Humans capable of seeing into the future
The title could be slightly misleading, but a new study from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute suggests that the human visual system is equipped with the ability to foresee the future.
"Assistant Professor Mark Changizi says that it takes nearly one-tenth of a second for the brain to perceive what the eyes see.
To compensate for such neural delays, he claims, the visual system has developed the ability to generate perceptions of what will occur one-tenth of a second into the future. Changizi says that it is due to this quality of the visual system that when an observer actually perceives something, it is the present rather than what happened one-tenth of a second ago."
Using this hypothesis, Changizi has been able to explain over 50 types of visual illusions because the brain is trying to perceive the future.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/HealthSci/Humans_can_foresee_the_future/articleshow/3051612.cms
The grass is greener here
I've moved the blog to http://blog.ramin-hossaini.com instead of the old http://www.ramin-hossaini.com/public/blog
Great thing is, the old URL's will still work thanks to some .htaccess scripting.
What took me so long?
Man barbecues car by mistake
Today, I read how a man barbecued his car by mistake. According to the article:
A man barbecued his own car by mistake following a mishap at a grill party in southern Germany, police said.
The 37-year-old poured a beaker of petrol onto the smouldering charcoal of his balcony grill in order to coax it into life, prompting a tongue of flame to shoot out.
A friend standing next to him panicked and dropped the cannister containing the petrol, causing it to ignite and spill on to the man's car parked below.
The car went up [in] flames.
Two other vehicles were damaged in the blaze, which police said caused no injuries but more than 30,000 euro ($50,000) worth of damage.
That's very unfortunate.
Lessons learnt/already known to most:
- A beaker of petrol is plenty for a balcony BBQ. Use sparingly (if at all).
- Smouldering coal can be rekindled with blowing air.
- Petrol is valuable.
- [Your comment here]
World Population
80 years ago, the world-population was around 2 billion.
Today, the world's population is 6,667,007,363
To state the obvious, We have grown by ~ 4.6 billion in 80 years.
Work better
How to Work Better
by Fischli/Weiss (1991)
- Do one thing at a time
- Know the problem
- Learn to listen
- Learn to ask questions
- Distinguish sense from nonsense
- Accept change as inevitable
- Admit mistakes
- Say it simple
- Be calm
- Smile
Sine Wave Speech
First listen to the "whistle" sounds on the page (link) - then listen to the clear-speech. Then finally, listen to the whistles again.
This is an example of perceptual learning, and you will be able to perceive new sine-wave speech sentences more clearly.