Ken Obenski - As I See It

"Age"

​Use to be in tribes and villages the leaders were the elders, those who had been everywhere and seen it before.
 
Now there is something new under the sun almost every second many see age as a liability, but is it? There are many positions in life that require split second decision making sometimes within narrow parameters, like professional sports. It takes extremely accurate decision making, to hit the baseball between the stitches (Ted Williams) but the range of decisions is narrowed to hitting the ball or not. The hitter could do something else, like hit the umpire, but that’s not a viable option.
 
Peace officers often have to make a split-second decision, to shoot or not to shoot, but their range of options is narrowed. Shoot who? With what, pistol, rifle, taser? Will one shot be enough? What about bystanders, who could be hit? Fighter pilots face a similar range of complex split-second decisions but each of those split seconds is a larger portion of a full second. The baseball is spinning at several hundred RPM and the sweet spot is there for a thousandth of a second. Competitive western action shooters can draw, aim and fire in about 2 tenths of a second. The ball would already be in the catcher’s mitt.
 
Missile or gun. The fighter plane now has a supercomputer built in to give the pilot details about many targets, but at mach 3 (2 miles per second) there’s is not much time to decide. Recently an Israeli pilot collided with a drone he just shot. Enveloped in fuel he had to decide whether to eject or keep flying he had about a second to decide. He successfully landed an F15 with only one wing. Ejection would mean the total loss of a $60million aircraft and collateral damage on the ground. Suppose it hit a school or hospital.
 
Commercial airline pilots have some similar decisions, like what to do when a door plug blows out or both engines quit. When on person is in complete control, we don’t want any risk that he might die, so there is a co-pilot and an age limit. Locomotives have a dead-man brake that stops the train if the engineer is unconscious.

Read More