Speaking of optical illusions ...
I've heard about the blind spot, and read about techniques for finding it, but never had any luck until a couple of days ago.
- Close your left eye.
- Look at some specific point with your right eye. The 1 at the beginning of the previous line will do nicely.
- Extend your right arm; stick your thumb up so that it blocks the point you were looking at.
- Now move your arm slowly to the right, while continuing to look at the point you were looking at before.
- Notice when your thumb just disappears. For me, with my size monitor, font size, distance from monitor
etcetera, it happens when my thumb is about, oh, about right here. Only, you know, four lines up, over
the word "beginning" on line 1.
Poof, the thumb is gone. Then, if I keep moving, the thumb is back. Back and forth I go, with the thumb appearing and disappearing. My mind Photoshops over the missing thumb, replacing it with whatever--based on context--it thinks should be there.
I've read that if you put two pencils end to end, eraser to eraser, and get the erasers in the blind spot, your brain will turn them into a single long pencil with no erasers.
It's a substantial gap in the field of vision. You're really blind there, and you don't know it. It's one more reason to look twice before pulling into an intersection, in hopes that a car in your blind spot will have moved out of it.