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News Briefs 08-12-2004

Short today but lots of reading and viewing. Post your thoughts.

  • Researchers take on imaginary playmates. Perhaps they should read some Jaynes on imaginary playmates.
  • 9000 year history of Chinese fermented beverages confirmed. More here. How come the Chinese are so intolerant to alcohol then?
  • Was 911 the ultimate black operation? For another version of this sort of thing, download Masters of Terror by Alex Jones.
  • Cretan excavation sheds light on Dark Age Greece.
  • Bagpipes through the ages.
  • Tomb’s hexagonal shape supports theories.
  • Human glands evolved from gills. It’s a wonder fish haven’t evolved them either, human glands, that is.
  • Magnetic effects seen in water.
  • Randi still offering $1million challenge.
  • New comet visible unaided.
  • Each of us processes music in different regions of the brain.
  • Physics and Metaphysics: with a nod to Teilhard de Chardin.
  • Borrowing like there was no tomorrow.
  • It’s not a meteorite. It’s not lightning. What is it? Anti-lightning?
  • Weird science: special relativity, the greatest deception of all time.
  • Left-handers flourish in violent society.

Quote of the Day:

Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.

Princess Leia Organa

    1. Imaginary Playmates
      I enjoyed the article on Imaginary Playmates that I found at http://www.seattlepi.com. I wondered if anyone noticed the similarity between these playmates and the other ‘people’ discovered in adults with Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). They don’t always do what is wanted of them, and have distinct differences from the main personality. Separate conversations can be had with them, but they are not readily controlled by the central subject.

      It occurs to me that these ‘playmates’ may be created through the same mechanism as the MPD personalities, though perhaps for different reasons.

      Perhaps the stuff of another study or article?

      Chris

  1. “It”
    The caption isn’t specific about how far apart in time the frames were taken, just that the frames before and after showed no flash or track. It looks like many of the smaller lights are on, leading me to believe that it was near dusk when the photo was taken. I would be curious to see if the light in question was on prior to the displayed frame, because it might just be that the light burned out with a bright flash just as the picture was snapped. The background haze around the light pole looks like smoke, maybe from something below the dock and out of the frame, and not related to the “event”. As for the dark line, or track, it doesn’t appear to have any trajectory – seems straight as an arrow, and is all but invisible above a certain point, so I might think that it’s an optical effect, produced by the flash, the murky atmosphere, and the angle of the camera and lens. The link shows one possible explanation.

    http://www.weather-photography.com/Photos/photo.php?cat=optics&id=w-162-23

  2. left handers
    In Australia we call them molly-dukers but hundreds of years ago people associated left-handers with the devil.
    This is why Catholic teachers made left-handed children write with their right hand;they were called “sinistrals” from sinister meaning evil or harmful.
    Of course as we now know this interfered with the wiring of the brain and these children began to stutter.
    Many never recovered.
    Years ago when I had a bad arm I tried to play tennis left-handed and found that I could not control my feet, and constantly fell over.
    It is an interesting fact that many of history’s leaders have been left-handed,Alexander the Great for instance.
    I believe that because left-handers think with the intuitive side of their brain and yet are forced to live in a right-handed world is the reason that so many achieve so well.
    Invariably when I have met brilliant people during my life and have noticed their handedness, just as a little test of my own,I have found that many are left-handed.
    I have a left-handed son who is very clever and approaches every problem from a perspective that right-handed people could never imagine.
    Long live the Lefties,they may be the hope of the world!

    shadows

    1. not brilliant — just weird
      Many of the left-handed people I’ve known write in a peculiar way — with their hand curled upside down and above the line they’re writing — which always looked rather torturous to me. As a kid, whenever I tried writing with my left hand, the results were always barely readable regardless of which way I held the pen.

      But then, at around age 30 I had a dream in which I was writing a word with both hands simultaneously, with the writing of the left hand being a mirror-image of the word on the right. When I woke up, I was so intrigued, I tried it immediately, and was astounded to find that I not only did it quite easily, but also that the mirror-image word produced with my left hand was far more legible than anything I’d ever written with it in the usual left to right style. Now, with hardly any practice at it, writing in mirror-image with my left hand is so comfortable I can do it almost as fast as I write right-handed — although I do occasionally forget to cross my ‘T’s because I can’t read what I’ve written until I turn the paper around and hold it up to a light to read the reversed image through the paper.

      Does anyone have any theories as to what this nap-inspired activity might be doing to my brain?

      Kat

      1. Many of the left-handed peopl
        Many of the left-handed people I’ve known write in a peculiar way

        All the teachers assume their students are right handed and force them to place the paper as a right handed person would. it took years for me to break that bad habit and quit smearing the things i write.

        1. Left Handed People
          As one of these lucky people, I had that same experience with leaky ballpoint pens that had me dragging a mirror-image of the first capital letter of a sentence all across the line I was writing. I was saved by the felt pen.

          I believe left-handers are lucky in that they were forced early on to deal with a difficult situation that often forced novel, flexible solutions. Excellent training for problem solving later, with some of the cookiecutter limitations removed. Years ago for a lark, I tried writing upside-down and then backwards at the same time, and in a mirror it actually looked better than my normal writing. I think it was that flexibility in problem-solving that helped.

          Chris

          1. you’re right
            Yes Chris I do believe you’re right.
            I have made an informal study of left-handers over the years and have found almost all of them to be excellent at problem solving,being able to think outside the square.I did have a book once on famous left-handed people but have lost it.
            It would be an interesting exercise though to find out who in world history was left-handed.

            shadows

      2. Lefties
        Francis Bacon wrote with both hands, as a form of spiritual exercise. Its also advocated as such in modern books such as Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. It’s OK if you want to develop your spirituality, but I wouldn’t advise it for a materialist such as yourself! Heh heh.

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