think or thwim

A nice set of before and after pictures comparing 1975 to 2006.

:: J Walk

Stephen Wiltshire draws a huge aerial view of Rome after a 45 minute helicopter flight above it.

:: Stephen Wiltshire

Ze Frank:

Speaking at the Oval Office today, President Bush congratulated General Patrias in explaining that the plan will move forward because he is the decision maker saying quote, “I have picked the plan that I think is most likely to succeed.”

Once again, he chastised critics saying some are condemning a plan before it’s even had a chance to work. By then, of course, you’re not really condemning a plan anymore; you’re condemning a reality.

No, the correct time to condemn a plan is when it’s being made; that’s what planning is.

This plan, however, is past planning and is becoming a reality. And as with any reality that involves bullets and people dieing, I very much hope that it will work.

The problem is your track record in choosing plans that are likely to succeed blows chunk’s out of a monkey’s butt.

Rod MacFarland created a nifty Wordpress Theme with a command line interface. Enter ‘p’ for previous post, ‘n’ for next post, or ‘help’ to find out what else you can do.

So what do people enter most often? (Unless you can read really fast, you’ll have to scroll up to read the whole post.)

Has anybody else noticed how much Dick Cheney looks like Darth Vader after he takes the mask off?

Update:
I swear I hadn’t seen [part 2] when I wrote my witty little Darth Vader comment above. I guess I’m not the only one who’s noticed.

:: AlterNet

This Radio Lab segment starts with Einstein’s relativity. It’s a good explanation, but nothing out of the ordinary. Then in the portion starting at 8:56 Oliver Sachs describes something that absolutely floored me.

Your Personal Time Can Be Affected By Disease

In the 1920s there was an outbreak of encephalitis lethargica, or sleeping sickness. BBC Horizon postulates that it was an aftershock of the 1918 flu pandemic. The disease started with tremors similar to Parkinson’s disease, but eventually the patients would just seize up and remain motionless. In the 1960s Sachs began working with some of those patients.

One of his patients, Myron Z, was basically frozen in odd positions for hours at a time, but Sachs would sometimes notice that Myron had changed positions during these episodes. Sachs pointed this out to Myron, who said “That’s ridiculous. I was just wiping my nose.” Sachs then filmed Myron over 2 hours and replayed the film at a faster rate of speed. Sure enough, Myron had been moving in slow motion, so slow that it was imperceptible to people with normal time perception. However, Myron didn’t realize it. Another patient, Hestor Y, was the opposite. She was living at a greatly increased speed, but also had no idea.

The 1990 movie, Awakenings, was about Sach’s patients frozen from encephalitis lethargica. The movie is good, but it only tells the story of the typical encephalitis lethargica patients. When they were given the drug L-Dopa they would awake and have no idea they had been frozen for 40 years. Unfortunately the drug only worked for a few months, and they all returned to their catatonic states. The movie does not reference Myron or Hestor, who seem to be a subset of that group. I just ordered his book by the same name. Hopefully it will have more details.

Time Really Does Slow Down When You Are In a Wreck

Sachs goes on to talk about time slowing for people in mortal danger or for athletes in the zone. There was an experiment last year that seems to have proven that it’s true.

From a February 2006 BBC News Article:

Mr Eagleman came up with a cunning device: the “perceptual chronometer”, a wristwatch-like device which flicked blindingly fast between two LED screens.

Normally the flicker would be so fast Jesse could only see a blur. But if time slowed down for him, he might be able to discern the two different screens and read a random number on one of them.

“There’s no way to fake this test,” says Dr Eagleman, “because if time is not running more slowly, they can’t see the sequence.”

All Jesse had to do was jump, and read. As he ascended the 33ft metal cage no-one seemed to believe this curious experiment might work.

It worked. Jesse could read the numbers. Not perfectly, but well enough to show that he was keeping up with the fast watch.

:: Radio Lab | Time

According to Wikipedia subliminal ads are illegal in Australia and the UK, but legal in the US. The FCC did issue a 1974 policy statement declaring that subliminal ads are “against the public good.” Thanks for watching out for us, guys.

Wikipedia also has some interesting examples from Fight Club and the 2000 Presidential Campaign (guess which candidate).

:: J-Walk

• If you use Stumble Upon, Google search results show 1-5 stars based on what other stumblers thought and the SU category. That rocks.

• Google cleaned up their image search results page, but took out some valuable information like dimensions. That doesn’t rock, but you can fix it, and that does.

After a series of epileptic seizures at age four Daniel Tammet developed some extraordinary talents. He can speak ten languages. He has recited pi perfectly to 22,500 digits, and he can do complex math problems in his head. Additionally, he’s a rare savant with the ability to communicate how his mind works.

The Boy with the Incredible Brain is a fascinating profile:

Daniel just published his autobiography a couple weeks ago: Born on a Blue Day

:: SmashingTelly