How magicians fool the mind of the viewer:
"Magicians are manipulating your consciousness. They are showing you something impossible," says Wiseman. "They're getting you to construct a narrative, which simply isn't true. So that means they know how to make you aware of certain things and blind to other things. What I'm hoping is that magic, this entertainment vehicle that has been around for a long time, will give us a real insight into the deep mysteries of consciousness."
Our brains filter out a huge amount of the mass of sensory input flooding in from our environment. Kuhn explains that we see what we expect to see and what our brains are interested in. "Our visual representation of the world is much more impoverished than we would assume. People can be looking at something without being aware of it. Perception doesn't just involve looking at an object but attending to it."
...
"What it shows is just how much of the picture in our head of our surroundings is a massive construction, based on expectations, what we think is important, what we normally encounter and so on," says Wiseman. "And that's what magicians are very good at exploiting."
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Incidentally to the magic link-- Jesse, cover your eyes-- the commercials for "Criss Angel Mindfreak" make me embarrassed to be alive. In fact, all three of the words in the title make me cringe, from the spelling for Chris, the fake last name and the very word "mindfreak." My god.
In fact, all three of the words in the title make me cringe, from the spelling for Chris, the fake last name and the very word "mindfreak." My god.
I just want to know why he's screaming at us.
MINDFREAK!!!!!
LOVE IT!!!
I don't know why everything about him makes me laugh so hard.
I couple of weeks ago, when I pulled out of my parking spot at Whole foods to leave, someone came and waited to claim it. By sitting directly in front of me so I couldn't actually leave. And this was a two way lane that actually had room for two cars to pass one another, he had just swerved over in my lane to be able to make the turn into my recently vacated spot and would not budge. I kinda wish I had pulled back into my spot and foiled him rather than politely backing up so he could have it. Nimrod.
No, it's all adults who can't see the goth wearing a top hat and petticoats.
I'm comforted that Jilli is also invisible to people with carts. I'm not really a small person and I've had to leap out of the way of people barreling down the aisle. Usually it's in grocery stores, but last week I went to our month-old Ikea, and I was run into several times by people by people staring at the brave new retail world.
I agree that the bill hammock is not about germ avoidance. I'd imagine it's a response to registers that tell you what change is due. Previously, a person would usually count out the change first to the nearest dollar, then get the bills out.
Now that the read out tells you dollar amount first, then change, I wonder if cashiers grab the bills first then change.
Also, random, in New Zealand, the grocery stores use Swedish Rounding to give change because there are no equivalent coins for pennies there. It was the first time i'd ever heard of Swedish rounding.
Hello, all. I have been such a good worker bee that I have hardly been here all day. (NOTE TO COMPANY EYEBALLS: See my virtue?)
I did break for a Hawaiian burger at 1, however.
Now going home to decide where the bookcases go. Also, to figure out how best to use furniture-coasters, about which the only shouting of Move Day was the topic. (Of course.)
Poor dumb Rafi Palmeiro. Maybe it was a drive-by blow-gun steroid injection. Maybe somebody was trying to kill him by feeding him large amounts of ephedra. Maybe he needs to invest in a Whizzinator.
Widely spread on various blogs
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Liberality For All - 8 issue mini series - Color
Synopsis:
America’s future has become an Orwellian nightmare of ultra-liberalism. Beginning with the Gore Presidency, the government has become increasingly dominated by liberal extremists.
In 2004, Muslim terrorists stopped viewing the weakened American government as a threat; instead they set their sites on their true enemies, vocal American conservatives. On one dark day, in 2006, many conservative voices went forever silent at the hands of terrorist assassins. Those which survived joined forces and formed a powerful covert conservative organization called “The Freedom of Information League”, aka F.O.I.L.
The efforts of F.O.I.L. threaten both the liberal extremist power structure and the U.N.’s grip on America, the U.N. calls F.O.I.L. the most dangerous group in the world. It seems the once theorized Vast Right Wing Conspiracy has now become a reality.
The F.O.I.L. Organization is forced underground by the “Coulter Laws” of 2007; these hate speech legislations have made right-wing talk shows, and conservative-slanted media, illegal. Our weakened government has willingly handed the reigns of our once great country to the corrupt United Nations. The Department of Political-Correctness is required to assist U.N. monitors to properly edit all print and broadcast media. Live broadcasts are a thing of the past; all transmissions are monitored by the U.N. and any ‘offensive’ material is dumped.
Rupert Murdoch’s decision to defy the “Coulter Laws” hate speech legislations, has bankrupted News Corporation. George Soros has bought all of News Corps assets and changed its name to Liberty International Broadcasting. LIB’s networks have flourished and circle the globe with a series of satellites beaming liberal & U.N. propaganda worldwide.
The New York City faction of F.O.I.L. is lead by Sean Hannity, G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North, each uniquely endowed with special abilities devised by a bio mechanical engineer affectionately nicknamed “Oscar”...
