media, Policy | No Comments »

D-Day

Wednesday, June 6th, 2012

Just before the greatest amphibious landing in history, General Eisenhower addressed his men:

Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon a great crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers in arms on other fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen. The greatest amphibious landing in history involved no Marines.

Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened, he will fight savagely.

But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man to man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our home fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to victory!

FDR originally coined the term United Nations for what we now call the Allies.

I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory!

Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessings of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

Patton’s speech to the Third Army is more colorful:

Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about America wanting out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bullshit. Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle…Americans play to win all of the time. I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American.

…There are four hundred neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily. All because one man went to sleep on the job. But they are German graves, because we caught the bastard asleep before they did.

…My men don’t dig foxholes. I don’t want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don’t give the enemy time to dig one either. We’ll win this war, but we’ll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans that we’ve got more guts than they have; or ever will have. We’re not going to just shoot the sons-of-bitches, we’re going to rip out their living Goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks.

…I don’t want to get any messages saying, ‘I am holding my position.’ We are not holding a Goddamned thing. Let the Germans do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy’s balls. We are going to twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all of the time. Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We are going to go through him like crap through a goose….

…From time to time there will be some complaints that we are pushing our people too hard. I don’t give a good Goddamn about such complaints. I believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder WE push, the more Germans we will kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that.

Posted in Media, War | 2 Comments »

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