Friday, June 15, 2007

Fun with brains

Now I think I can say with some fair degree of certainty that we all look at the world in slightly different ways. I'm equally sure that from time to time we have all wondered what it would be like to experience the world the way someone else does. This usually leads to stupid questions like "Do other people see the same colour when we both look at red?". Think about that for a second, we know what wavelength we are looking at but do our brains interpret it the same way?

Well it turns out that a lot of people "see" more than just the colour they see. These people have a condition know as synaesthesia. Some of you may have heard of this before, it's a really neat neurological condition. What happens is that inputs (usually visual or auditory) into the brain trigger more than one reaction. People might see specific colours associated with specific letters, numbers or words; others may experience a taste for words they hear. There are all kinds of variations on this theme and they have been known and research for years. It turns out that more recently they have found that there is another form of synaesthesia, this one being more conceptual. Essentially those who experience it associate abstract qualities, such as gender or personalities to things like words, letters, numbers or colours.

So why am I telling you all this? Well it turns out that if you included this new definition of synaesthesia the prevalence of the condition in society goes from somewhere around 1 in thousands to 1 in 20. But that wouldn't be quite enough to make me want to write about it, unless I had the condition; but I don't I'm quite normal and experience the world in the same mundane way that most people do. Deirdre however...

We figured out that Deirdre is synaesthetic when I read an article about it in New Scientist. After learning about the higher prevalence we had the following exchange:

Me: So do you happen to see colours when you look at letters or numbers.
D: No. But they do have genders. (All this was said in a very matter of fact tone.)
Me: Really! That's so cool! You have synaesthesia. What gender is blue?
D: Well blue is androgynous.

We proceeded to go through a list of letters, numbers and colours, all of which I have forgotten the genders for (though it seems I usually pick ones that are male). Then I learned something else really neat about Deirdre, she sees the words she hears!

Of course this led to a new barrage of questions from me. I learned that:
  • The words go by in her mind's eye in a ticker tape style
  • The spelling is always correct
  • As is the punctuation
  • Stuttering slows the tape down
  • The letters are in white on a blue background
  • Other known languages are written in that language
  • She can see what she is about to say and sometimes gets ahead of her own mouth
So of course being the complete nerd that I am I have proceeded to harass one of her sisters and two of her brothers about the condition. So far it seems that the condition only afflicts the females of the family and the only commonality is the ticker tape. Of course I will pursue this line of research until it no longer amuses me, though so far the novelty has yet to fade and with eight more siblings to go... I'll keep you all posted.

Saturday, June 09, 2007

What was he thinking?

Every now and then when I go out riding I see something that just makes me scratch my head and wonder if there could possibly be a logical reason for what I witness. And I have yet to come up with one for what I saw the Friday night.

I had decided to take a spin through a nearby mountain bike trail when I got home from work. I don't ride my mountain bike all that much, but I do find it to be a nice change from the road rides, where intensity and training effect are foremost in my mind; mountain biking is just plain fun! So as I approached the trail entrance I saw this guy come flying out of the trail, riding a bit too fast to seem safe. My first impression was that he was an idiot, after all he wasn't even wearing a helmet.

After my first loop of the trail I was chatting with another rider when the helmet-less dude comes flying back onto the trail for another lap. I don't pay much attention to him, but I just wonder how long it will take me to catch him, as I was going to go in for another lap myself.

Sure enough I do catch him about halfway through the loop, I'd started after him several minutes after he passed by. He was smart enough to pull over to the side and let me past, but seemed to stare at me more than anything else as I passed and thanked him for letting me by. But it's not like I expected more from a "tough guy" in a cycling jersey, khaki shorts and no helmet.

As I was taking my time riding out of the park with the trail I heard him come rushing up and past me. I think he looked over at me as he was yet again standing and mashing the gears like a big man. But when he got past me I noticed something I hadn't seen earlier, not only was this idiot stupid enough to mountain bike without a helmet on, he didn't even have a fucking seat! Now this wasn't a free ride bike that doesn't even have a seat post, he was riding a mountain bike that just didn't have a seat installed.

As I said before I really don't know what this idiot was thinking but all I know is that if he has an accident he may give a whole new definition to going for a #2.

Saturday, June 02, 2007

Do you understand the rules of the road?

So I live in a pretty quiet residential neighbourhood; it's a nice little place with a bunch of one-way streets and a lot of intersections with stop signs in all directions. Now really strange trend seems to have developed of late and I really can't explain it.

Normally in an area with so many stop signs I would expect that most cars would be more than likely to pull a "rolling stop", rather than a proper stop that "The Man" insists we do. And I'm ok with that. A rolling stop isn't likely to hurt anyone; hell I do it often on my bike, it's just easier. And the argument could be made that it's better for your car/fuel efficiency since you aren't having to accelerate from a dead stop. But lately people haven't been doing a rolling stop, or the next logical progression: not stopping at all. What they have been doing is stopping, and waiting, and waiting and waiting!

This happens almost every time you come to an intersection and your direction of travel will cross that of the person who got to the intersection first. These people will actually sit there and wait until you come to a full stop before they dare to pass through the intersection. It's as if they all saw some "action" news story about people being intentionally rammed as they drive through intersections.

This afternoon though I got to experience the most stunning example of this. I was biking home, and probably about 50 meters from the intersection, when I saw a car on the opposite side stop with her left turn blinker on. So I just coasted up to the intersection and when I finally got there she was still sitting and waiting. So I stopped, and put my foot down and the woman proceeded to try to wave me through the intersection! Now this is really fucking stupid! She's waited so long that she could have gone through the intersection at least twice before I even got there. I don't know if she thinks she's being really charitable or something or some other BS, but I think that she really has no clue what's going on in the world.

I actually had to yell to her that I had a stop sign and that she was supposed to go. As she drove past she had a perturbed look on her face as she was holding a phone to her ear. All I can hope is that I yelled loud enough that the person on the other end of the line knows just how stupid the woman they're talking to really is.