Guess who? 

I teach neurology, something you can study forever and never learn the whole thing because our knowledge of our inner world is always changing. We used to think that reception was perception. You saw something because it was there. Not even close. You’d never be able to get through the day without most of it edited out, and some things that are not there added in. For example, there is a blind spot in your visual field. If you close one eye there should be a little dark area in front of you. But that would be a little disconcerting, so your visual cortex adds in what it thinks should be there based on the background. Put your hand over your right eye. Now look at the “X” below with your left eye and KEEP looking at it. If you slowly move your head closer to the screen what happens to the “O”?

O…………………………………………………………………………. X

It disappears! The visual cortex fills in the blind spot with the white background and the line of dots. It will do checks, stripes, paisley’s, whatever floats your boat. This may not work if you are reading this on a phone, but with the “X” about four inches to the right of the “O”, the “O” disappears when you are about eight inches from the screen. Try it with paper and pen if you still know how to use that technology.

What the brain fills in is nothing compared to what it photoshops out. Your retina is covered with blood vessels and you should see them. Everything you look at should be overwritten with a network of blood vessels, but that would be weird so the brain erases them – unless it gets tired. Ever sit up too fast and see spots before your eyes? Those spots are blood cells traipsing across your retina. Most of the time it is easy to hide all that in the visual field because it is full of contrast. It’s not for nothing “Where’s Waldo?” is always in a busy scene. He’d be easy to spot in an empty blue sky. Find yourself an open space and lie down and look up at the sky. As you stare at the sky it gets hard for the cortex to hide all those blood vessels and cells, so they slowly start to appear. Don’t look at them! That’s like the boss walking in the room and everyone gets busy. If your brain knows that you are paying attention to the spots it will make them disappear! Instead, keep looking straight up, and slowly you will see more of what is really there (kind of like the matrix.) Eventually you will see that the spots are running in definite paths. That’s because they are inside your capillaries. Sometimes you can see them too as fine squiggly lines.

So your brain takes out what is there, and puts in what is not. The rest it distorts, so you see what you expect to see, like the symmetry in people’s faces. Unless they are way off, like they’ve walked out of a Picasso, most faces look symmetrical. Look at front-on picture of someone. Symmetrical. Turn it upside down. Not symmetrical any more. When your are looking at something novel, like an upside down face, the brain eases up on those shenanigans. Shenanigans, not a word you get to use very often, but when it comes to shenanigans it’s hard to beat tricky Dick.

I am not a crook.

Nixon is easy to spot because his face is less symmetrical than most, but it will work with just about anybody.  Your eyes are lying to you, but what about to others? Lets say your are talking to someone really smart, like a dog. Try it. Start talking to your dog if you have one. I’ll bet it is looking you right in the eye – the right eye. Dogs know that most people will be more honest in their emotional communication with the right side of their face, especially the eye. (It’s a trade secret they learn in dog school). A dog’s quality of life depends on an accurate read of peoples’ emotions so it becomes a good judge. You probably do it too. When you are talking to someone, where do you look? By the way it won’t work with cats. Cats don’t care how you feel.

Fun fact about Richard Nixon.  He is immortal. If it is true that if your name lives, you live, then Richard Nixon will outlive us all.  He didn’t get us to the moon, that was Kennedy and Johnson, but he was president when the astronauts made it to the moon. Every time they landed and picked up some rocks they left behind a flag and a plaque. There are six of them up there.

I’m fine with Neil, Michael and Buzz.  They are the first humans to boldly go where no one had gone before. But a bureaucrat? Why did they leave out Spiro Agnew? When they are trying to come up with a legit reason to return to the moon, how about this:  Unless we go and get those plaques back his name will outlast Alexander the Great, George Washington, Ozymandias, even Beyoncé.  There is no erosion on the moon.  In a billion years, when the pyramids have been worn to dust and the continents aren’t even recognizable, some aliens will land on the moon and they will see his name in six different places.  If there is a god she is laughing so hard she’s going to fall out of her hammock.