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“Gunslinger’s gait”: a new cause of unilaterally reduced arm swing
- adaml_623 11y agoThat article reads like a William Gibson story. It's not relevant to my life but I'm happier for having read it. 10/10 - would laugh about in the pub.
- trm42 11y agoSame here. The title could also be "This is how you detect Parkinson's decease OR KGB-agent" :)
- DiabloD3 11y agoI need more stuff like this. Everything about this was exactly perfect. The subject material, the pace, the tone of voice, the length. Just perfect.
- empiricus 11y agoThe article is missing the control group; how often does this gait appear in other countries high officials?
- DiabloD3 11y agoWhat other countries have high officials trained by the KGB? Presumably this isn't standard advice given to all military men, because I've never heard of this before.
- grkvlt 11y agoI guess Israeli officials (or any other country with conscription) will all have had military training. And, for example, Ariel Sharon was a special forces commander.
- Tharkun 11y agoI read about this yesterday, and spent last evening people watching. Either there are a lot of KGB-trained spies in my neighbourhood, a very high rate of Parkinsons, or there are other possible causes.
- thesz 11y agohttp://www.gutenberg.org/files/308/308-h/308-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/308/308-h/308-h.htm I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever—read the symptoms—discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it—wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus’s Dance—found, as I expected, that I had that too,—began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically—read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright’s disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid’s knee.
- benten10 11y agoI realize this is getting off-topic, but that's by far the funniest book I've ever read. I don't remember laughing out loud so consistently (or even, at all) at any other book. If anyone's interested, "Three men in a boat" is HIGHLY recommended. "Three men on a bummel(?)" was OK, but this book hurt my ribs because I laughed so much so hard. : ) Ah, to be able to write like that. Was that his only more-popular book, anyone know (wiki's not helpful)?
- an_ko 11y agoBetter: People of the same age without weapons training. High officials of other countries would also have had weapons training, so they'd make a bad control for the claim in question “weapons training → reduced right arm swing”.
- scott_s 11y agoFor most of America and western Europe, I don't think it's true that most high-level officials will have had weapons training.
- mannykannot 11y agoFWIW, In the clip with both Bush and Putin, Bush is not doing it.
- jstanley 11y agoMy left arm swings a lot more than my right, and I've never had any weapons training, and never carried a gun anywhere.
- nimbs 11y agoSo you have Parkinson's?
- kbart 11y agoSame here. Especially after spending 8h clicking mouse on not very ergonomic office table. I also notice a lot of people (especially younger males) have one shoulder a bit higher/lower than the other. I can only speculate it's for the same reason.
- benologist 11y agoEarlier this year I swapped mouse hands to spread the workload out more evenly with my weaker arm, was a fun experiment with I think pretty good results.
- kbart 11y agoI switched to ergonomic mouse[0] at home. It takes some time to get used to it, but I've never look backed after I did. 0. http://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Vertical-Ergonomic-Optical-1600DPI/dp/B00BIFNTMC http://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Vertical-Ergonomic-Optical-16...
- Paul_S 11y agoNow it's caused by walking whilst holding your phone.
- 67726e 11y agoSo you have spies trained to telegraph their identity because of their gait. Brilliant!
- arethuza 11y agoI read a book recently written by a former member of the UK SBS ("Black Water: By Strength and By Guile" - Don Camsell) and at one point he goes to work for an undercover intelligence unit and one of the important parts of their training for undercover work was learning how not to look like a soldier/marine - which is quite difficult if you have had as much training as someone in the SBS.
- dweekly 11y agoFor anyone who has seen played "spot the Fed" at DEFCON, blending in is clearly a challenge. (E.g. Most of the hackers there don't have neck muscles that indicate their owners can bench 300+ pounds)
- arethuza 11y agoA friend in the Army was in some kind of team competition that also included a SAS team and he said he could tell who they were just by looking - "nails" as they say. I did make me think that if these guys are so easy to spot then it must make undercover work quite tricky!
- chippy 11y agoIt's a bit of a myth really that of the muscular military spy (even James Bond would fit that role) - most intelligence officers tend to be small and wiry, lacking bulky muscles, trained for speed and agility. They would be fit, but not noticeably so. So they of course be lacking beer bellies and man boobs, but they wouldn't have big muscles. Now someone at DEFCON is not going to be a field agent - they will work in an office behind a computer which leads me to the next myth from DEFCON: that spooks are not geeks. They are exactly that. They are us, like us, have the same interests. They just work against us whilst believing they are working for us.
- AndrewOMartin 11y ago"Moving forward should be done with one side, usually the left, turned somewhat in the direction of movement." This strategy is known as straferunning, and was previously thought to be effective only in 90's era first-person shooters, particularly Goldeneye. Maybe Putin is also a 00 Agent?
- compbio 11y agoI think this kind of research is rather unethical and farcical. Like the previous research, where they came to the conclusion that Putin was an autist, based solely on Youtube video's. http://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2015/feb/07/putin-aspergers-story-stupidity-of-psychological-diagnosis-from-a-distance http://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2015/feb/07... it seems like a clumsy attempt to discredit Putin, so that people don’t take him seriously. we’re just being given pure conjecture, dressed up as convincing scientific knowledge. This sort of practice doesn’t offer any useful scientific insight into, well, anything, and it misrepresents how science works, and what good quality scientific research looks like. I do understand that as a public figure one attracts more scrutiny. But I also thought that medical professionals, like neurologists, fall under Hippocratic Oath: Whatever, in the course of my practice, I may see or hear (even when not invited), whatever I may happen to obtain knowledge of, if it be not proper to repeat it, I will keep sacred and secret within my own breast. If a neurologist is allowed to dig up old KGB manuals to classify heads of state as gunslingers, I am allowed to say this has nothing to do with fast gun access, but everything with signalling stature through body language: People will pass you by at your swinging arm and not bump into you when you employ this gate. Either that or old habits really do die hard, and Putin carries a gun to summits.
- Tharkun 11y agoI assumed the article was intended as being tongue-in-cheek. Calling it unethical and farcical is, well, farcical.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jevgeni 11y agoI hope it's Parkinson's.
- bigfudge 11y agoit's the christmas BMJ, which is traditionally full of somewhat tongue in cheek articles. That said, how does your dominance hypothesis explain the consistent asymmetry?
- slr555 11y agoThis is not a new phenomenon. In the law enforcement community it has been well recognized for many years that people who carried concealed weapons will often exhibit reduced arm swing on the gun side. The habit is driven by two issues. The first is training and a desire to keep the strong side arm indexed to the weapon for faster unholstering. The second is a reaction to the first and involves trying to unlearn the reduced arm swing, which more recently has been seen as a "tell" which may give warning to potential adversaries that one is armed and may be a potential threat. As a corollary people are now taught to be aware of reduced arm swing in others.
- nickbauman 11y agoWonder what they're packing? KGB assassins and recon agents are known to carry the PSS, with an almost completely silent report. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSS_silent_pistol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSS_silent_pistol
- DanielBMarkham 11y agoThanks for this link. A fascinating weapon. Would love to see a teardown and some range action. I didn't think such a thing would be possible. Sounds like something along the lines of a gunpowder-powered air gun -- the gunpowder contains the force, but it's the cylinder that ejects the round -- all the gases are captured. Very interesting!
- moron4hire 11y agoThat's pretty much exactly how it worked, with the piston internal to the cartridge, rather than the weapon http://worldweapon.info/patron-762x415-sp-4 http://worldweapon.info/patron-762x415-sp-4
- fein 11y agoProbably not a PSS. I can nearly guarantee it would be a Makarov, and only special forces have ever been issued Grachs. KGB is synonymous with the Makarov and to a lesser extent the Tokarev.
- grandalf 11y agoMy right shoulder hangs a bit lower, due to the years I spent carrying a heavy bag full of newspapers as a kid doing a paper route.
- joonoro 11y agoThis is actually amazing. I will now forever see Putin as being ready 24/7 to whip out his PB[0] at a moments notice wherever he goes. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PB_%28pistol%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PB_%28pistol%29
- moron4hire 11y agoI've noticed in previous years that I have such a gait, and I have never had any sort of combat training. I always just assumed it was a result of wearing my wallet in my back, right pocket while I sat at work, which generally causes other imbalances in the spinal column.