Frames Per Second

Working Memory Has Limited 'Slots' - Science Daily

For more than a few years now there's been a debate in the enthusiast gaming community over whether the fact that a graphics card can display a certain number of fsp's (frames per second) really matters when it reaches beyond what the eye and brain can physically process. Now, with this new study it appears that the idea that fps only matter up to a point is true. It also makes sense in terms of how we are able to recall events and the fuzziness that can occur in translating working memory into long-term memory. While working memory captures a certain number of images per second it seems the high resolution of those images degrades when shifted into the long term memory. Hence the reason why eye-witness testimony days or months after an event can differ drastically from what actually happened.
But it also explains to some extent the abilities of those who can speed read or have a 'photographic' memory. The ability to take in large amounts of data and then retain the original resolution of that data is a mark of intelligence, it seems. Moreover, since everything our eyes perceive must go through that initial interpretation process it makes more sense that the data is captured by a series of images rather than one continuous stream. There's a momentary gap between what is actually happening in reality and the interpretation our brains make of all that sensory data. Why would evolution make a mind that cannot see reality at a high level of detail unless it allowed some advantage? High resolution fps must then have been an advantage to the early human mind.

Your Lying Eyes

How Believing Can Be Seeing: Context Dictates What We Believe We See - Science Daily

It only makes sense that context would provide meaning for what we see. I remember watching part of the mediocre movie "What the Bleep Do We Know" and learning about how the natives in America at first couldn't see Columbus' ships or Umberto Eco's description of native American's first experience with armored men on horses and how the natives believed the horse and the man to be one creature. When we see things that are outside of our contextual background, our minds attempt to take up the slack by interpreting the visual into something that makes sense or, in the case of the unseen ships of Columbus, completely block it from our sensory experience. Simply put, the neurons of perception are firing but they have nothing to connect to, nowhere to go.
It's a matter of how our minds categorize the world. Before the rise of Gothic literature in the 19th century, many of our fears about science overtaking man or the idea of playing God remained undefined and outside of our experience. Once Gothic literature came about we had a reference point from which to expand our experience and make the subconsciously frightening something less fearsome. Once we can put something into words, into language, can we examine it in a logical fashion. But that which remains outside of our logical realm are either ignored or unconsciously feared.

The Spherical Cow of Language

Language as a Spherical Cow - Science Blog

And once against Chomsky gets it wrong on what language is and does. This is what happens when to attempt to take the context out of language. Wittgenstein still has the best explanation, in my opinion, and I have yet to come across a better theory of language that explains as much as Wittgenstein's 'meaning as use' and the language-game theorems.

In the Basement

Warehouse 23 Basement via Coilhouse

This is the kind of randomness I love. What an opportunity to come up with truly weird ideas and have them mean something, even if only for a moment, to someone else.