Poverty reduction is the only solution to vote-buying, says former resident Electoral Commissioner. And WIKE cannot put the PDP at risk and is free to associate with the opposition. Former PDP National Publicity Secretary Col. Olovo Dion says, Well, this is FOSS Politics, I am Mary Ionico. The immediate past resident Electoral Commissioner in River State, has said only an improved economy can guarantee total eradication of vote-buying in Nigeria, he described the menace as a societal problem and reflection of Nigeria's level of development, noting that introduction of technologies into the electoral system has made it difficult for politicians to re-elections through other means. Now on how this can be achieved, if I'm not stressed, the use of information and communication. Well joining us this evening is Oboe Fanga, the immediate past resident Electoral Commissioner for River State. And also to be joining him on this conversation is Emmanuel Mjokou, who is the Director of Democracy and Governance Connected Development. Mr. Fanga, it's good to have you join us. Thank you very much. So this is a regular that we talk about every Thursday we talk about, you know, the civic space and how we can educate people more on some of the devices that we're dealing with in the electoral system. And I'm so glad to have you join us. But let's start by educating people on what constitutes as vote-buying. A lot of people, when we talk about vote-buying, just think of, you know, exchanging money at the polling units. But research has shown that vote-buying sometimes starts even before the election in itself. Yes, vote-buying would mean that a political party or candidate or political interest are using money and money's worth to influence the choices of the electorate in the election. And since the election does not start and end at the polling unit on election day, it is a process. It means that vote-buying could happen at any time during the electoral process. And it is for this reason that I have come up with this idea of classifying vote-buying in Tubera's categories. I refer to the wholesale vote-buying. I also refer to the middle men, middle persons, which could be middle men or middle men or middle women trading. And also the retail vote-buying, which is the one most people seem to focus on, which is what happens on election day or very close election day. But vote-buying could mean that right from when people are aspiring for a position, even before they become candidates of the political parties, they would have gone around visiting influential members of the society, trying to woo them to support them or to endorse them. And too often, this is not only limited to merely talking to the people, to convince them to support these aspiring and potential candidates or political parties. There's also some form of post-trading that goes on then. So that also is part of vote-buying, which is what I refer to as a wholesale vote-buying. And that is why you would hear these influential members of the society say they have endorsed a particular candidate and then hope that those people who look up to them as leaders in that way, they have influenced, would now vote in terms of who they have endorsed. Then at the level I refer to as a middle man trading is what many people observed in the last few months during the primaries of political parties where huge sums of money was said to have been disbursed to the delegates of the political parties. That also is vote-buying. But the one that a lot of people are condescends with and they talk about so much is the one I call the retail vote-buying, which is what happens on election day or close to election day where the individual voter is given some form of gratification, usually cash, for them to vote in a particular way. Okay. Let's talk about how both connect. So I have also done some research that has said that there is a connection between vote-buying and voter apathy. But then one would think that if there is some monetary encouragement, you would get to see more people show up to the polling units as opposed to seeing less and less people come out to vote. But is there really any connection between those two? Well, maybe we should interrogate when we talk about turnout at election. There needs to be something to benchmark with. So if somebody says fewer people are coming out to vote now, then we need to know what they are benchmarking it with. And if people say more people are coming out to vote now, we also need to know what the benchmark is. I think that we first need to interrogate the number of registered voters in a particular, I mean, if we are looking at the entire country, then we look at how many of those persons are actually legitimately legitimate to be on the voter's register before now. And we are doing a cleanup of, I think it's doing a cleanup of the voter's register. Maybe at the end of this exercise, we will know exactly how many people are registered to vote in Nigeria. And then we can also look at various districts. And then apart from that, you also need to know how many people have collected their permanent voters card and as such are eligible to vote on election day. Then we can now calculate the turnout based on the number of people who have the PBC and could have voted in the election and how many people have actually voted. So when we do that, we can now say effectively whether more people, the percentage of persons who have turned up to vote. Because before now, a lot of times people were looking at the percentage of votes cast in an election based on the total number of registered voters. But we also know that on the voter's list are names of persons who are long dead and so shouldn't be counted as we in terms of turning up to votes until we have that clean record and also number of people who have actually collected the permanent voters card, then we may not really have a good picture of the real percentage. Now, your question was a link between a vote buying and the number of people who turn up to vote. I think it would require more research to find out if more people have turned up to vote because there's gratification or more people turned up to vote when there was no gratification for them to do so. Okay. I think we're being joined now by Emmanuel Jockel, who is the Director of Democracy and Governance for Connected Development. Mr Jockel, thank you very much for joining us. Yes, I can hear you. I can hear you. Perfect. Now, from the reports that, or rather from the piece that the former REC put out on the Guardian newspaper, he talked about dealing with issues of poverty in order for us to be able to even start solving the problem of, you know, vote buying. But let's start by looking at how this even started and who encouraged it and how we got here. Yeah, thank you for having me. And this is such a very good conversation coming at the right time, giving the introduction to the Electra Act and how INEC and the Electra stakeholders through all the commitments and engagement with the new Electra 2022 have given powers back to Nigerians and back to citizens. So this conversation is very important at a time like now, knowing in my mind from my experience in the field, that as we head to the 2022 election, it would be a spectrum, sadly, to see a lot more of good buying happening in the fields. Good buying has been part of us, frankly, since 2000 and since 1999, when the elections, when we had this democracy, it has become more like a culture. It has been happening. But then for every year, for every election cycle, the Electra stakeholders make efforts in amending the election and, you know, fixing the elections to make it better, the vote buying in itself increases, you know, the cost and the price, the rate of vote buying keeps increasing. I say this because in the last election in Ekiti State and Ocean State for once, we are seeing politicians trading votes and buying votes as high as 10,000 Nigerians. There is reason why this is happening and the reason is simply so. The Electra 2022 that has brought the use of the technology, the device, BivaS, which allows for biometric verification before you are allowed to get a credit to vote, has completely taken powers out of the poll clerks. You know, before now, you know, before, before now, these guys have aware of the process, but with the, with the electronic device that we are using, BivaS. Now, you can no longer work in with someone's PVC. Someone called John cannot work in with somebody called Stephanie's PVC and constantly pulling in it, and the poll class will allow you just to vote. It will no longer happen. They need you. They need me. They need biometrics for me to be able to vote. So what this simply means is the power is not in the hands of the people. But then, how much knowledge, how much exposure, how much do the people, the Electra, understand how much power do they have? Now, talking about hunger and poverty is a weapon, and these politicians understand this. They understand the organization of poverty, and they are using it, and they will use it more, as well as the election in 2020. In the state, and in a shown state, where I observed the elections, I saw clearly people being paid as high as 10,000 Naira for elections. And frankly, from what we've gathered, we understood that the money that these political elites and political actors released, the eve of that election was, they were valuing votes at 20,000 Naira per person. And this is very troubling. This is very sad. But then again, I always say this, and let me say this on your platform. While we try to critique and understand vote buying, I always tell people that vote buying in a very funny way is progress in an electoral process. Vote buying in a funny way in an electoral reforms is a bit of progress. You know why I say this?  I know you will wonder, what am I saying? Elections generally is more like a transaction. So you have politicians come to the people to tell the people, this is what I want to do for you. I want to do this. I want to do that. It's more like a transaction. And the people have to now buy into your manifesto and into your promises and now decide to give you vote. While politicians have brought this thing down to an evil way of transaction, treading, giving you a particular amount, a particular vote. Now, what we need to make Nigerians understand is that politicians are coming to you because your vote is important.  Now, citizens need to move beyond that level of petty, evil transaction of 5,000 Naira, 10,000 Naira to start demanding more. There's a transaction going on. What are you asking for? You should be asking for primary health care centers in your communities. Exactly. So this is where I have an issue. This is where I have an issue and I'm going to put it to you and of course the former rec. So we always say people should, people ought to. How many of these people know the consequences of their actions? Again, just as you said, there's poverty. He also put it in his piece that poverty is at the base of all of this vote buying. But how many people know that their poverty will continue to linger? Some people have no idea. It's an opportunity for them to grab onto some money to feed their children. Professor Lumumba had said that no matter how lyrical you wax to the average African, when you're done speaking English, he would ask you in the interim, what do we eat? So how much information is out there for the people, the communists of people to understand the consequences of these actions? So first of all, and that is why it's good that you are using your platform to have this conversation. Because I mean, getting the people to understand the ills and evil of vote buying is not the job of just INX, the voter education department. It is the job of the media because the media has the reach to get down to communities. It's the media of print media, the radio media, the TV, everybody's job is job of civil society organization. It's job of traditional institutions. It's the job of religious institutions. It's the job of every person at the political parties, especially. But suddenly the political parties may not exactly do this because they are beneficiaries of this vote buying. And as we head to the 2020 election, let me tell you the evil of vote buying. So in the past, you hear politicians, someone saying, I made you a governor. I made this person a governor. I contributed to making this person a president. You know, that in my view has been very disrespectful to the citizens and to the electorates. Nobody makes anybody a governor. Those things have happened in the past because of the influence of vote buying and the process of regaining elections. Going forward, if you notice across Nigeria and the people running for presidential offices, you see they are seriously engaging one way or the other. So I'm going back to ethnic influence. I'm going back to religious influence. I'm going back. I mean, but they are all engaging because they have come to understand that in this election that is coming, it's going to be about the people. But the sad thing, like I've said is now I believe and I know because frankly, some of these politicians who have always started themselves to be popular and to be godfathers, they are not really that popular as you were. So for them to get themselves to win these elections, I'm expecting and we are hearing already that there is going to be massive vote buying in the elections coming because frankly, the electoral act has completely removed powers from the hands of even INAG officials who want to be corrupt and fraudulent. Frankly, they cannot do much anymore. So the power is in the hands of the people, but the politicians will come to them more knowing that the people are poor. I was in an ocean state, in a city state. Do you know what they were saying? What they were saying was vote and cook soup, vote and make better soup. So they are flashing 10,000 Naira in the faces of these very poor people. And frankly, in the rural communities, there are people who have spent their whole day and they've never seen 10,000 Naira once together as their own money. And they are putting it in their faces telling them vote and cook soup. So we are expecting that this is going to get worse, but this systemization, this awareness campaign has to be dipping to get people to understand the evil of selling their votes. Let me come back to you, Mr Burfanga. He's made a lot of references to what's happening today. Yes. But then how, because I also know, I was in Anambra, I saw a lot of vote buying during that election. I covered, you know, the main town, Oka. What do we do with the psyche of the average Nigerian who's used to, like he said, taking these monies to meet the immediate needs because you see for them, that's the only opportunity they might get to get, you know, to place their hands on that kind of money. Where do we even start to change that mindset, that narrative? It's not enough, it's not enough for us to say that, oh, well, there's the media, but then there are people who may not also have access to the media. So how do we do that? Well, let me first reemphasize what Mr Enjoku said, which is that vote buying has been happening now because the votes count now more than ever before. And I've stressed this over and again in my recent interviews that is because the votes now count and people can only win on the basis of the votes cast and counted and declared. That is why the politicians are going after the voters to buy the votes. Now, we've all agreed that this is a societal money and needs to be addressed. Mr Enjoku mentioned the responsibility of the mass media to that and we cannot overemphasize that. Now there are other agencies in the society that can influence the activities and opinions and attitudes of citizens. And this includes the religious institutions and the traditional institutions. Although, sadly too, some of the leaders of these institutions are also involved in this practice. Remember when I talked about the wholesale level of a vote buying that even the political parties, even the aspirants and candidates, grow conversing support from these persons that there is also some form of transaction that goes on at that level. But we cannot overemphasize the responsibility of these agents in the society for positive change. The religious groups, the community groups, every level of association needs to talk about this. And of course, we need the mass media. Even the political parties themselves, it is in their best interest to speak against vote buying because you cannot tell if you're going to have more resources than the other political party to buy votes. You know the interesting thing, at the end of the most recent elections, a lot of times those who lose out in the election complain that why the other party won was because they were involved in vote buying. But the truth is that all of them were involved, but somebody has outspent the other. So we can reduce our election to who spends more winning the election. So even the political parties, it is in their own best interest to also speak against vote buying and stop it so that at the end of the day, whoever emerges the winner in an election emerges on the strength of the promises they make and what they are able to deliver to the people in terms of what we call the dividends of democracy. Not the Mr. Joku said in the recent elections, they paid as much as 10,000 Naira and we know that this kind of 10,000 Naira won't even last more than a week even for the forest of persons who collect the 10,000 Naira, even the person who hasn't seen 10,000 Naira in a whole year because this comes cheap. They also spend it on all factor kinds of things that give you even if it is up to one month that they use in spending this. So after then what happens the people you are electing are going to be in government for four years. So if you've taken care of one month out of four years then you have three years and 11 months to worry about your future and these persons are going to mess it up because they've already bought you over. I want to talk about the again because I picked so many things out of what you're saying but I wonder why we don't question where these monies come from, where these monies that we're taking are coming from. Again, I wonder, I think on its own cannot do all of the voter education, political parties have a you know also a responsibility, we the media have a responsibility but I wonder why are we not questioning how these monies show up in the first instance other than just taking it and taking it and waiting. I mean we saw what happened in all of the party primaries and how allegedly was a dollar rain of sorts and nobody has questioned it, nobody's really probed it. I mean we heard that the EFCC was at most of these party primaries but money still were exchanging hands. So again does this mean that we the people ourselves have failed in our duties especially civil society in questioning where our money goes and how these monies just immediately surface on election day? Okay so is this for me should I go on?  Exactly so the question is not even about civil society being able to probe where this money is coming from. So you know the the team of this conversation is vote buying you know. So first I would like to say using the term vote buying maybe not capture the whole conversation. I would prefer to call it vote shredding.  So the politicians like I've said are not just guilty and we've done in-depth research on these issues and this is all found out. So the people the citizens themselves are also defrauded in the process. I've had conversations where politicians say when they come to a political polling unit before the election we start that they are making plans to pay as high as 10 to 15,000 Naira or 20,000 Naira to the first 10 persons that will vote for them. The reason why they do this these guys are just funny. The reason why they do this is to spread the message within that polling unit. So the first 10-15 persons that collect the 15-20,000 Naira goes around telling everybody ah but the XXX is paying 20,000 Naira out. So you see the citizens and the electorate now all keying up expected that they are going to collect 20,000 Naira and this whole thing is a bit challenging and as we're having this conversation I want to call on the attention of the security personnel who are in this polling units most of the time who have the powers to make arrests because frankly as civil society on election day my duty is to simply observe and make a report but then for every polling unit that I've been to in Echitea National State using that as reference because it's the most recent election that Nigeria's have had every polling station I go to I see at least four security personnel in this polling unit and myself I am not a security personnel but for every polling unit I go to it takes me less than it takes me less than 10 minutes for me to identify the person paying for this vote and sometimes it's very coordinated you see someone so so more and so I get I blame INEK I blame INEK because in some cases the secrecy of the ballot is not even assured it's not guaranteed so you see before an election you see the people in the polling unit will push yourself so much that people are standing right in front of where the person who is supposed to make his vote picks up same ballot so as it's completely making his turn print and these things are pretty easy especially in elections where PDP and maybe APC are involved so someone takes his hand to the top of the ballot paper it's simple he's going for APC the person bringing the design we all done is going to PDP the person bringing it out in the media is going to level these things are simple and it's easy to identify okay I'm so sorry to talk over Eva let me come in quickly you talk about the number of police officers at polling units I've been at a polling unit before and I was trying to as a journalist covering it and I saw open air vote buying and as I was trying to record it they almost I almost got mopped now the police officers this is a conversation we've also had it said they're not armed because it's against the law to carry arms at a polling unit how do they affect these arrests if most of these people are maybe more in number as opposed to one or two police officers at a polling unit no no so first of all the police need to do they have I mean the last election in a kid's state it took APC officials wearing their red jacket coming from above that to be able to make arrests across the state in our shows that in a kid's election literally every polling unit there was vote buying and there are police security personnel in this person it is their duty to identify and that's the point I was trying to make I'm not an intelligent example when I come to a polling unit I identify either so sometimes the vote buying doesn't have any people in it in some cases when you vote you go and meet the person who has identified that you voted for his party of choice and you'll give you a title with which you now leave the polling unit and go to some other place present the tally and you are paid but my point is there are secretary personnel in this polling unit and allegations and even conversations we've had have we've been able to find out that in some cases even the politicians they have a budget for the police personnel that come to the polling unit so the whole process the whole vote buying team starts first of all from the delegates and what the election down to the primary election they do in the states how this party candidates emerge down to the polling unit literally everybody politicians try to buy up everybody and what I'm saying like in most cases even the police secretary personnel who are in the polling units who have the knowledge that there's a budget mostly for them so they can turn the other way and have these guys do what they want to do because frankly all the political parties in the last elections that have observed they all do vote buying like like like like the former rex okay what is who will outbuy who who out spends who okay back to you mr fang he's he's he's he's saying he's he blames ineg i think i think i've had this conversation many times the ineg officials about security operatives at polling units what they're capable of doing and what they're not capable of doing because i've seen police officers stand by and do nothing and this thing's happening you know in the class so what does ineg do in this case because ineg is not a law enforcement but then he's saying ineg is to be blamed okay so um there are various ways to look at this i'm not holding brief for the security agencies but let's also look at practical scenarios you find you go to a polling unit in the community where we've established that we've passed the stage of political parties trying to who uh trying to buy uh the votes we've reached a stage that even the voters want their votes to be bought so you now have an understanding between the voter and the political parties okay it now becomes difficult for you to break that chain now if you have a security agent at that polling unit while it is important to stop the vote buying and possibly arrest people at that point i imagine that they will also have to weigh the possible consequences of an attempt to make an arrest at that point that it could lead to a breakdown of law and order that would even mark the entire election it could disrupt election in that polling unit so would you in the attempt to make an arrest there just to make a point that you arrested someone now ruin the risk the possibility of election being uh being a confusion in that uh a polling unit and then election is disrupted there now the other points he made um Mr. Njoku made about um the secrecy of the votes we have the cubicle that has opportunity for you to vote in such a way that somebody does not see how you voted but when somebody himself or herself is determined to prove that he or she has voted in a particular way then the person will do that so you'll find a situation where even if the secrecy is is is provided the person finishes printing on the ballot paper now remember what we have is open secret ballot in which means that you make that you mark the ballot in secret and come and drop the ballot in the open the ballot box must be kept in a place that everybody sees okay so these votes are now in coming to drop the ballot paper in the ballot box consciously does as if he's trying to fold this paper in such a way that he or she wants how he has voted to be seen by those who are going to vote so you find a situation where you have a willing boot a willing buyer and a willing seller it now becomes difficult for a third party to break that that chain the the the the arrest that we talked about that the ELCC made even Mr. Njoku admitted it wasn't within the polling unit the the the vicinity but outside the they were able to identify locations where money was being exchanged and it raised it raised concerns about what the money was being exchanged for and then those persons were arrested it is further investigation that would lead them to identify that this transaction was related to the election but at the polling unit the the electoral official at that point what is most important for him or her is to allow anybody who is registered to vote and has come with this or a permanent voters card to be accredited given a ballot paper to vote and when he or she has finished voting at the end of voting the votes are counted and results are declared based on the votes that are counted if you expect that we would prioritize the arrest of willing buyers and willing sellers as opposed to paying attention to people voting and the votes being counted then it means that we would have wasted the time of the voting because the election would be disrupted and at the end of the day we won't even have the votes to count well this is a conversation that has to be continuously had but unfortunately time is no longer on our side but I want to say thank you gentlemen Mr. Boyfonga is the immediate past resident electoral commissioner in river states and Jocely Minow is the director of democracy and governance connected development switch is also called code thank you so much gentlemen for being here thank you for having me thank you very much thank you and thank you all for staying with us we'll take a short break now when we return we'll continue our discussion on the PDP week a saga call our nobody on the people's democratic party former national publicity secretary has dismissed concerns that governor yes on week of river states may form an alliance that might be detrimental to the party's chances next year stay with us it's still plus politics now call our nobody on the people's democratic party he was the former national publicity secretary has dismissed concerns that governor yes on week of river states may form an alliance detrimental to the party's chances during next year's presidential election he also said the governor was at liberty to associate repoliticians from other camps such as with within which was within his right now joining us to discuss more on this drag within the PDP is Duran Odeyemi he is a former deputy national publicity secretary of the people's democratic party mr odeyemi thank you so much for joining us thank you very much I'm happy to be with you great there have been so many conversations around the situation between governor wiki and the presidential flag bearer of your party they have also been concerned as to he's hub nubbing I use that word loosely here with other members of other political parties especially the Labour Party being that there are certain demands that were made allegedly from his group that has not necessarily been met by the party but let me ask you as an insider um what is the party doing to reconcile governor wiki and of course the presidential flag wearer and the party chairman I would have thought this question could be answered by the once again joining us is Duran Odeyemi now mr odeyemi you are about to answer my question before we lost that connection yes I will say that the NWP member will be able to answer what exactly they are doing towards reconcile it with the crisis that we find ourselves and I want to make clear that the issues are damn too simple the party uh in its will done have given the presidential candidate to article and the vice-presidential to okawa in the process of reconciling with governor wiki and his allies such as the um former governor of the NWP case I identify us uh former governor of the NWP and others we have a particular demand which is legitimate and logical and this is that if we have the presidential candidate from the north and we have the chairman of the party from the north the chairman of the beauty from the north and the chairman of the governor of the north from the north then the chairman should be able to fulfill his promise and be a man of honor by resigning from that position and be with somebody from the south so that there will be equality there will be justice and there will be fear in the party which is a sign in our constitution but if and if the party in its will done are not ready to meet the demands of the governor wiki is not meant for the boc and other leaders of the party to clear we can move forward how is it possible how possible we are not in crisis I will not be a party to it exactly I was about to say that how do you move on if you know your house is on fire again the 2023 elections as we all know is going to be a very fiercely contested one and if this early in the day the PDP seems to have its house not in order and this drag and the fight is becoming a bit more public than it should be what's the what's the guarantee that the PDP will carry the day or you even stand a chance come 2023 again I'd like to put it out there this is the second time in a very short while that just to that the PDP is having another goal at its leadership and why is that I remember how second this was you know kicked out of the party here we are again in a very short space and everybody's asking for you to step down why can't these things be clearly sought out or sorted out at bigger pardon in the best interest of the party as opposed to personal personal needs the question is what's the guarantee that the PDP can stand a chance against all of its opponents come 2023 if this early in the day there's this much fire on the mountain or once again I think that we've lost Duran all day and me on I think that we are having a little collection problem there with him we will go on a quick break and when we come back we will be wrapping things up finally on the show stay with us well that's us on the show tonight but before we go here's my take now the past is supposed to inform our present and prepare us for the future yet the stagnation of our development is worsening national circumstances it shows that we're still doing the same thing expecting different results and that for me is a definition of insanity now too often so many of you you know have sold your votes for short-term gains the money that is paid for that vote is not a deposit for your future prosperity because short-term thinking like that would never solve any of our problems taking the money and not voting at all is not even better but our greatest weapon against making the same mistakes in the past is knowledge learn all that you can about these candidates I always say this they can tell you whatever you want to hear but do your own digging you will be making a more informed decision I am Mary Anna Cohn have a good evening


Aloha. I know you're probably terribly confused at this point. I'm not Ethan Allen, although I do make furniture and the real Ethan Allen and likable science, he doesn't make furniture. Some other guy named Ethan Allen makes furniture. So if you're not confused yet, we'll try and confuse you by the end of the day. I'm Stan, the energy man here for Ethan Allen on likable science, which today we're calling weird science. What I'd like to do today is talk to you a little bit about science that I've experienced in my career, flying airplanes and doing weird things like that, that maybe some of the things that Ethan Allen's not experienced with or doesn't normally have an issue that maybe I can share with you and talk a little bit and help you understand about science. So one of the things that I first did when I got in the military was flying airplanes and I was flying fighters and high-speed airplanes that did a lot of maneuvering. And what happens when you're in a fighter airplane and you're doing a lot of maneuvering is you turn corners really sharp and you do what we pull Gs, which are G-forces, gravity forces. So if you think about it, if you have a rock on the end of a string and you're spinning it around, the rock wants to fly off into space. And it wants to do that because it's a centrifugal force. Or actually gravity, artificial gravity that the string is holding the rock in, and it really wants to fly away. Well, the same thing happens to you when you're in an airplane and you're turning a really sharp corner. You're really, you're really, what we call pulling on the pole. You're really pulling hard and you're making your plane accelerate around a curve that makes it want to squish you down into your seat.  And that's a really uncomfortable feeling.  We call it doing the funky chicken technically. That's the technical term. For funky chicken in the airplane because you'll go unconscious. So what will happen, physically what happens to you is your eyes are very sensitive to changes in blood pressure. So what will happen is as you start turning the corner really hard, if you're not ready for the G-forces and you're not fighting it, your eyes will start to kind of gray. You'll see kind of a, it just gets tunnel vision and the colors go away. And next thing you know, you don't see anything, but you can hear everything. You're still conscious. Everything's going on. But right after that, there's none of the blood pressure in your head and you pass out. Like I say, you do the funky chicken, you're just sitting there going like this. So what we do in the airplanes and the fighters to make sure that you don't pass out is you put on this thing called an anti-G suit or G suit. And the new fighters that pull even more Gs, those folks have even full body suits that help them keep their blood pressure up. So we used to joke that the best fighter pilot was about four feet tall, had high blood pressure and a low heart to head distance because that's what keeps your blood impact in your brain. So when your heart doesn't have to pump too hard to keep the blood there.  There's a sensor in there that feels this acceleration as you're going around the corner and it pumps a bunch of air into this G suit and the G suits literally squeezes you.  At the same time, they're trained, they train us so that we literally squish and go like that.  But that's how you fight off the G's, the artificial gravity that gets built up when you're flying in a fighter. It's really an interesting experience and if you ever get to go on a high-speed thing at the fair that's really spinning fast, you kind of get a sensation of G forces but those are about maybe one and a half to two G forces on your body. The average fighter pilot can sustain six or seven G's pretty much for quite a while for several thirty seconds maybe but airplanes can generate up to nine or ten G's and some of the pilots have to sustain nine or ten G's for maybe a couple seconds and then back off to six or seven G's and back into nine or ten G's. It's actually quite a bit of work and you can really pass out quickly if you're not if you're not right there with it. So the G suit's really important and an amazing piece of technology but it all starts with G forces, anti-gravity forces. Another piece of science that I got to use in the military a lot was radar and it's really cool stuff. It was invented probably just before World War II or World War II and for the first time when you're out looking for another airplane or something you can use your radar but how does it work? It's like okay you have a radar dish that's that looks kind of like a parabolic dish and it has a little a little thing in the end. It sends a signal out and the signal is timed and it hits and it hits another airplane and then the signal comes back to the radar dish and gets bounced back to where it started and there's a clock in here that measures the time it took for the radar signal to go out and the radar signal to come back. It does a whole bunch of mathematical calculations very quickly and tells you that this airplane is 30 miles away or 40 miles away or 10 miles away and it helps the pilot's situational awareness so he knows where his enemy is and he can he can make his do his maneuvers and adjust his position the way he wants it using the radar. The other neat thing about radar is it's great for navigation. You can use radar for navigation the same way you use it for the airplane except that you can use it to look for a piece of land.  We use a neat rule called the 60 to 1 rule and what that means is for every one degree that you have at 60 miles the object out there is one mile so if if this was 60 miles away if this mountain was 60 miles away and this was one degree on my radar scope right here I know I'm a mile above the top of that mountain and then if you were at 30 miles you know you're in half a mile above the mountain and if you're 25 miles or excuse me 15 miles you know that you're a quarter mile above the top of that mountain so you basically use a 61 rule to help you calculate how much clearance you actually have and when you're using round numbers like 60 or 6 it's real easy because whatever the the degrees are that's how far that's how many increments of units of measure you are above or near that particular object so that was a cool piece of science that really helped out a lot of folks especially when it comes to weather I talked to Ethan today about thunderstorms and how powerful they are in airplanes you know like thunderstorms a whole lot so we try and stay away from thunderstorms and one of the ways we have to just like looking at the the ground when you're looking at a thunderstorm it usually starts at maybe 15 or 20,000 feet and may go up to 50,000 feet so if you're in an airplane and you you have that radar working and you go okay let me see how high is that thunderstorm how wide is that thunderstorm how low you can decide whether you're gonna try and go off to one side and lower or stay the same elevation and go around it or hey I can't get over the top of that the top of that thunderstorm is so high I can't get over the top of it so these a lot of the radar for weather avoidance for looking at for other aircraft and trying to figure out how far they are away from you and keeping a safe distance from them and also navigation and boats use navigation use a radar for the same thing on navigation they can tell exactly how far they are away from a landmass and even help identify where they are if they can identify certain specific mountains or landmasses that they can match up on their chart they can even help keep themselves oriented and keep themselves from being lost by looking at the radar picture compared to what they have on their charts so that's another great piece of likable science and weird science that we got to use in the aircraft I talked to Ethan earlier today about survival that's a big thing in in in combat or if you're in the military you have to be able to survive especially if your airplane decided to quit flying on you and you know you're you're stuck someplace so some of the some of the things that they teach us are how to tie good knots how to how to put up a shelter how to how to hunt for your own food or set up snares make snares how to make a fire and how to do all kinds of things but one thing that's really critical in any survival situation is finding water and being able to hydrate yourself because you can go several weeks without food but you can only go several days without water and particularly if you're injured or you're you're doing a lot of exercise like trying to get to a safe spot and you're moving a lot you're burning a lot of calories you're also dehydrating yourself you got to have a source of water one of the ways that that we would get water especially if we didn't have a free-flowing stream or something is we would take the water take a piece of plastic like a ziplock bag or anything that we happen to have like it just happened to have a ziplock bag in my pocket and you would take this dig a hole in the ground take the ziplock bag or the the plastic that you have and put it over the hole put a small cup in the middle put some weights around the end of this ziplock bag to seal it around the hole and then put a little tiny pebble right above the center and when you do that it'll make a little dimple in the middle of this of this thing and all of the water that condenses on this plastic over over a day days period will force the condensed water to drip into your little container and it'll fill up and it'll give you enough water to hopefully keep you hydrated for as much traveling or whatever you're doing so that's one important piece of survival survival gear that we'd always want to have is another one that I've actually thought about a lot especially because I go in the water a lot and used to do a lot of fishing and boating is you know I'm getting older I wear reading glasses to read stuff and and that sounds kind of weird for young guys who have good eyes still but one of the pieces of survival equipment that I always packed when I was in the military that didn't come in a normal survival kit was a magnifying glass and the reason is because if your eyes injured or if you are older like me and and you really need to focus on like a rescue radio and change the frequency and you can't really see it you can use the magnifying glass but the magnifying glass is also great for starting fires for burning holes and things if you want to drill a hole in a piece of wood you could actually drill a hole using the sun and burn a hole in a piece of wood so the magnifying glass is actually a great survival tool so if you're ever in a survival situation that's one of the pieces of equipment I'd always take with me another thing I'd always want to have with me if I could is a piece of surgical tubing that's here in Hawaii we all know what a Hawaiian sling is and if you're in a in a survival situation and in a in an ocean environment or a water environment or even in the land environment you want to catch rabbits or squirrels or whatever birds you can use that surgical tubing to make a Hawaiian sling to make a spear and go after some small game and then a Hawaiian sling is a stick with a sharp point on one end and the and the surgical tubing tied on the other end with a loop and you basically pull it tight and hold it and then let go of the spear when it's aimed at an object and the rubber tubing all the energy from the rubber tubing will let loose and poke into whatever you're aiming at it's really really accurate that's something that most of the local divers here know know how to use and in a survival situation that could mean the difference between having some food and not having some food so there's some great great stuff that you can you can learn especially if you go back and look at some of our heritage and Hawaiian heritage and how local folks did fishing and catching catching squid or octopus using shells and hooks and you know there's some great stuff we can learn just from looking at our Hawaiian heritage so there's some weird science for you to get started I'm gonna come back with some more complex weird science a little bit later on after the break here we'll be back in about 60 seconds hi I'm Stacy Hayashi and you can catch me on Mondays at 11 on Think Tech Hawaii Stacy to the rescue see you then hey everybody my name is David Chang and I am the new host of the show the art of thinking smart I'm really excited to be able to give you the smart edge in all aspects of your life can have awesome guests some of my great mentors in the business military political non-profit you name it so we look forward to seeing you every other Thursday at 10 a.m. on Think Tech Hawaii and also on a blog art of thinking smart calm look forward to seeing you there Aloha I'm kawi Lucas host of Hawaii is my mainland every Friday here on Think Tech Hawaii I also have a blog of the same day at kawi Lucas calm where you can see all of my past shows join me this Friday and every Friday at 3 p.m. Aloha hey welcome back to likable science or weird science as we have today with me Stan the energy man rather than Ethan Allen and I'm here to talk about a little bit of the science that I used in in the military and in flying and we'll talk about a couple things I'm actually going to talk a little bit about a fairly I want to say complex science but it's been used for thousands of years by mariners and and people who traverse the the world before they knew it was round and and that's celestial navigation but before I get into that we'll talk a little bit about just how airplanes work and the basic principles of lift on a wing if you look at an airplane wing you notice it's mostly it's curved on the top usually sometimes it's curved on both sides but what you'll what you'll see if you have a if you have a traditional wing which is which is curved on top and flat on the bottom kind of looks like this which is what what the physics behind this is as that as all the air hits the wing and tries to go around the wing the air that goes underneath the wing and the air that goes over the wing have to meet back here at the same time so what does that mean this air has a shorter distance to go because this one's going all the way around the corner and coming in and so what does that do that actually creates a low pressure system on this side on this side and high pressure system on this side and it gives that the wing lift so when you hear of an airplane wing giving you lift it's because of this principle that the air is going to move and meet at the same time over here but it has different distances to cover and that changes the pressure differential on a on a body so it actually gives you lift and that's how an airplane wing has lift so in an airplane when it comes to flying you have several forces you got gravity trying to keep you down you have lift from your wing letting you go up you have acceleration from your engine the more power you put in the more you accelerate forward you have pitch when your nose goes up you have y'all when the plane roll turns sideways and you have roll so you have you have different different physical factors at work on your airplane as you're moving so the the aviator the pilot has to get used to understanding what's at work in his airplane at any given time so the simply simple way we put it is when you push the throttle this way okay the airplane goes faster and you go back in the seat like this when you pull it this way you slow down and you go forward in the seat when you push the nose over like this the houses get bigger when you pull it up the house gets smaller you know we try and keep it really simple for the aviators so they don't get in trouble but bottom line is on an airplane you have a way of controlling your pitch and if you do raise your nose and you want to climb you usually add some power and get the airplane climbing up then when you level off you'll just drop the nose and hold it level and you can pull the power back and it'll maintain your speed and you don't even need to have fancy instruments a lot you know the early airplanes that were flying they didn't have all these fancy instruments were flying in the weather and when they wanted to stay level they didn't necessarily have to look at their altimeter once they got to a certain level they wanted to stay at you'd actually look at the shape of your airplane and look at the horizon behind it and you could maintain almost level flight just by keeping that same sight picture so there's some great great science there that that you can learn from from the different aspects of lift drag pitch yaw roll and that's what pilots live with every day and the more it becomes internal to you and the more comfortable you feel with what what things you do with the airplane that affected and how they're gonna how they're gonna impact your day things like you don't want to be pulling the nose up and not add power because if you do that pretty soon you run out of speed and the plane starts falling out of the sky we call that we call that losing all lift on your wing as stalling the wing you don't want to put the nose down and not pull up or you hit terra firma and you know that's not good to run into the ground so we learn about a lot of different physics and aviation that keep us in the air and keep us going but one of the things I want to talk a little bit about today is celestial navigation and one of the funny things that that we learn we first start learning celestial navigation in the Air Force is that everything that we learned in the science class was totally wrong the earth is flat and we start from there and you just kind of go what the earth is the earth is not flat right stand the earth is round but for for navigation purposes they teach a couple things number one they teach that if you have us I wish I had a ball a sphere but if you look at a ball and you and you imagine the that ball is the earth kind of suspended in the middle of in the middle of the air and you looked at all the stars and the sun and the moon around it you would be able to say that for every star at any given time there is a point right on the surface of the earth that was right directly below that star where that star was right overhead and and there was a spot right on the earth surface where that star was directly overhead and if you if you understand that the stars and the sun and the moon moving very predictable patterns what our early ancestors learned about celestial navigation was you could predict where those stars would be at any given time so what we do now is we have a very sophisticated way of measuring we know exactly where stars are going to be on any day at any time anywhere around the world and what we do is when we're flying around in an airplane we'll say we'll just say we estimate we're going to be right here on the earth that's our spot we use a triangle for that we call it a dead reckoning point and then we pick us we pick three stars and we say okay I'm looking at this star and it's it's sub point that point right underneath the earth is right there that's that's directly above that star and if I drew a circle around that point the circle would look like that and then I'm looking at this star over here it's off in this angle and it's it's sub point is over here and if I took a spot from here and drew a circle it would be like right here and then I'm looking at this star way over here and it's way on that side of the earth and its sub point is way over here and the and if I drew a circle around that point it would be right here and so what happens is where these three circles overlap guess where they overlap they overlap right where you're at and you may think that's pretty weird that that stars that are millions and millions of miles away light years away could give you a very accurate point where you on earth believe it or not our our margin of error for this for a checkride was three miles and we're doing four or five hundred miles an hour while we're flying while we're calculating this so our position taking it off of three stars to pass the checkride was three miles I think they give you some credit if you were four or five miles but if you were 10 miles you're failing the checkride and three miles was what your target was so what you're basically doing if you think about that that's the star is like right over your head and it's straight up and down and you're drawing a circle around around where the star's sub point is and if one circle's line is here or one star's line is here and another star's line is here another star's line is here you basically take this side of the triangle and bisect it this angle bisect it this angle bisect it and that's the triangle that's a spot on the earth where you are based on those three stars amazingly accurate and if you go back to early Polynesians again they notice more basic relationships to stars and they would say that okay in the morning when the Sun comes up we know it's going to come up right over in this direction all the time plus or minus a couple degrees at the most so they're looking for the sunrise to come up it and at sunrise they take a bearing off of that and they know the the nose of their their canoe should be so far off and they know they're heading the right direction if they wake up in the morning and the Sun comes up and it's way over here and they're expecting it to be way over here they know they've been off course for a certain amount of time they'll correct back towards course maybe over correct a little bit and start navigating back towards where they should be and then look for other celestial clues to figure out whether or not they're close enough to track they also use things like rebounding waves coming off of islands you know we're used to seeing big waves passing us in a boat but when you get near an island those waves hit an island and they rebound back off so you'll get to actually see that rebound come back into your pattern and say hey I know I'm near an island and I'm expecting this island to be over on my left side hey it looks pretty good I'm getting rebound from that side hey I'm seeing birds that are usually near the islands that's a good sign hey I'm seeing insects that are near the islands that's an even better sign so celestial navigation nowadays is a really precise science but even in older times celestial navigation coupled with natural observations of what happens on the Earth's surface could give navigators really really accurate information as to where they are and that's why the Polynesians and other navigators actually found their way around the world so well and could repeat it that's the key could repeat it so well because they made such great observations on the celestial side and also just on how things worked in nature so that's one of the concepts that I think most people they see a sextant like a me a sextant that sailors use and it scares them because it just looks like a kind of a weird mechanical thing with lots of mirrors and stuff but what you're really doing on a ship is you're taking a bearing off of off of a star this way and a bearing off of a star that way and you're crossing them to find the same kind of point and giving yourself a position what we call line of position that tells you where you're at on earth so that's some other great science that we learn in in the military for flying and some great science that helps us out if you have any other science that you'd like to know about sometime let us know here at Think Tech Hawaii and we'll have Ethan Alan answer the question for you because I don't know everything I have to ask Ethan anyway but we can we can call up Ethan and get the answer from him real quick but there's a lot of fun things I tell you one of the things I learned a survival school that I did this for and I went to survival school like 30 years ago here's a really easy knot that I use all the time so simple you make a loop like that you reach through it and make a little thing like this and what do you got you have a little slipping knot you take the this end that's that pulls that makes it get bigger and smaller you make a loop in that and you flip it over and pull it tight on the front side of the knot and that's called a trucker's hitch now it doesn't slide anymore it's not going to move so you put that on on one side and then you have your load in your truck and you come on this side and you make a loop in here and pull it tight now you have another little loop right and you take this one and do the same thing you just make another little loop and flip it over and pull it tight and now it's locked and you have a really strong connection and when you want to take it off you just come over here pull that little loop off pull it loose and you're done and when you want your rope back in one piece you pull that loop out and you're done easy to untie easy to tie really quick another one that's used a lot especially by mariners is called a bowling and so you have a piece of line here this may be going out where you're trying to hook on to something you make a little loop there and then you take this end run it through around back down through the loop and pull it tight and what you have is it as a good tight loop that's that's not gonna that's not gonna pull out but the good news is that when you pull this thing really tight when you pull it super tight like you're gonna tow a vehicle and you know how much strain that can put on your rope and it's like you'd never get the knot out but this this one actually the knot comes out very easily because once you start pulling on the on the end that you start pulling on this piece right here it doesn't cinch down too tight and once you get one piece loose everything else just comes right apart so a bowling is a really really good knot to use when you need a strong knot that that can help you pull something but you're gonna need to untie it and by the way that even works with a cable strap like a tow strap if the hook breaks off or something you can still use a bowline on a regular strap and it'll come loose real easy no strain at all taken it apart even though you had a couple thousand pounds pulling on it so there's a little bit of likable science from the weird science guy Stan energy man thanks to Ethan for giving me opportunity to talk about some science today I appreciate it and maybe when he has a day off again I'll come back and do some more weird science if I can think of some more weird science and if you have some you want call in and share with these folks and I'll see what I can do to answer any questions about Stan's weird science on Ethan Allen's likable science aloha