Supergrunch

*accepts word challenge invitation to see what the fuss is about* Must play you at Chess and Go again at some point.

I'll hold you to that when I'm back in my parents' house over Christmas, where my Wii resides. :wink:

Cool, what are you doing in Cambridge? If you fancy meeting up, PM me or summat.

That's more made up pseudoscience. Quiet Shino. [noparse]:p[/noparse]

I listened to the calls to see what all the fuss was about, and as prank calls go, they were pretty rubbish - lot's of insulting and trying to be funny and little actual humour. Suspension seems fairly reasonable - I mean, if I think it'd be considered unacceptable if celebrities and radio weren't involved, and thankfully there don't seem to be any double standards. Anyway, Russell Brand really irritates me, but I don't really mind Johnathan Ross. I'd imagine if it were actually funny, less people would be bothered about this. Odd that - it shouldn't really change anything.

Yep, there's a fair bit of 3D, but this is KyoAni (the Haruhi people) so they're bound to make use of all the technological trickery that they can. Anyway, for some really great forceful Japanese (albeit unnaturally masculine and over the top), try watching Akio's monologue in episode 22 of season one:

Coolness - getting job = win. Never had one of those, might have to soonish... Heh, "holiday." "It's not a holiday, it's a vacation - you vacate the premises and continue to work." Anyway, fun day today. Spent the morning finishing an essay, then my parents came to visit which involved food, so all in all good. Got to get up for 9am tomorrow though...

I think most of you have sussed that this is an optical illusion and how it works - your brain interprets the 2D animation as 3D, but there are two possible (equally valid) ways to interpret it. It's like a more complex version of a Necker cube: You've probably seen this one before, but there are two ways of interpreting the image, both of which are cubes from different perspectives. In the case of the dancer, the movement makes things more complicated, but you can interpret (say) the leg moving left to right as either in the foreground or background, with the opposite interpretation for the leg moving right to left. For instance, if we take this latter leg to be in the foreground, we see the dancer rotating clockwise, but if you take it to be in the background the rotation appears anti-clockwise. It can be difficult to switch from one interpretation to the other or even believe that the other interpretation exists; this is because your brain does the analysis automatically, and sticks with the first interpretation unless you can convince it to change. Personally I saw the movement as clockwise initially, but managed to see it the other way with a fair bit of squinting and so on. Anyway, it's definitely not a trick gif - it's just a very good illusion. But as for the left brain/right brain thing, this is total bollocks. The dichotomy is a false one, but nevertheless has somehow managed to infect pop psychology so people keep spouting nonsense about it. The brain is by no means symmetrical, and the two hemispheres have slightly different function, but processing isn't nearly as isolated as people would lead you to believe - indeed, the hemispheres are linked by tissue known as the corpus callosum, and lots of interaction goes on. For instance, a lot of language processing (like grammatical analysis) goes on in the left side of the brain, whereas some other parts occur in the right side, like intonation, but these are generalisations (mostly) resulting from studies of brain damaged people, and it's not as simple as a division of labour - indeed, some things are controlled by both sides at once. (Incidentally, a minority of people, mostly left handed, are the other way round. And another somewhat unrelated point - it has been shown that in very young individuals with damage to a particular hemisphere, the functions can develop in the other hemisphere just as well.) There's not really such a thing as being "left brained" or "right brained" - people use both hemispheres all the time, and if you couldn't, you'd have serious problems. Sure, you might be better at some things than other things, but we aren't yet able to explain this in terms of brain usage, and trying to do so is just pseudoscience. (however, all evidence so far suggests such an explanation would be extremely complex) Let's look at the proposed characters that they ascribe to the left and right sides of the brain: Left: Uses logic, detail oriented, facts rule, words and language, present and past, maths and science, can comprehend, knowing, acknowledges, order/pattern perception, knows object name, reality based, forms, strategies, practical, safe. Right: Uses feeling, "big picture" oriented, imagination rules, symbols and images, present and future, philosophy & religion, can "get it" (i.e. meaning), believes, appreciates, spatial perception, knows object function, fantasy based, presents possibilities, impetuous, risk taking. There's no way this hypothesis is even broadly true, and to show how absurd it is, I've had a guess bolded all the properties I think apply to me - hmm, doesn't look like there's any kind of pattern there. Additionally, I can't see any reason why the dancer test should bear any relation to all this. (I'm aware that in some cases I've bolded both, when you're supposed to have one or t'other. That's because I think these dichotomies are silly too.) tl;dr: The gif isn't a joke, it's an optical illusion. It has nothing to do with left/right brain though - indeed, this whole concept is rubbish. Edit: There are probably some errors in the above as I'm exhausted, but meh. The general point holds.

Well, you do live in Iceland... I have to do that essay thing multiple times a week - for instance, I just finished one now that's in for 8pm tonight, and started it yesterday evening. Ah well, no essays until next weekend now.

Hmm, apparently it's supposed to snow here at 6pm. Somehow I doubt it'll happen.

The one time I have used a laptop was on a Ryanair flight. Not that I advocate them or anything; they're awful. But they do let you use laptops.

Nope, tattoos in general. They often don't let people with them into hot springs and so on.

You can use a laptop on a plane - I've done it. You just have to turn off the wi-fi switch.

Postgrad funding = or so I hear. Blarg...

Incidentally bluey, isn't the whole tattoo thing a bit taboo in Japan? I heard it has yakuza associations and the like.

Happy birthday to ye.

Maybe, it depends on the font I suppose, not that anyone actually uses interrobangs or anything. I suppose you mean something like this:

Nah, a glottal stop, like this: As in the cockneyish pronunciation of "bottle" where you don't touch the roof of your mouth with your tongue - the ' in "bo'le" - ['bɒʔ(ə)l]. It comes up in various other places in English too, including recieved pronunciation. Whereas an interrobang is literally an exclamation mark stuck on top of a question mark, like this: Anyway, for unrelated reasons I'm currently so glad I changed to linguistics - it's been awesome so far. Had some fun supervisions today.

Right - two essays down, one to go. I wish my parents wouldn't always come right when my work is heaviest, it removes my work time...

I'd be interested too. I want that after story poster with Okazaki on the lampost - may have to make it myself.

The Yamanote line would be awesome for a party though, especially if you did while it was moving.

And your tent? I'd go for bivouac myself, but then I'm minimalistic like that.

Not as such. That said, I did just mistype "cucumbers" as "cumcumbers", so maybe there's some sort of Freudian slip going on.

I'm not religious, but I can use religious metaphors nonetheless. I mean cucumbers = win.