Color Perception: An Impressive Illusion

"Awesome Illusion"
Mr. Science Show (June 25 2009)

"This illusion has been doing the rounds this week (see Bad Astronomy and Richard Wiseman for a couple of science blogs I like that picked it up), but it's so good I thought it needed to be posted here also.

"Look carefully at the image below. Do you see a couple of spirals, one blue and one green? Well, take a closer look - in actual fact, the blue and green are actually the same colour!..."

The post shows a larger version of that thumbnail, and two enlarged segments from the graphic. It also briefly tells why the 'blue' and 'green' appear to be different colors. And, yes: they are the same color.

Technology, Perceptions of Magic, and the Human Condition

"Steven Levy on How Gadgets Lose Their Magic"
Tech Biz: People, Wired Magazine (April 20, 2009)

"When Arthur C. Clarke went to the great geosynchronous orbit in the sky last year, he left behind a huge legacy, not least of which was a quote oft cited by Silicon Valley visionaries and wannabes. 'Any sufficiently advanced technology,' the sci-fi master wrote in 1962, 'is indistinguishable from magic.'

"I thought of Clarke's observation recently while I was playing with a Flip MinoHD camcorder. It's a stripped-down device with a footprint smaller than an Altoids tin, yet it holds an hour of video (in high definition!) and even has 2X zoom....

"...When I was growing up, television production was confined to studios, and video cameras were giant cyclopsian beasts that included chairs for their operators...."

I'm old enough to remember the television technology the author describes. I've seen the transistor change from a technological wonder the size of an obese pencil eraser to a routine - and microscopic - component known chiefly by technogeeks and development engineers.

This article shows what's happened, now that 'magic' is commonplace.

The author illustrates his point by disclosing how he reacted to the Flip MinoHD camcorder's limitations: "...the handheld image was a bit shaky ... maybe too vérité. As a result, my first thought was not so much 'What hath God wrought?' as 'What? No image stabilization? Where's the built-in steadicam?'..."

The author's on to something here. We live in 'the future' - not quite as described when I was growing up, but 'the future' nonetheless. There's a degree of thoughtfulness here that wasn't in the glowing (and sometimes goofy) articles about "the future" of generations passed: and isn't in the determinedly pessimistic discussions of "the future" that have been in fashion more recently.

The author closes with a thought: Maybe a way to recapture the magic is to turn all the stuff off for a little while.

Vaguely related posts:

• "Space-Based In-Flight Internet"
  (April 27, 2009)
• "'You Will Forget' - The Doctor Will Fix You Now?"
  (April 13, 2009)
• "Skylon: Spaceplane for 2019"
  (March 12, 2009)
• "Nanotechnolgy and Electronics: Atom-Sized Transistors ('Nanotronics'??)"
  (February 20, 2009)
• "Better Ideas From Japan: 'Robocop' Rolled Out"
  (January 24, 2009)
• "Santa Claus, 2007 - as seen from 1907"
  (January 6, 2009)
• "Cynicism isn't Pessimism, or: Nothing Could be That Bad"
  (January 3, 2009)
• "The 2008 Olympics "Water Cube:" Looks Cool, Retains Heat, and Keeps Itself Clean"
  (August 22, 2008)
• "Yesterday's Inventions"
  (August 16, 2008)
• "Flying Cars May Get Off the Ground This Time"
  (July 20, 2008)
• "Spaceport America: Still Open for Business"
  (November 6, 2008)
• "Coming Soon to a Spaceport Near You"
  (March 26, 2008)

What We Expect to See is What We See

- and I have a video to prove it!

I was led to this by a post on an online community. That's a topic for another post.

The video is near the top of a post called How you can begin to attract more opportunities into your life.

To appreciate the video, I strongly suggest that you view the video before reading the text below it. Also, follow the instructions in the video.

I don't necessarily endorse the rest of the "How you" post. It sounds quite a bit like permutations on Napoleon Hill's book.