A Very Important Picture

Subconscious Editing

It's funny the way the human brain works, isn't it? I mean, quite apart from the fact it appears to work on electricity (which is quite frankly ridiculous if you ask me...), it can do some pretty bizarre stuff at times.

Take, for instance, the way that it can recognise not only patterns, but also tiny incongruities in them. The patterns don't have to be numerical sequences or geometrical shapes, either. A pattern can be a block of text, written in a particular style. One word out of place - not misspelled, just unexpected - can leap right out of the page at you. 

The example which led me to blog about this is a recent experience with a word suddenly lodging itself in my mind. The word was 'blood'. Here I was, sitting at my desk with my email open on one screen and a fairly dry, technically worded document open on the other. Neither of which should contain the word 'blood'. At all. 

And yet... I scanned through the document a couple of times, and there it was, in the phrase 'the life blood of asset management planning'. In all of the text, in a place where it really had no reason to be, was my word. Of all the words on that page, my brain had honed in on 'blood'.

Why did this happen? And more importantly, are there wider implications here? I know that I have at least a partially photographic memory - I can remember numbers I've seen written down, such as license plates on cars. Not all the time, but way more than average. And I can remember visual patterns with surprising ease and accuracy. 

Could it be that as an extension of this is my brain scanned all of the words in the document and found this one out of place? Or was because it was so wrong in the context of the words written there that I couldn't help but spot it? Or was it just a fluke?

I don't have the answers. Sometimes I wish I'd done cognitive psychology, just to answer questions like this. But on the other hand, I wouldn't have liked to be like Derren Brown. Stupid man...

Darkness and light... and a bird

Look for the extra-special free gift of a bird flying through the frame. Joys.

It's morbid, but we must have answers...

When the queen dies - assuming she's succeeded by a male heir, which seems likely - do all the QCs automatically and instantly become KCs? Would that not be a really good time for a business card printing company to launch an advertising campaign to the members of the Bar? 

Real Man Test #87: Swarfega

Do you (a) know what Swarfega is, and (b) know how to use it properly?

This summer...

... bring the outdoors indoors!

We live in crazy skies

Plowed by mutant spacemen

Tiny caterpillar...

... is tiny!

The Nature of Fortune

This isn’t an article about luck as such, but it’s writing was triggered by a piece of good fortune, the source of which I’m beginning to question. That questioning is the basis of my post.

I made a reasonably significant purchase on a website recently. Being the conscientious souls that they are, the website sent me a confirmation e-mail listing what I had ordered, how much it cost, and delivery and billing information. It’s a fairly standard procedure these days. In fact, it’s so standard that, as a matter of course, I barely glance at the e-mails these days.

On this occasion, however, and for reasons I’m still a little unsure of, I decided to thoroughly check the details of the order. Having done so, I realised that, in my hurry to get the process finished, I had wrongly specified the delivery address. As it happens, no harm was done, and the details were amended with a quick reply to the e-mail.

But what was it that made me check the details when normally I wouldn’t? It certainly wasn’t that I didn’t trust the company in question to get it right. It wasn’t that my attitudes have changed – I’ll probably move the next e-mail of it’s kind straight to the relevant folder with nothing more than a cursory glance of its contents. So, what was it?

I have a theory on this. I think it’s quite feasible that subconsciously, over the course of my night’s sleep, I realised that something, somewhere was wrong with what I’d done during the course of the evening. That triggered me to re-examine the products of that evening’s tasks, including the response to the online purchase. I scanned this e-mail not because I wanted to confirm that I had done things correctly, but rather because I was expecting to find something wrong.

How often do we attribute fortunate coincidences to sheer luck, when actually it’s our subconscious helping us out?

Just a theory…

Car Park Bingo x 4

Nissan GT-R

Audi R8

Honda CR-Z

Alpha Romeo 200