i am one of the last of the real rennaisance men.

spanning pure arts to heavy mathematics.

[my son is on mathermatics scholarship. dad was an artist who suddenly became an engineer in a year. grandmom was a research chemist before women supposedly were allowed. and the list goes on]

i am also handicapped, being totally deaf in one ear… so i cant even get to do a fMRI study since the brain patterns would be abnormal due to the deaf side.

when i was a kid they studied me like a lab rat. cameras, and tests… they were too busy with confirming ideology to actually learn anything, but they did get their degrees because i was their thesis.

what a long strange trip its been….

left brain, right brain, heck, i am a person that says why use half a brain when you have a whole one ready?

Not that there’s anything wrong with that….

I had a head injury some years back. Sub- and epi- dural hematomas on/in the frontal, parietal, and temporal lobes on the right side. About 30% morbidity overall. I really should have been what they called a “gork” but I recovered a lot, including some things I didn’t have before. But the short term memory thing was a trial, to put it mildly. One thing that was weird was that my brain went in large part from random access to sequential access. I could “know” something but not knew that I knew it. Then someone would mention the thing and the entire memory would come back.

There is an amazing movie called “Memento” that is chillingly close to what I experienced at first, though I learned to handle it better and a lot of what I “lost” showed up later in other ways.

Whenever I visit your blog I get hungry. You should be getting a stipend from the apple growers.

“when i was a kid they studied me like a lab rat. cameras, and tests… they were too busy with confirming ideology to actually learn anything”

Yeah, you have to really watch all these left right brain studies.. If it’s not ideology it can simply be cultural assumptions / biases (re: about what constitutes personality trait dichotomies… and/or if they exist… for one) leaking in. Absolutely everything needs to be demonstrated… or it’s just random opinion / bunk.

The problem with the spinning dancer is that, as I first saw it, both the right arm and right leg are raised as if they had been “thrown” to induce the spinning motion. The right shoulder is leaning slightly back as if it had also been twisted.

But, since there are no visual clues as to the true front and back of the picture, the arm may actually be the left arm. Why did I assume the right arm? The only reason is that would be the arm I would use to create a spinning (or throwing) motion. (I’m not a very good dancer but I played softball, basketball, and racket ball and always lead with my right arm).

Neo- Tilt your head to the left, image leading with your left arm, and see if you can see her rotating counter clockwise.

I have my doubts about this test because my husband, too, sees her turning clockwise. Now, I might well be right-brained, or more likely, I think, balanced like Neo (I am both a lawyer and an artist/creative writer) but my husband is left-brained indeed. Might it not reflect one’s dominant eye as much as one’s dominant brain-half?

BTW: I’m an Electrical Engineer so I’ve got a pretty mathematical background.

I wrote for many years lefthanded, but gradually lost all ability to do so - eventually being able to produce only literal “chickenscratch”. So I shifted to writing righthanded and can do it quite adequately, except for the lack of needing to=practice.

But no other function whasoever of my left hand was involved in this dysfunction, thankfully. For a long time, however, when I was trying to write righthanded, my left hand would kind of clench or move, which I could eventually stop by concentrating-relaxing. Mind over Matter, no doubt.

Think about it. All of us instinctively know a correct or incorrect horse rendering when we see it.

I’m suggesting that we all knowing how NOT to draw a horse, reveals us all knowing exactly how to draw a horse. Except for our not trusting we have that information at the tip of our synapses.

Wonderful suggestion, SteveH. But if I ever try to draw a nude woman, somehow I just know I’m going to need a real live model.

I can indeed see the dancer spinning either way.

I can see her stepping forward, but not to her left Her right foot doesn’t seem like it is angled correctly for a person taking a step to the left.

I’m suggesting that we all knowing how NOT to draw a horse, reveals us all knowing exactly how to draw a horse. Except for our not trusting we have that information at the tip of our synapses.

One of the secrets of learning to draw is learning to see. If we try to create a visual image from the integrated knowledge we have of a horse, we get nonsense. It’s only when we learn how to ignore most of what we know and attend to exactly what our eyes are telling us and no more that we can create an image that will reproduce the experience to our eyes.

sorry.. i was referring to the hell that they put and ahve put the gifted through. from social experimentation with ulterior motives. like putting us in classes with the most violent kids, thinking that our brains will rub off and we will make geniuses out of people who think torturing is a fun way to spend a day. or how adults would waltz into my life, pretending to be the best friends, but they were researchers with their agendas, so they made friends, got what they wanted, then left the kid by himself a freak.

here is another older person who was gifted, and unlike me, a lot more bitter.

http://celiagreen.blogspot.com/2008/01/more-research-on-gifted-children.html

There is every reason to think that many of those involved in education have ideological axes to grind; and even if they did not, they are in a position of so much power to influence what goes on in the lives of their victims, that it could hardly be expected that their subconscious motives would not have considerable influence on the outcome. Their motives are not necessarily purely ideological; they may simply prefer or dislike one type of person rather than another. In particular, jealousy of exceptional ability, exceeding their own, is likely to be a very influential force in the situation.

the stories i could tell.. meanwhile, they loved to use such kitsche as left and right brained, and other catches, to label us and sort us, then do things to us.

i remember a freind who broke down before he could be tested… never made it anywhere.. the games were too much on top of academic acheivment they didnt want him to have, so they could cook the books.

right now in colorado they will do somethig similar. now poor = gifted… so if a kid is poor and a minority he or she gets in the gifted program. (cause we are all the same. like those sociopaths and psychopaths that destroyed my ability to breath normally).

its nice. under the guise of social whatever, the teachers will spend all their time working on kids that cant do the work, and so what happens to all the smart kids who are predominantly jewish, chinese, or caucasian?

can you spell ted kazynski?

[have you ever read his tract? its the kind of thing that movemetns are founded on - and would have been if teddy was more the political animal than the fix it yourself kind of guy]

to quote
“Criticising the sacred assumptions of the modern ideology and breaking the taboo about complaining of the damage done to your life by properly appointed agents of the collective seems to be regarded as even more reprehensible than pornography.
”

so i was referring to a personal gripe in how the collectivist system has managed to insure that the best and brightest actually dont go anywhere.

care to see what the roles are for engineering, and sciences?

left brain right brain is populist crapola…

its like nature nurture… its not some opposing proportions on a scale. its 100% of both. duh.

read about tall poppy syndrome, and how we hate success, and deem that those who are, are cheaters… ergo, paris hilton is a giant, emmy noether is unknown, and sanger a eugenicist whose eugenics mag hitler was a fan of, is a hero.

ack!

another quote

The only form of success to which people have little resistance is that of socially appointed oppressors of humanity, in which case the successful person may enjoy some status and power over others so long as he retains his position, but is unlikely to become rich enough to enjoy any autonomy. He is not going to be free to do anything he wants in any way he could get anything out of, and will always be expected to get his kicks out of frustrating and oppressing other people

for some reason, this post churned up the past.

why, i dont know.

The power of society depends on the power of the lie. The power of the lie is very great.

Amen. And what is this “anti-clockwise” business? Why is “anti” better than “counter”? And…

One other burning question: could “being right/left handed” discourage people from using their other hand from an early age and somehow inhibit development of one side of the brain to its fullest?

Which foot is on the floor?

It can be either, but in both directions it feels like the (b) kind of falling turning.

I use the mouse with my left hand to exercise my right brain a bit.

Delightful post, Neo.

(J. Peden’s advice helped me control the otherwise less controlled switching. Mostly clockwise for me.)