Three simple word pictures this week. Which well known phrases are represented by the following…..
sta4nce
Give Get
Give Get
Give Get
Give Get
12345678
12safety78
12345678
As ever, please say if you think you have solved them and how long it took, but don’t post your answers. I will give the solutions on Monday. Have a good weekend. Finally, here is another great colour contrast illusion from tonicblue.
Oh, and feel free to post your own word picture puzzles…
First, thanks to Scientific American Online for posting an article about the new optical illusion that I mentioned yesterday. Great that it reached such a wide audience!
Yesterday I also sent out a strange challenge on Twitter, asking people to present a summary of the first Star Wars film in 140 characters or less. I was swamped with replies, and here are some of my favourites:
saliearls: farm boy saves princess, gets robots, fights space war, learns mind tricks. Obi Wan dies. May be about religion.
wizely Effeminate farmboy from nowhereville still manages to find incestuous attraction and blow things up amidst insterstellar war.
ahanin Luke falls in love with his sister and tries to kill his dad.
StuartForsyth Farmhand goes on a roadtrip with an old guy. While being chased by crazy father discovers he’s more than he thought.
scottcrussell Disgruntled exemployees persuade ragtag no hopers to kidnap an executive all goes terribly wrong when head office destroyed.
NatashaMuse crazy bearded desert-dwelling hermit tricks a virgin into become a terrorist and hating his own father.
ianvisits Girl meets droid. Driod meets boy. Droid leaves boy for old man. Droid takes boy and old man to cowboy. Cowboy gets girl.
So, can you do any better? Want to try any other films? Oh, and if you haven’t seen it, here is Star Wars in just 5 secs (thanks daisyjane1)….
This week the blog is turning into a bit of an illusion fest. Last week I posted a wonderful contrast illusion. I wondered whether it might be possible to use the concept to create a more concrete image. Something that might enhance the effect by fitting in with people’s expectations about colour. A few nights ago I woke-up from a dream with this image of a world map fully formed in my head…..
The ‘green’ of the land is the same colour as the ‘blue’ of the sea. What do you think? Any other ideas?
Update: The people who read and comment on this blog never cease to amaze me! Matthew Wilkes (tonicblue) has just posted this much improved version….Genius! Not sure the colours are right in the re-sized image below – go to the original here.
Here is another wonderful illustration from artist Ruby Rust….can you spot the lion?
On Friday I posted this great picture by artist Rusty Rust and asked if you could find the hidden tiger….
If you didn’t try to solve the puzzle, have a go now. For everyone else, the answer is after the break.
OK, it’s a simple but tricky one this week. Below is a painting of a tiger in the jungle, but can you find the hidden tiger in the picture?
PLEASE do not post the answer, but do feel free to say if you have solved it (no googling!) and how long it took. I will post the solution, and appropriate credits for the illustration, on Monday. I have also extended the caption competition (see post below) till Monday too, so still time to win a free copy of 59 Seconds by submitting your entry. Have a good weekend.
Yesterday I posted this….
Imagine that you are in a room with 100 people. They are all the same age and sex as you, and are from roughly the same background. In walks a driving instructor. He is going to test the driving skills of everyone in the room, and will give each person a score that reflects their skill and safety.
Do you think that you would be placed in the top half of the group?
As a few of you pointed out, this is a standard question used by psychologists to measure unrealistic optimism (sometimes called optimistic bias). The majority of people tend to think that they are above average when it comes to anything positive, such as driving skills, interview technique or sense of humour (roughly 95% of people say that they have an above average sense of humour!).
Researchers are not quite certain why this happens. It might be that we all like to think well of ourselves, or might be that we only usually see our own behaviour and do not realise that other people are just as good!
Either way, it affects us. Take, for example, the issue of climate change. If we all think that our carbon footprint is lower than average, we might end up thinking that it is everyone else that has to change.
What thinks you? Were you an unrealistic optimist yesterday?
On a completely different front, the new poster campaign for 59 Seconds kicked off in London yesterday. Here is an example of the type of thing that is out there….
I have started a caption competition for the pic that is in the middle row, far right. Winner gets a free copy of the book. Feel free to enter!
Here is a scenario for everyone that is able to drive…..
Imagine that you are in a room with 100 people. They are all the same age and sex as you, and are from roughly the same background. In walks a driving instructor. He is going to test the driving skills of everyone in the room, and will give each person a score that reflects their skill and safety.
Do you think that you would be placed in the top half of the group?
Feel free to give an honest answer!
I haven’t posted a new Quirkology video for a long time because they are a tad tricky to create. However, about a month ago I came across a nice use of the blind spot by bored lawyers. Apparently during a tedious court case they occasionally pass the time by covering one eye, looking at the judge with the other eye, and seeing if they can make the head of the witness disappear!
This got me thinking, and after a bit of experimentation I came up with the following video….
Hope that you like it. Getting the black bar bit to work was problematic, but we got there in the end (and my thanks to everyone involved in the creation, filming, editing and testing process, including Caroline, Emma, Sarah, Peter, William and Ringo).
When researching the idea I came across several nice blind spot demos, but my favourite allows you to map the actual size and shape of your blind spot. Have fun playing with it here.
On Friday I presented you with this little puzzle…
Albert was confronted with three boxes and a note. Each had a picture of a different form of transport (a speedboat, a racecar and a horse).
The note simply said….
Hi ,
The rare clock is in one of these boxes. You only get to open one box and your task is to open the one containing the clock. Here is a clue that might help – “I am the same going forwards as backwards”
Good Luck
Bob (company director)
Which box should Albert open?
Well, as I am sure many of you guessed, this was all about palindromes (words that read the same way in either direction). So, the answer was racecar because it reads the same forwards as backwards.
I also posted a follow-up question (thanks Briantist) how do you spell ‘a hungry horse’ in four letters? The answer is M T G G!
Talking of palindromes, here is a piece that I made about a year ago….
Can you work out how it was filmed? Also, ten points and a free rotavator for the person posting the best palindrome!
You may remember that last week we helped young Albert open the company safe in his bid to get access to a rare clock. Well, it seems that the company are especially hot on security. When he opened the safe door, Albert was confronted with three boxes. Each had a picture of a different form of transport (a speedboat, a racecar and a horse).
The note simply said….
Hi ,
The rare clock is in one of these boxes. You only get to open one box and your task is to open the one containing the clock. Here is a clue that might help – “I am the same going forwards as backwards”
Good Luck
Bob (company director)
Which box should Albert open?
As ever, please do not submit your solution, but feel free to say if you think that you have solved it and how long it took. Answer on Monday! Have a good weekend.
Update: For those that get it straight away, Briantist has posed a nice follow-up question – how do you spell ‘a hungry horse’ in four letters?
Thanks to everyone who re-tweeted about the illusion yesterday. It was great to see such a great response, and a special nod to Phil Plait and Dave Gorman for helping spread the word.
Tis another busy day. Have the final meeting about the campaign for ‘59 Seconds’ today. This is my new book exposing the myths that abound in the self-help industry, and describing scientifically supported techniques that make people more creative, happy, attractive etc. and take less than a minute to carry out (thus the 59 Seconds title). It’s all a bit hush hush at the moment, but launches in the UK in 10 days time (on Amazon here). Then off to the Natural History Museum in London for the opening of a new exhibit that I have been working on with artists Jeremy Deller and Matthew Killip about facial expressions and Darwin.
So, what’s all this about a Tardis, I hear you say. Well, Dr Who travels through time in a police box that appears small on the outside and huge on the inside. Earlier this week I went along to the opening of the Walking In My Mind exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London, and saw a real Tardis. Well, kinda.
Actually, it was a very clever exhibit that looked like this on the outside….
But used the ‘wall of mirrors’ illusion to appear huge on the inside….
It is a nice idea. Let’s imagine that someone made a wardrobe like this – would you have one in your house?
A few days ago i was sent this amazing illusion (thanks Karen). The illustration below appears to show green and blue spirals…..
But in fact the apparent green and blue are exactly the same colour! Don’t believe me? Well, I put the image into photoshop and changed all of the other colours to black and you get this…..
I find that utterly jaw dropping. What do you think?
Update: A few people have pointed out that you can have the creepy experience of the illusion vanishing as you zoom in in the image!
Update2: Another great version of it here.
P.S. I am not sure who created this, so if anyone can find out let me know and I will obviously credit it. the link I was sent it here. Just found out that it was created by Kitaoka (thanks Rob).
As many of you may know, my mate Simon Singh is currently being sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association. Chris French has recently put a great summary of the issues in the Guardian, and I would urge you to support Simon’s campaign for freedom of speech in science.
Aspects of the case revolve around the evidence (or lack of it) for the chiropractic treatment of children with colic. Although there is some anecdotal support for this notion, in my opinion such stories would not cut the mustard in the scientific arena (as the gag goes, the plural of anecdote is not evidence). After all, mothers may be give an inaccurate report of their children’s behaviour, or may have sought out treatment when the condition was especially bad and thus any effect could simply due to the symptoms becoming less severe over time.
That’s why controlled studies are so important. In my opinion, the only decent study to date was carried out by Olafsdottir and colleagues in 2001. Unlike the handful of other experiments into the topic, this study used proper blind procedures and controls, with, for example, the mothers involved not knowing whether their child was receiving chiropractic treatment or simply being held. The results showed that chiropractic spinal manipulation was no more effective than the placebo condition. I am not the only one to think that this is a vital study. For example, a 2002 review of chiropractic treatment for infant colic in the Archives of Disease in Childhood (here) only cited 4 studies – one of which was the Olafsdottir experiment, which was singled out for its sound methodology.
Yesterday I put in the search terms ‘chiropractic research infant colic’ into Google, and looked at the chiropractic sites that offer evidence about the efficacy of the chiropractic treatment for infant colic. I couldn’t find one that described the Olafsdottir study.
Of course, it is up to them which evidence they list, but I would have thought that a major study like that deserved a mention somewhere. Am I missing something? Can you find one?
On Friday I described how young Albert had been asked to go down to a factory basement and retrieve a rare clock from the company safe. When he got there he saw the following numbers on the safe door….
77 – 49 - 36 – xx
the next number in the sequence will open the safe. What number should Albert use to get at the rare clock?
If you didn’t try to answer the puzzle, have a go now. For everyone else, the solution is after the break.
