Morbid Fact of the Week

Like me, you may be aware that getting shot in the head may not be the worst way to go, particularly if someone is catching you unaware and shooting you from behind in the back of the head, "1984" style, because the speed of the bullet is such that you will be dead before you can know what has happened, before you can even hear the shot. Apparently that logic also applies with car crashes.

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It takes as long as 150 to 300 milliseconds (ms) to be aware of a collision after it happens. Other neuroscientists think it can take as much as 500 ms. Now this might not sound like a lot of time, but think of what happens during a car accident. At the 1 ms mark, the car's pressure sensor detects a collision, and at 8.5 ms the airbag system fires. At the 15 ms mark, the car starts to absorb the impact to a significant degree. It's not until the 17 ms mark that the occupant starts to make contact with the airbag, with the maximum force of the collision reaching its apex at the 30 ms point. At the 50 ms mark, the safety cell begins to rebound, and after 70 ms the passenger moves back towards the middle of car — the point at which crash-test engineers declare the event as "complete."

And then, around the 150 to 300 ms mark, the occupant finally becomes aware of the collision. That's assuming of course that an airbag was deployed or that the occupant was wearing a seatbelt. Otherwise, the person wouldn't have known that they were even in a car accident. Which, if the accident was fatal, is not necessarily a bad thing.

-- Andrew Sullivan's Dish

Morbid Fact of the Week

Like me, you may be aware that getting shot in the head may not be the worst way to go, particularly if someone is catching you unaware and shooting you from behind in the back of the head, "1984" style, because the speed of the bullet is such that you will be dead before you can know what has happened, before you can even hear the shot. Apparently that logic also applies with car crashes.

_ _ _

It takes as long as 150 to 300 milliseconds (ms) to be aware of a collision after it happens. Other neuroscientists think it can take as much as 500 ms. Now this might not sound like a lot of time, but think of what happens during a car accident. At the 1 ms mark, the car's pressure sensor detects a collision, and at 8.5 ms the airbag system fires. At the 15 ms mark, the car starts to absorb the impact to a significant degree. It's not until the 17 ms mark that the occupant starts to make contact with the airbag, with the maximum force of the collision reaching its apex at the 30 ms point. At the 50 ms mark, the safety cell begins to rebound, and after 70 ms the passenger moves back towards the middle of car — the point at which crash-test engineers declare the event as "complete."

And then, around the 150 to 300 ms mark, the occupant finally becomes aware of the collision. That's assuming of course that an airbag was deployed or that the occupant was wearing a seatbelt. Otherwise, the person wouldn't have known that they were even in a car accident. Which, if the accident was fatal, is not necessarily a bad thing.

-- Andrew Sullivan's Dish

Peanuts

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, ‘Where have I gone wrong?’ Then a voice says to me, ‘This is going to take more than one night.’

-- Charles M. Schulz

I have enjoyed a number of such nights, until I finally came to realize that it was just never meant to be for me, and that I would have to make do with what consolations I can draw from life, and happy to find that life can still be fairly satisfying.

Peanuts

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, ‘Where have I gone wrong?’ Then a voice says to me, ‘This is going to take more than one night.’

-- Charles M. Schulz

I have enjoyed a number of such nights, until I finally came to realize that it was just never meant to be for me, and that I would have to make do with what consolations I can draw from life, and happy to find that life can still be fairly satisfying.

Was Marx Right?

So: why was Marx right?

Someone asked me that last night at a talk, and I mentioned Greece. There’s irony in the fact that in the midst of the most affluent civilization history has witnessed people are scavenging in rubbish baskets for food. That’s the kind of contradiction I think Marx was talking about. I also stressed how much Marx admired the way that capitalism had in a very short space of time accumulated such wealth—material, spiritual, cultural—but that it couldn’t do that without the contradiction of generating inequality at the same time; we’re seeing a stark instance of that in Greece today. So that’s the kind of thing I’d point to to show the relevance of Marx. Even within the anti-capitalist movement, Marx is not a majority presence. One has to say that. It’s partly because of the discrediting of Marxism by Stalinism, which will take a long time for the Marxist left to recover from. But I’m not myself madly concerned about whether people stick the label “Marxist” onto themselves as long as they take a critical stance towards the present situation. It doesn’t matter what they call themselves.

-- Terry Eagleton

Our old friend Mr. Eagleton. It's not surprising that there is a little revival going on for leftist thought. Who knows, if things keep going as they are for another couple of years, it might get a lot noisier.

Was Marx Right?

So: why was Marx right?

Someone asked me that last night at a talk, and I mentioned Greece. There’s irony in the fact that in the midst of the most affluent civilization history has witnessed people are scavenging in rubbish baskets for food. That’s the kind of contradiction I think Marx was talking about. I also stressed how much Marx admired the way that capitalism had in a very short space of time accumulated such wealth—material, spiritual, cultural—but that it couldn’t do that without the contradiction of generating inequality at the same time; we’re seeing a stark instance of that in Greece today. So that’s the kind of thing I’d point to to show the relevance of Marx. Even within the anti-capitalist movement, Marx is not a majority presence. One has to say that. It’s partly because of the discrediting of Marxism by Stalinism, which will take a long time for the Marxist left to recover from. But I’m not myself madly concerned about whether people stick the label “Marxist” onto themselves as long as they take a critical stance towards the present situation. It doesn’t matter what they call themselves.

-- Terry Eagleton

Our old friend Mr. Eagleton. It's not surprising that there is a little revival going on for leftist thought. Who knows, if things keep going as they are for another couple of years, it might get a lot noisier.