Make your own demotivator!

The day has finally arrived -- we can now make our own demotivational posters!

I'll try to post some if I start feeling creative. :)

light to dark; dark to light

I ran across this quote, and have been thinking about it a bit. I thought that I'd share...

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

-Marianne Williamson, from her book "A Return to Love"

What do you find to be funny?

If there's one truth about grad school, it's that it definitely warps your sense of normalcy...if you had one to begin with. Here are two things that you'll find to be very funny if you've ever been in grad school:

1. A new gem of a PhD comic: humor in grad school

2. A snippet taken from the Best Visual Illusion of the Year website:

In a sense, the structure of modern science is itself a vast contest. Someday, all or most of the major scientific questions will be answered. Our job as scientists is to be the ones who discover the answers, and publish them, first.

Ah, too funny. :)

Perspectives

A visit to my college's website this evening eventually led me to visit the "best visual illusion of the year contest" website. As a quasi cognitive scientist, I have attended many lectures on the perception of our visual system, but I have to admit that I wish that more of those lectures involved visual illusions -- they're so much fun!

Here's this year's first-place visual illusion winner: The Leaning Tower Illusion.

One of the ways that we can learn about how our visual system works is by finding out what we can do to trick it. In fact, a lot of the good studies in biology and psychology involve trickery. Perhaps that's why I am so intrigued by the research in those subjects. ;)