Free After Work 2014-01-17

[Opus the Poet]

leg of tarantula

Sounds like something that should be accompanied by eye of newt.

As I recall "eye of newt" was some kind of berry, similar to "wing of bat" actually being holly leaves. Looking up the modern definition in http://witcheslore.com/bookofshadows/he ... ic-2/1174/ we find the correlation to be mustard seed, other sources cite it as a species of marshberry http://witchesofthecraft.com/2013/06/20 ... ly-an-eye/

[NOTDilbert]

In a follow up to my previous post, here is a 1st meeting between Phix 'big-sphynx-all-mighTee' and Tina-ski;

http://wapsisquare.com/comics/2010-06-17-now-focus.gif

In it, as Phix is leaving, she asks whether Tina was going to predict her order but Tina is "having trouble concentrating...".

Based on the context of the prev day's comix, It's a safe bet they hadn't yet met, not to Tina's knowledge anyway...

That's what I was thinking. Just way too frazzled to focus.

Unless Atsali is into mealworm tea for breakfast, why can't Tina read her? Can't be cause she's a paranormal, she can read Phix.....

Uggh. Mealworm tea That's a disgusting idea, dude. Nobody makes tea out of mealworms.

They're much tastier deep-fried or toasted, with a bit of garlic salt.

I'm partial to Barbecued, myself.

Don't they tend to fall through the grill onto the charcoal?

[Jabberwonky]

Nice to have a choice of flavors there. Pricey, though, compared to what you'd pay in Southern American countries where they're a popular snack.

Must admit, I have never actually tried them myself. However, my wife and I recently vacationed in Southeast Asia, and in Laos were offered a popular beer-snack... fried crickets and grasshoppers. I found them to be quite tasty... a cross between fried shrimp and Frito's corn chips.

A few days later I tried a local Cambodian delicacy... quick-fried tarantula... quite similar in flavor. On the basis of taste alone I would guess that more Americans than not would enjoy eating such arthropods properly prepared and seasoned.

Esthetically, though. . well, leg of tarantula is definitely and literally the creepiest thing I have ever eaten.

In Thailand 'bug carts' were not common, but not that hard to find either. I noticed that most European and American tourists just paid a small fee to take a picture along side the cart. Personally, having ridden motorcycles most of my life, eating a bug isn't that big a squick. But, and I have stated this before, if the bug is big enough to need a second bite, I'm not going back in for it...

I also recall a man on an episode of Coast to Coast AM that visited Peru in search of ayahuasca he ate roasted Goliath tarantulas with the shamen. He claimed it tasted like crab.

[Catawampus]

And based on the earlier scenes in this story arc, are we sure Tina can even "see" those "black eyes" as described? Maybe she identifies everyone and their surroundings by their personal auras and magnetic/heat signatures and everything else is just "implied".

Well, she'd need to have some method of distinguishing differences between the colours of objects. Otherwise she wouldn't be able to read signs or use a computer or a lot of other basic things that go on in everyday life. I expect that she would see different eye colours as being different, but probably in a much different way than we would.

Of course, that brings up the old philosophical question of whether any two people actually perceive the world around them in the same way, and how would we really be able to tell whether or not they did. . .

[illiad]

And based on the earlier scenes in this story arc, are we sure Tina can even "see" those "black eyes" as described? Maybe she identifies everyone and their surroundings by their personal auras and magnetic/heat signatures and everything else is just "implied".

Well, she'd need to have some method of distinguishing differences between the colours of objects. Otherwise she wouldn't be able to read signs or use a computer or a lot of other basic things that go on in everyday life. I expect that she would see different eye colours as being different, but probably in a much different way than we would.

Of course, that brings up the old philosophical question of whether any two people actually perceive the world around them in the same way, and how would we really be able to tell whether or not they did. . .

in reality, most perception actually occurs in the brain... there is a LOT of research into how the eye works, I will leave you to google it!!

there was a recent experiment with prismatic glasses, that turned what the wearer saw *upside down* - after only a day or so of disorientation, he felt perfectly normal!!

two weeks later, they took off the glasses, and it took two days to recover, due to the disorientation!!! It shows how fast the brain adapts to the input...

this could be how tina 'sees' but with much finer quality... there are advanced IR cameras, that can see though masks and glasses...

[Mark N]

Don't they tend to fall through the grill onto the charcoal?

Chicken wire grill covers are a big help with that. (I know lots of survivalists)

[Prester Fred]

They sell those T's at my local Hot Topic so it wouldn't be a stretch to see it at the mall where she and Castella went shopping.

But it clearly is a stretch to see Atsali wearing one.

(prepares to fire an elastic band into the pun jar from across the room).

[Catawampus]

in reality, most perception actually occurs in the brain... there is a LOT of research into how the eye works, I will leave you to google it!!

there was a recent experiment with prismatic glasses, that turned what the wearer saw *upside down* - after only a day or so of disorientation, he felt perfectly normal!!

I was referring more to the part that comes after perception. The part that comes after the light enters the eye, hits the relevant nerves, the nerves signal to the brain, and the brain says, "Ah ha, the colour red has just been detected!". Once you've reached that point, your brain projects an internal image into your consciousness portraying what it thinks the colour red ought to look like.

The colour that you see within your mind, though, is not really what is on that red apple or whatever it is that you're looking at. It's your mind's own independent construct and interpretation.

Is there any particular reason why your internal view of the world has to have that particular image associated with 660 nm wavelengths of light, though? Your brain could just as easily have decided that what you currently perceive as blue is what the 660 nm wavelength appears as. You'd go through life quite happily calling that colour red, and you'd never know any different. And for all that you know, everybody else's brains could be assigning different colours to different wavelengths; what your brain presents red as being, somebody else's brain could be presenting as being the colour green. You'd both look at the red apple and agree that it is red, but the images in your minds would be different.

And why stop there? Perhaps what you perceive as being the colour of 660 nm, somebody else perceives as being the smell of burning lobsters.

Since we can never experience anything beyond our own individual brain's perceptions of the world around us, how can we tell?

[GlytchMeister]

in reality, most perception actually occurs in the brain... there is a LOT of research into how the eye works, I will leave you to google it!!

there was a recent experiment with prismatic glasses, that turned what the wearer saw *upside down* - after only a day or so of disorientation, he felt perfectly normal!!

I was referring more to the part that comes after perception. The part that comes after the light enters the eye, hits the relevant nerves, the nerves signal to the brain, and the brain says, "Ah ha, the colour red has just been detected!". Once you've reached that point, your brain projects an internal image into your consciousness portraying what it thinks the colour red ought to look like.

The colour that you see within your mind, though, is not really what is on that red apple or whatever it is that you're looking at. It's your mind's own independent construct and interpretation.

Is there any particular reason why your internal view of the world has to have that particular image associated with 660 nm wavelengths of light, though? Your brain could just as easily have decided that what you currently perceive as blue is what the 660 nm wavelength appears as. You'd go through life quite happily calling that colour red, and you'd never know any different. And for all that you know, everybody else's brains could be assigning different colours to different wavelengths; what your brain presents red as being, somebody else's brain could be presenting as being the colour green. You'd both look at the red apple and agree that it is red, but the images in your minds would be different.

And why stop there? Perhaps what you perceive as being the colour of 660 nm, somebody else perceives as being the smell of burning lobsters.

Since we can never experience anything beyond our own individual brain's perceptions of the world around us, how can we tell?

Vsauce did a video on this exact question.

If I were to try to answer it, I'd suggest downloading the schematics of several thousand brains (detailed enough to distinguish individual neurons) and then map out which neurons fire when light of "x" nm wavelengths are detected by the eye for each brain while that person is in a full-on sensory deprivation chamber. If the overall pattern of activation matches between people, then yes, my red is the same as your red.
This would take a lot of computer power. Like... A friggin' lot. Our brains are so complex they confuse themselves. We'd have to commandeer all of the hard drives just to store the brain schematics, if we did enough brains to create data of any real value.
Think about it. All of the hard drives.
...then again, I'm a mechanical engineering student, not a neurologist. *insert damnit, Jim/Jin joke here*


(I wonder why we always default to red. Why not indigo?)

[shadowinthelight]

And why stop there? Perhaps what you perceive as being the colour of 660 nm, somebody else perceives as being the smell of burning lobsters.

If your lobsters are burning I think the light is too bright.

[GlytchMeister]

And why stop there? Perhaps what you perceive as being the colour of 660 nm, somebody else perceives as being the smell of burning lobsters.

If your lobsters are burning I think the light is too bright.

If the light is making the lobsters burn, I think it may be time to lay off the acid.

On a somewhat related note, was that pony always in your avatar?

(Only on the Internet can those two sentences make any sense)

[shadowinthelight]

On a somewhat related note, was that pony always in your avatar?

Yes, since November 2012. I've kept the same avatar for that long?

[illiad]

And why stop there? Perhaps what you perceive as being the colour of 660 nm, somebody else perceives as being the smell of burning lobsters.

If your lobsters are burning I think the light is too bright.

If the light is making the lobsters burn, I think it may be time to lay off the acid.

so you have never used *sunlight* and a lens to make paper burn???

[GlytchMeister]

*evil laugh*
Ohhh, I was just talking about ambient light.
Yes, I know how to focus sunlight. But it's just so boring after a while. I prefer chemicals... Like aerosols, liquid fuels, that sort of thing. I've made flame throwers, potato guns, sticky fire bombs, incendiary trees...
Next on my pyromaniac's list of things to play with are gunpowder and thermite.

[Atomic]

Speaking of Color Vision, there are plenty of tools out there to help "see" the effects, such as This color blindness simulator.

Of note is the idea that many animals are color blind, such as dogs. AFAIK, it's not that they see only grayscale, it's that they don't see Red - their eyes have only Blue and Green detection. Thus the spectra for Red deficient vision would represent what dogs might see.

Then again, insects such as Bees see far into the ultraviolet part of the spectrum, and pit vipers far into the infrared (thermal), so there's plenty of different ways of seeing stuff.

Tina's demons might be "seeing" our emotions directly, hence, the aura! Similar to Schlieren photography, perhaps?

[GlytchMeister]

Speaking of Color Vision, there are plenty of tools out there to help "see" the effects, such as This color blindness simulator.

Of note is the idea that many animals are color blind, such as dogs. AFAIK, it's not that they see only grayscale, it's that they don't see Red - their eyes have only Blue and Green detection. Thus the spectra for Red deficient vision would represent what dogs might see.

Then again, insects such as Bees see far into the ultraviolet part of the spectrum, and pit vipers far into the infrared (thermal), so there's plenty of different ways of seeing stuff.

Tina's demons might be "seeing" our emotions directly, hence, the aura! Similar to Schlieren photography, perhaps?

Or perhaps long-range EEG O' Vision? But that couldn't account for how she can pick up things like Georgette's painful history. That's way beyond the capabilities of EEG, as far as I know.
Ugh. I need to catch up on neuroscience and medicine...

[illiad]

standard telepathic empathy could pick up on her 'history' though..

[Grantwhy]

Speaking of Color Vision, there are plenty of tools out there to help "see" the effects, such as This color blindness simulator.

Of note is the idea that many animals are color blind, such as dogs. AFAIK, it's not that they see only grayscale, it's that they don't see Red - their eyes have only Blue and Green detection. Thus the spectra for Red deficient vision would represent what dogs might see.

Then again, insects such as Bees see far into the ultraviolet part of the spectrum, and pit vipers far into the infrared (thermal), so there's plenty of different ways of seeing stuff.

Tina's demons might be "seeing" our emotions directly, hence, the aura! Similar to Schlieren photography, perhaps?

Or perhaps long-range EEG O' Vision? But that couldn't account for how she can pick up things like Georgette's painful history. That's way beyond the capabilities of EEG, as far as I know.
Ugh. I need to catch up on neuroscience and medicine...

But that couldn't account for how she can pick up things like Georgette's painful history.

Georgette's demons? Could Tina's demons have spoke/questioned/exchanged details with Georgette's demons the moment she walked in the door?



Which might go some way to explaining Tina's ability to read what drink people want? (ask their demons)

Which doesn't exactly explain how she was able to 'read' what to give Phix.

Maybe, while Sphinx don't have 'human demons', they do that their own demon like analogues (?), so that when Tina first meets Phix, with a bit of concentration and effort, Tina was able to get a bit of information to suggest a drink.

ie: wE dO nOt UnDeStAnD yOr QuEsTiOn, BuT oUr HoSt ReAlY lIkEs A pErSoN nAmEd "Picard"

= http://wapsisquare.com/comic/now-focus/