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Optical Mind Tricks
R. Alex Whitlock
I can't remember what class it was, but one of my college professors pointed out that when it comes to magicians, it's not that we don't see the "magic" that they're pulling off, it's that our brain doesn't process it.
It's interesting the tricks our eyes play on us. If you stand twenty feet away from a car and hold a yardstick up, it'll be smaller than it is if you hold the same yardstick up from ten feet away. The car only appears to be smaller than it is because of distance and perspective. Sometimes it can be taken even a step further. The moon in the sky appears smaller than it is because it's so far away. But it appears larger if it's standing behind some mountains or trees. Except that if you take a ruler, it's actually about the same... it only appears to appear smaller.
Pretty trippy stuff.
Of course, there's also vertigo,
optical illusions, and countless other ways our mind inaccurately interpret data.
I run across one such example on a daily basis. When a state trooper is parked in the median of a freeway - or off to the side - it always appears as though he or she is pulling out as you pass him. The further away you get, the more stark this illusion becomes.
I call this optical trick "paranoia."
Observations
I guess I'm less paranoid than others. I don't hold that fear. I've actually only received a speeding ticket once, and it was from a cop I didn't see in an area I didn't know the speed (as it was 5 miles an hour less than every other street around it). I've gotten plenty of "warnings" though. Not written, but rather I get caught speeding, slow down, the cop pulls up next to my window, gives me the single of "hey buddy keep it down" and drives off. I guess I'm just lucky.
I haven't gotten any since I got up here and honestly I have little reason to believe that I will (at least in the conditions described above). The way that traffic citations up here work is quite different from the way they do in Houston. The subject of a future post, actually.
As for warnings, I got those up until my driving record was no longer clean. My first three pullovers were warnings (including going 72 in a 45 in Pasadena!), but once I got that first one I don't think they were willing to give me the benefit of the doubt.
Every ISP trooper I have ever met has been quite reasonable. I've been given a ticket by one once (I was doing 30 over,) but any other interaction has either been social or of the flashing the overheads at me to slow down kind. Cops up here are kind of different too - unless its Boise City - who think they are way better than they really are.
Boise itself seems to have a pretty high opinion of its place in the greater scheme of things... (this coming from a Texan!) :)
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