mental maps

2002.08.10
So the other day I was watching a baseball game (well, it was on in the background...) and a hit ball popped up way behind the catcher and umpire. The announcer described it as "popping up near here". It took me a second to realize why that seemed so weird to me...mentally, I'm mapping the announcer with the camera, I don't really picture them as sitting in a booth in an actual location around the field. So if a ball flies away from the camera it's hard to think of it flying towards the announcers...

Similarly, I had to figure out what was so distracting about a change making machine that had the dollar inserted below, and the change come out above (beyond a possible design flaw of having less room for gravity-fed change)--it made me realize that I have this sub-conscious image of a dollar somehow physically turning into the change, which then comes cascading now.


History Lesson of the Moment
Bush I was a star baseball player at Andover.
Bush II didn't even make the varsity team.

Bush I got straight A's at Yale.
Bush II got D's and C's.

Bush I was a heroic WWII fighter pilot.
Bush II patrolled the coast of Texas during Vietnam and quit flying when the National Guard began drug testing.

Bush I went to Texas and built a successful oil business.
Bush II's oil business failed almost immediately.

Bush I fought a short war with Iraq that achieved its objectives with relatively few U.S. causalities.
Bush II....?
Jeez, sounds like an episode of Goofus and Gallant. Bill also posted a kind of interesting story of a real life mad scientist