Optical allusions.

^^Very interesting video.  I love the ending but the build up takes too long.

Today was full of visuals.  Started off the day watching new music videos on the telly while getting dressed and such.  Saw the "new" Rihanna video (sort of) and some other videos that I had no idea who they were.  On the way to work, a very beautiful lady stood in front of me on the bus.  I had something pretty to look at for the next 25 minutes or so.  I guess you can say it balanced out the homeless man sitting behind me drinking two Sierra Nevada's that he had hidden in his jeans.  Boy was she beautiful.  It's quite rare to see someone that beautiful riding public transportation.  Usually the bus is just filled with normal people or ugs (and the occasional homeless drinking in public).

At work I read an interesting article about optical illusions (yes I purposely titled this post "allusion" to allude to the content of my post).

All of the orange circles are the same size but it's quite tricky.

The same goes for this picture.  Picture (b) was quite tricky for me.  If you'd like to read the article here it is:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/11/optical-illusion-doesnt-fool-kids/?npu=1&mbid=yhp

Then I saw this video which was completely mind bottling.  "You know, when things are so crazy it gets your thoughts all trapped, like in a bottle?"



After work I came home and watched two hours and a half hours of PBS.  There was the NOVA special that runs every so often and this particular episode was titled "What Are Dreams?"  The episode discussed all parts of dreams and how they relate to our lives.  I lost interest at some parts and got distracted with my dinner (although I did not taste much.  See previous post).  The second show was a lot more interesting.  The show, Human Senses, spent the first half hour discussing our sense of touch while the second half discussed vision.  The first half hour was also somewhat uninformative since I already knew about most of the topics they discussed.  Main points were that pain can be altered depending on influences.  During the test the show conducted, a panel of volunteers were given one of two pills.  The first pill was said to enhance sensation and pain while the other was a painkiller.  Both were just flour and sugar but the volunteers were not made aware of this.  The experiment used electrical pulses to sent a shocking sensation to the volunteers and those who took the "pain-enhancing" pills had a stronger reaction to the same level of stimuli.  Those who took the "painkillers" felt little sensation.  The first segment also introduced hypnotherapy as a way of using mind over matter to reduce the amount of pain felt.  The most interesting part of the segment was definitely the part where the host's body was altered to show where the most sensitive parts of the body were.  It looked something like this:

The only difference was that the host was of course, moving.  And the lips on the host were a lot bigger.  "Steven Tyler would be proud."  The second segment about vision was a lot more interesting.  The opening of the segment explains the basic operations of the eye and how it works.  Then there was an experiment where volunteers were hooked up to a machine that detects their eye movements.  The volunteers then waited in a bar for the tester and were unaware that their eye movements were being monitored and recorded.  The room was filled with hired models and beautiful people and then the volunteers were shown what they were looking at.  It was interesting to see how people had no idea they were looking at certain people for a long time.  They were either staring or made a lot of visual passes at the same people numerous times.  The episode then moved onto another experiment which I totally want to try.  Somewhere (I forgot where), a man developed goggles to invert images.  When the host put on the goggles, everything he saw was inverted.  He was tested for 8+ hours where he had to learn to adjust to the changes.  The inventor had been wearing the goggles for 14 days without taking them off and had learned to ride a bike with the goggles on.  The argument was that given time, your eyes could adjust to a lot of stuff.  Because of the inverted vision, the host had trouble reaching into a refrigerator for a bottle of milk.  It was hilarious seeing him hit the top of the refrigerator over and over trying to get to the milk.  Definitely something I'd want to try.  Two other experiments were done to prove that vision can be distorted when distracted.  The first experiment involved the host asking a random person directions before a couple of construction workers pass between the person and the host holding a door.  During the pass, the host switches with one of the people holding the door to test if the person had noticed that the person who asked for directions had changed.  More than half of the people had no idea that the person had switched out.  They were preoccupied with thinking about directions and explaining on where to go.  The second experiment involved five basketball players.  They were told to pass three balls as part of an exercise.  They were recorded while doing their passing drills and a group of volunteers were asked to see how many times the players in the yellow jersey touched the ball.  What the volunteers failed to notice was another person dressed in a gorilla costume walking in the middle and pounding on his chest before stepping back out of the clip.  Only five people noticed the gorilla out of a group of over 20 people.  Of course, I thought to myself, "How stupid are these people that they didn't see a gorilla walk in the middle?"  Then the host said, "I know you're thinking, 'How stupid are these people that they didn't see a gorilla walk in the middle?' Throughout the episode, a gorilla has been in plain view.  How many times did you spot the gorilla?"  And to be honest, I actually only noticed it twice.  Maybe a third if I think back to it really hard.  The host the went back and showed all the different places a gorilla can be seen in the background.  There were a total of five gorillas.  I guess two out of five isn't that bad. 

Side note:  I spent about an hour reading up on eugenics and euthenics.  Very interesting.  I may have to buy some books to read up on it.  I keep saying I'm going to read more but I always end up watching the telly and wasting my life.

Until next time,

Keep your eyes open.

-Alex Thunderlips