Awareness test
Discussion in comments to avoid spoilers.
Snarking The Odyssey (with AD&D)
WARNING: Those of you who are accustomed to pithy political remarks here on Internal Monologue should brace yourselves for a major dose of gaming geekitude. Here's a link to one "Jamie R." who does a very snarky close reading of Homer's The Odyssey (HT: Mad Latinist via email). I've only read book 1, but it's pretty funny so far. An excerpt: Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he was acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea while trying to save his own life and bring his men safely home; but do what he might he could not save his men… Sooooo, he’s in charge, and everybody dies. Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero and his colossal failure. What? … for they perished through their own sheer folly in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Hyperion; so the god prevented them from ever rea
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Anyway, so apparently I'm not self-aware. I may need you to explain to me how mirrors work.
Or maybe I'm not aware as in "Awareness Day." That could be a problem!
Focus someone's attention, and then anything that fall outside of the parameters is likely to go unnoticed.
Passes by the white team? We start to look and the first filter is to ignore the black team--and the "bear" is black, so its actions aren't of interest. We miss a lot--we filter it out.
I wonder how many people would see it if they were looking for passes by the black team.
"The brain has evolved meachanisms for combating data overload, allowing large rivers of data to pass along optical and cortical corridors almost entirely unassimilated, and peeling off selected data for a close careful view. In deciding what to focus on, the brain essentially shines a spotlight from place to place, a rapid, sweeping search that takes in maybe 30 or 40 objects per seconds..."
"The brain, it seems, is a master at filing gaps and making do, of compiling a cohesive portrait of reality based on a flickering view."
(NYTimes Science Section, 4/1/08)
Visual artists know that they just have to suggest something and the viewer will fill in the details.