mastery

Do ‘brain-training’ games make you a better pilot?

By Dave English

The Association for Psychological Science recently published a massive 200-page research report on brain training programs, seeing if fun cognitive tasks or games can enhance performance on other tasks. Peer-reviewed, respected authors, fully-referenced. It covered all the valid studies that have examined this question, a huge research database. And the results? Based on this examination, we find extensive evidence that brain-training interventions improve performance on the trained tasks, less evidence that such interventions improve performance on closely related tasks, and little evidence that training enhances performance on distantly related tasks or that training improves everyday cognitive performance. So no, they don’t! … Continue reading Do ‘brain-training’ games make you a better pilot?

Elliot Seguin on the perpetual pursuit

By Dave English

Elliot Sequin is an experimental test pilot working for Mooney Aircraft, the founder and pilot of Wasabi Air Racing, and learnt his craft at Scaled Composites at the Mojave Air & Space Port, Mojave, California. He shares his considerable passion of flying in this cool video.

Fly like an Eagle

By Dave English

I just re-watched the excellent rockumentary History of the Eagles (2013), over four hours on the band that made the biggest-selling album of the twentieth century. The movie has several revealing interviews with members of the legendary band. Contemporary thoughts from the early 70’s, and reflections after 40 years: “Perfection is not an accident.” Glenn Frey “Our goal was just to be the best we could be. We wanted to get better as songwriters and as performers. And we worked on it.” Don Henley “Your whole mandate is just to improve. Life is about improvement.” Glenn Frey “It wasn’t a hobby … Continue reading Fly like an Eagle

Make the sky your canvas

By Dave English

Graham Hill is the only driver ever to win the Triple Crown of Motorsport—the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Indianapolis 500 and the Monaco Grand Prix. Wow! He was the Formula One World Champion twice, with a total of 14 Grand Prix wins. And in his spare time, he liked to paint. Which makes this quote even more meaningful. “I am an artist. The track is my canvas, and the car is the brush.” We should aim to fly like Graham Hill drove. Make the sky our canvas.   (Picture is Graham in a Lotus 49, during the 1968 South African Grand Prix.)