Wrong Side of the Tracks

The town where I live has a railroad track running through middle. In general, the nicer houses are on the West side of the town and the older, more run down houses are on the East side. Our evening entertainment usually consists of going for walks down the brick-paved streets. The town is small, so you can cover a significant portion in a few 3 mile walks. One thing we've noticed is that the average number of dogs per house on the less affluent side of the tracks is much higher than on the wealthy side of the tracks. On the East side, it is common to see 3 or 4 dogs staked out together in a small yard. On the West side of the tracks, people still have dogs, but it is rare to see … [Read more...]

Scientists and Magicians

magic-main

In an interesting experiment, scientists showed individuals photos of two female faces and asked them to pick which one was more attractive.  Then using a slight of hand trick learned from magicians, the scientist replaced the chosen photo with the one that was not chosen.  So, the individual was handed the photo that they had decided was less attractive. Only 26% noticed the switch.  The other 74% accepted the rejected picture as the one that they had chosen.  Now possibly that could be explained by saying that they just weren't paying attention to the photo once it was handed to them, but the scientists went one step further.  After handing over the photo, they asked the … [Read more...]