What is he on?
I was waiting for my bus to bring me to salsa last week.1 It was drizzling at the time, with some driving gusts. I'm wont to stretch my neck, tilting an ear to a shoulder2 and pointing my nose upwards. Due to my off-kilter gaze my attention was caught by raindrops, falling.3 They were back-lit by a street lamp. Against the night sky, it looked like a swath of comets, like something in the opening of TNG. I had a moment of vertigo, like I was inside an optical illusion. It was amazing.
There's the rub.
Yet another reason why humans make terrible scientists. Our thoughts colour our perceptions; Giving us preconceptions, if you like.
We are convinced the next time it will come up heads, since it came up tails so many times already. We are shocked when famous people turn out to be other than virtuous paragons... surely all the money, good-looks and social influence correlate to a good nature.4,5 If we are feeling all happy, we are more likely to get the wool pulled over our eyes.6 If a person annoys me, he/she can't be right.7
And, at the end of the day: do what I say, not as I do.
I can't wait for the robots to take cover, everything will move smoothly.
*****
1In the main, I am better at at keeping the beat now, thanks to the... clave!
2The more possible one.
3Sure, it sounds poetic, but since the water spheres and I were standing near a bus-stop, as opposed to a volume of space removed from objects of a significant mass, poised at the apogee of a parabolic flight in a gravity well, or a high magnitude magnetic field, the water obviously falls.i
4
7Heck, I probably didn't bother listening in the first place, since he's obviously going to be wrong.
*****
iOther exceptions are welcome.
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