Web Monitor
15:39 UK time, Wednesday, 3 February 2010
A celebration of the riches of the web.
Today in Web Monitor: the new reason we multitask, how to survive a 35,000ft fall and the science behind the cowboy films.
• Scientists, surprisingly, have been studying the question of why the good guy always wins in a Hollywood shoot-out. Nobel prize winner Niels Bohr has a theory about this - the good guys are second to draw their gun and are quicker at reacting. Now she's found another scientist Andrew Welchman who's found this may not be true in real life:
"Now Welchman says neuroscience doesn't support Hollywood's portrayal either. The only way the last guy to draw could win is if the reactive part of the brain makes him move so fast that the time it takes him to draw, plus his reaction time, is less than the time it takes the first guy just to draw."
• If you're reading this while you should be working then you may credit yourself with being able to multitask. multitasking is a myth which has developed over the last decade.
Clifford Nass, a professor of psychology at Stanford University has previously found that multitaskers are the worst at multitasking. He told Mr Glenn the motivations behind multitasking need to be considered:
"One of the deepest questions in this field... is whether media multitasking is driven by a desire for new information or by an avoidance of existing information. Are people in these settings multitasking because the other media are alluring--that is, they're really dying to play Freecell or read Facebook or shop on eBay--or is it just an aversion to the task at hand?"
• a myth that falling out of a plane means dying. In How to Fall 35,000 Feet - And Survive he gives a countdown of what to do should the event arise:
"Granted, the odds of surviving a 6-mile plummet are extra¬ordinarily slim, but at this point you've got nothing to lose by understanding your situation. There are two ways to fall out of a plane. The first is to free-fall, or drop from the sky with absolutely no protection or means of slowing your descent. The second is to become a wreckage rider, a term coined by Massachusetts-based amateur historian Jim Hamilton, who developed the Free Fall Research Page--an online database of nearly every imaginable human plummet. That classification means you have the advantage of being attached to a chunk of the plane."
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