http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2008/11/mirrors_edge_as_pro.html

Mirror's Edge is a first person computer game in which you play an urban free-runner, leaping, sliding, and generally acting fly across the roofs of a dystopian city (see the trailer here). It looks good. In fact, it looks amazing. But, reportedly, to actually play it is even better, sickeningly better.

Clive Thompson, writing for wired.com, suggests that the total interactivity of the environment (if you can see something, you can jump on it, or off it) along with the visual cues about what your character's arms and legs are doing (they appear in shot as you run and jump) makes the game a convincing proprioception hack. In other words, it remaps your body schema so that you feel more fully that you are the character in the game. When your character runs fast, you feel it is you running fast. When you character jumps across between two buildings and look down, you feel a moment of sickening vertigo.

Research into illusions of proprioception --- your sense of where you body is in space --- has shown that our body map is surprisingly flexible. It is possible to mislocate your hand, for example, coming to believe that it is directly in front of you when in fact out at the side, or behind you (see video here). Jaron Lanier has reported on an early virtual reality experience he had that made him feel like he had the body of a lobster, with 6 extra limbs. The important feature of all these illusions is that they rely on precisely timed visual feedback. Although visual input can reprogramme our body image, it only does so when there is a tight coupling between what we see and feel. The importance is not the level of detail in what we see, but in the fluidity of the interaction. If Mirror's Edge makes you feel like you are really are doing Parkour then it is because it has the correct kind of visual feedback (your limbs, in a fully interactive world) with the correct timing.

A final thought: if a computer game really is immersive for something as visceral as free-running, isn't that kind of surprising, given how complex free running is physically, and how simple the commands used to control a computer game are? Perhaps what this is because when we automatise an action such as a run, a jump or a roll part of the process of making it automatic is losing the experience of the component parts. So, when a computer game feels like real, it is because real feels like nothing -- we just ask our brains 'jump' and the motor system sorts out the details without our any deep experience of how the jump is performed.

link Clive Thompson's report on playing Mirror's Edge
link YouTube trailer for the game

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DilbertDailyStrip/~3/USzZ9q2h_VA/

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2008-11-18/

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap081117.html

How common are planetary systems like our own Solar System?

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/blotter/entries/2008/11/17/south_austin_bank_robbed_1.html?cxntfid=blogs_the_blotter

Austin police are searching for a man they say robbed a South Austin bank this afternoon.

Just after 3:30 p.m., the man entered an International Bank of Commerce branch at 9900 South Interstate 35, wielding a handgun and demanded money, Lt. Cedric Hudson said.

He left the scene with an undisclosed amount of cash, police said. Police said the suspect is a white male, about 5 feet 10 inches tall, between 40 and 45 years old and weighs about 200 pounds.

He has a mustache and was wearing a neck brace, according to a surveillance photo provided by police.

Anyone with information is asked to call police at 974-5092.

http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2008/11/jumping_brain.html

The Jumping Brain is a limited edition toy created by artist Emilio Garcia that is a detailed plastic model of the brain, with, erm... webbed feat.

It comes in traditional lab demo gray, as well as red, green and blue and even has its own MySpace page.

The development of the project is even documented online, so you can see how the curious idea went from drawing board to webbed wonder.

Link to Jumping Brain website.

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/blotter/entries/2008/11/17/woman_found_dead_identified.html?cxntfid=blogs_the_blotter

Austin police identified a woman Monday who was found dead last week in Lady Bird Lake near Barton Springs.

Authorities said they do not think the death of Jill Walker Robinson, 44, was suspicious. Robinson was found Friday by a woman in a canoe who called police.

Police later recovered the body, which they said had no signs of trauma.

In the time of the end, the time of the Lily, these writings will be sought as serviceable . . . to all such who are shooting forth into the fair Lily in the kingdom of God, who are in the process of birth, are these lines written; that each one may be strengthened, and bud in the life of God, and grow, and bear fruit in the Tree of paradise; . . . that each branch and twig in this fair Tree may contribute, help and shelter all the other branches and twigs, that this Tree may become a great Tree! . . . Then shall we all rejoice, one with another, with ‘joy unspeakable and full of glory’!

http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2008/11/ganzfeld_hallucinati.html

The cognitive science journal Cortex has just released a special issue on the neuropsychology of paranormal experiences and belief, and contains a fantastic article on hallucinations induced by the Ganzfeld procedure.

The Ganzfeld procedure exposes the participant to 'unstructured' sensations usually by placing half ping-pong balls over the eyes so they can only see diffuse white light and by playing white noise through headphones.

It is probably best known for its uses in parapsychology experiments, but it is also used to induce hallucinations and sensory distortions which are much more likely to occur in the absence of clearly defined sensory experiences.

The article reviews the sorts of hallucinations reported in during these experiments and discusses what electrophysiology (EEG or 'brain wave') studies tell us about what happens in the cortex when these perceptual distortions kick off.

Some of the descriptions of hallucinations are really quite striking:

“For quite a long time, there was nothing except a green-greyish fog. It was really boring, I thought, ‘ah, what a non-sense experiment!’ Then, for an indefinite period of time, I was ‘off’, like completely absent-minded. Then, all of sudden, I saw a hand holding a piece of chalk and writing on a black-board something like a mathematical formula. The vision was very clear, but it stayed only for few seconds and disappeared again. The image did not fill up the entire visual field, it was just like a ‘window’ into that foggy stuff.”

“an urban scenery, like an empty avenue after a rain, large areas covered with water, and the city sky-line reflected in the water surface like in a mirror.”

“a clearing in a forest [Lichtung], a place bathed in bright sun-shine, and the trunks of trees around. A feeling of a tranquile summer afternoon in a forest, so quiet, so peaceful. And then, suddenly, a young woman passed by on a bicycle, very fast, she crossed the visual field from the right to the left, with her blond long hair waving in the air. The image of the entire scene was very clear, with many details, and yes, the colours were very vivid.”

“I can see his face, still, it's very expressive… [I could see] only the horse that comes as if out of clouds. A white horse that jumped over me.”

“A friend of mine and I, we were inside a cave. We made a fire. There was a creek flowing under our feet, and we were on a stone. She had fallen into the creek, and she had to wait to have her things dried. Then she said to me: ‘Hey, move on, we should go now’.”

“It was like running a bob sleigh on an uneven runway right down… [There] was snow or maybe water running down… I could hear music, there was music coming from the left side below.”

“In the right side of the visual field, a manikin suddenly appeared. He was all in black, had a long narrow head, fairly broad shoulders, very long arms and a relatively small trunk…. He approached me, stretching out his hands, very long, very big, like a bowl, and he stayed so for a while, and then he went back to where he came from, slowly.”

You can simulate the Ganzfeld procedure in your own home by taping two half ping-pong balls over your eyes and listing to the radio tuned to static in an evenly lighted room.

The other articles in the special issue are also fascinating, and range from a study finding greater body asymmetry is related to higher levels of unusual beliefs - likely reflecting asymmetrical brain development, to an experiment looking at the cognitive psychology of people who believe they've been abducted by aliens.

Needless to say, there's many more fascinating studies and Cortex has the advantage of not only being a leading neuropsychology journal but also making it's material freely available as open-access articles. Enjoy!

Link to Cortex special issue.

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/blotter/entries/2008/11/17/man_charged_with_terrorist_thr.html?cxntfid=blogs_the_blotter

Authorities have charged an Austin man with making a terroristic threat Saturday on a Southwest Airlines flight from Dallas to Austin.

According to an arrest affidavit, John Peter Flack, 26, put a ski mask on during the flight, repeated the word “kill” over and over and recited lines from the movie “Silence of the Lambs.”

The affidavit said he also stared at a 15-year-old female passenger and made sexual gestures toward her.

The document said that Flack was “very intoxicated” and that the flight crew had banned him from drinking more alcohol.

Flack faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of the third-degree felony. His bail was set at $10,000.

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/blotter/entries/2008/11/17/motorcyclist_dies_in_san_marco.html?cxntfid=blogs_the_blotter

San Marcos police officials have reported that a 41-year old Corpus Christi man died of injuries he suffered in a motorcycle wreck near the 202 mile marker on Interstate 35 Saturday about 4:30 p.m.

Alvin Byrd, 41, died Monday morning at University Medical Center at Brackenridge in Austin where he was flown by helicopter after the accident.

According to police, Byrd was traveling south on I-35 in the far right lane and lost control, possibly when vehicles ahead of him began braking. Byrd was not wearing a helmet, police said, and suffered severe head injuries.