Death is a delightful hiding place for weary men.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

quirks

ok basically i've been "tagged" to play this game (which is not fun at all) to list out 6 of my idiosyncrasies. i duno i may have more than 6, i'll just list them anyway and dun worry, i'm not gonna play tag.

1) i like to correct other people's english, be it written or spoken
2) when typing, i always press "space" twice after a fullstop and only once after a comma
3) i'm never satisfied by just pressing the button at the traffic light once, press more times then the thing will know i'm in a hurry what
4) when i go out everything must be in the same pockets e.g. cigarettes, keys in left, phone in right, wallet at back, but everything comes out onto the desk when i reach the office
5) i will often not click on the first search result that comes out on google, until i've checked through some of the rest
6) toilet rolls must roll outwards, not inwards
7) i will have an urge to straighten out crooked stuff like picture frames
8) i always wet my toothbrush before i put the tooth paste on it

okay so i got eight. i'm pretty sure there's more but this is all i can come up with at the moment. anyway since i'm on this topic might as well let y'all in on something

9 brain quirks you didnt realise you had

1) our short-term memory has a max capacity of seven
humans have 3 forms of memory: sensory, long-term and short-term. long-term memory is like hard-drive space, while short-term memory works like a very small RAM. this short-term memory can hold only about five to nine (average is seven) items at a time. remembering information longer than this requires you to either compress it down into seven units or store it in long-term memory. this is why last time phone numbers were only seven digits. it's eight now cos not enough numbers to use lol

2) yellow-green is the most visible color
yellow-green sits right in the middle of the frequencies of visible light. our eyes have receptors for blue, green and red. being in the middle, yellow-green is the one most noticeable and not red like many of us think it is

3) our subconscious is smarter than we are
or at least more powerful. in one study, a square was assigned to a location on a computer screen through a complex pattern. after watching it, people began to get results better than chance of picking out where the square would pop up next. but when asked to consciously determine the pattern, even given a few hours, very few could do it

4) we have two nervous systems
one set controls excitation and the other controls inhibition. if you hold out your hand, you might notice minor tremors. this is caused by slight, random differences in the amount each of the two systems are firing and not because u're suffering from alzheimers' =p

5) our brain is awful at probability
maybe your maths teacher have told you this. what’s interesting isn’t that your brain is bad at probability, but how. it seems our minds like to think more details make events more probable, not less. think it through

6) our memory isn’t great either
studies have shown that people are highly likely to misremember past events. even worse, it is incredibly easy to suggest a memory that never happened. this is why so-called “repressed” memories should be given a lot of thought. it is far easier to suggest a memory of an event never happened, then it is to recover one that actually did. so the next time you get drunk, things that you think happened, they did - no need for further thought

7) we can perceive depth with one eye
it’s a myth that depth perception is entirely the result of having two eyes. binocular vision does assist in making a 3D picture. however, most of our ability to perceive depth comes from inside our brain. it has been wired to look at angles and proportions to judge distance. if we required two eyes to perceive depth then most optical illusions wouldn’t work and it would be incredibly difficult to gather information from flat photographs. not to mention a lot more one-eyed pirates walking overboard - there goes captain hook

8) long-term memory shuts down during sleep
the parts of the brain that transfer information to long-term memory shut down while sleeping. this is why dreams quickly fade away after you wake up. although you may have several dreams in a night, they aren’t being recorded into long-term memory. only the fragments of a dream left in short-term memory have a chance to be encoded after you wake up so now you know why you usually only remember dreams that happened closer to the time you actually wake up

9) we have an instant playback feature
i mentioned that humans have 3 forms of memory, short-term, long-term and sensory. sensory memory is our brain’s equivalent to an instant playback feature. imagine being at a gathering and overhearing someone say your name. often you can recall what they said even though you were focused on another conversation. this is because your sensory memory re-sends the signals when it finds something important, such as your name. if you lacked this form of memory, activities such as multitasking or taking notes from a lecturer would be impossible. if you’re asked to repeat something you just said because the other person wasn’t listening, just wait a few seconds. often they can replay the message in their head and give a response. so for those who can't multitask, your brain is definitely short of something

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this post took longer than it should because of multiple msn conversations =p, and i said being sick stinks because idk for what reason, my fart stinks - maybe its cos of the medicine LOL

astrocow
14:30