Tag Archives: Demonstration

Re-Inventing Yourself with Sarah Jones

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Sarah Jones, in her TED talk,  gives a great demonstration on switching identities. When held a (funny) mirror, we get a chance to reflect (that’s what a mirror helps to do, right?) on what we do in real life.

Mostly we switch identities without consciously controlling it. When the cop stops us, we might go into the little-innocent-boy identity, or when the kid is annoying too much, we play the big nasty bully. Sarah Jones reminded me that this switching of identities can indeed be controlled. I had an early experience with this when a well-known show host and comedian went over a map of Germany and gave a weather report for all the different areas in the appropriate dialect for the area – and there are quite a few for such a small country.

This impressed me so much that I was able to mimic some of the dialects and mannerisms. By doing this for myself, I learned that I had to become a person from that area, and then it was actually very simple to be credible. I did not get all the dialect-specific words right and probably missed some of the nuances of the dialects, but as long as I was a person from that area, it worked.

Sarah Jones is definitely a master at that – here she is…

The Power of Thank you Revisited

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A little while back, I reported on Laura Trice’s TED talk about the importance and power of “thank you,” of validation. Delivered right, a “thank you” looks really simple, but as with all very true facts, it appears so simple, yet is often so hard to attain. This talk is a very good demonstration of what it teaches; look at the ease with which Ms. Trice walks the talk at the end. I personally don’t know many people who can blow you away with a simple “thank you” as she did.

Today another video came across my desk that actually caused me to revisit Ms. Trice’s talk. It delivers the same message in the form of a short film, and be prepared to be moved…

Photoshop Exposes Optical Illusion

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One of these optical illusions came across my desk again…

optical illusion

which claims that the fields marked A and B have the same gray level. Just looking at the image, it is obvious that this could not possibly be. So, normally, the untrained non-scientific mind would push it aside, maybe say, wow, really?! and wander on.

But this is where I came in – a trained scientist! And this scientist now really had enough of this and went on the quest to look for himself.

I started up trusty Photoshop, zoomed into an area that contained both fields A and B, cut a bit out of field A and dragged it next to field B …

opticalillusionproof

And what do you know? When the cut-out little square from A is right next to field B, it is very clear that they are the same shade of gray – quod erat demimonstrum!

And we still trust our eyes? A little shadow so that the eye ‘thinks’ that the field must be brighter, makes it brighter for the eye. Could not help contemplating how many things there are that I don’t see and how many things I see that are not there.

UPDATE:

I was really surprised that there was so much discussion about this relatively irrelevant subject, but it went even further, with somebody even accusing me of cheating. But somebody made a life-action demonstration of this little optical illusion, and I just have to share this here:

But then again — if you think I cheated, then one stupid video will not convince you otherwise – No Amount Of Evidence Will Ever Persuade An Idiot. (No, not a qoute by Mark Twain – but should be.)