There was a comedian years ago, and I can't remember his name, but I saw him live, who made a comment about oral sex, and if men could do it, they'd never leave the house.

It's the sort of joke that finds its way into a lot of different venues, though. Last season on Veronica Mars, * Logan Echolls sent Dick Casablancas to buy some drugs from the PCHers (a local gang) as part of his plan to figure out who might be framing him. When Dick returned to Logan, he made a quip about a PCHer suggesting he perform intercourse on his own person, and Logan's reply was a riff on the same joke. "Doesn't he understand? If you could do that, you'd never come to school." Logan's not really a Beavis or Butthead type, but Dick could be their bastard child who lucked into a lot of money. *

shrift, you have a soul now. Unsucked. The rest will happen.

Ack shrift, I'm sorry the job situation is not going well. I wish I knew somebody in Chicago who could help.

I'd like to vote no on making Chavez an honorary Buffistas. He is too authoritarian, has accomplished little against poverty in Venezuela depite his rhetoric, and had a questionable election. Also, I'm not a Bush fan, but I don't like Chavez's over the top accusations and general anti-American stance.

Humans? Over-recognising the human face? Now there's a shocker.

Speaking of which....

Often times skeptics talk about people who have paranormal beliefs as seeing patterns that aren't necessarily there. We even have a word for it, pareidolia (which I invariably have to look up the spelling for). This seems to make sense because our neocortex is an incredibly powerful pattern matching engine. So if some people see patterns more easily in vague or obscure stimuli then that implies there is something different going on in their brains.

This 2002 article from New Scientist magazine reports on research conducted by Dr. Peter Brugger at University Hospital in Zurich. Using a group of 20 self-described "believers" (I wonder exactly what they believed in) and 20 self-described skeptics he asked each group to distinguish between scrambled images of faces and images of actual faces flashed upon a screen. A second trial asked the two groups to tell real words from nonsense words. As you might expect, the believers were much more likely to see a face or a word where there wasn't one.

Both groups were then given L-DOPA to increase the levels of dopamine in their brains (L-DOPA is a synthetic precursor to dopamine and is able to cross the blood-brain barrier). This led to both groups making more errors, but it also led to the skeptics being more likely to see the scrambled faces and words as real. Interestingly, the increased levels of dopamine in the believer's brains did not seem to increase the likelihood of their interpreting the spurious data as real which might mean there is a threshold above which more dopamine does not make a difference.

[link]

I actually enjoy letting my brain "recognise" things. I don't know how to explain it, but I sort of delay paying proper attention, and let my brain guess at what it's seeing (or sometimes hearing). It's quite fascinating at times to compare that to reality.

I've seen quite a few ghost shows on TV where there is somebody who talks about seeing a figure out of the corner of their eye and state that it's a ghost or they are crazy and I just want to reach through the TV and tell them "No, it's normal, it's the way your brain works!".

Happy Birthday Sophia!

I actually enjoy letting my brain "recognise" things. I don't know how to explain it, but I sort of delay paying proper attention, and let my brain guess at what it's seeing (or sometimes hearing). It's quite fascinating at times to compare that to reality.

As long as you don't get too pareidolish on us.

OTOH, maybe that would be fun....

shrift, you have a soul now. Unsucked. The rest will happen.

It would be nice if they'd give me an interview before turning me down flat. You know, once a month, at least.

Ack shrift, I'm sorry the job situation is not going well.

I think I need to rewrite my resume. And keep broadening my job search. And apparently go back to school for a Computer Science degree.

I probably applied for a hundred or so jobs before I got the one I did. I got three interviews in three months, and was offered two. I'm so glad I didn't take the first one.