>I have not previously considered that the human eye has a different
>resolving power in the horizontal and vertical directions.
>
>I have a friend who maintains that he can achieve about 3 times the
>resolution on a line of pins running vertically (North - South) compared to
>a line running horizontally (East - West). eg when soldering a quad flat
>pack package manually he maintains it is visually easier to solder the pins
>or inspect them if they are in the vertical direction.
>
>I do not SEEM to have the same variation but my visual system is a little
>unusual.
>
>Question:
>
>1.    Do other people consider that they have differing horizontal and
>vertical resolving powers?
>2.    Does anyone have any formal information on this?
>
>My friend MAY have astigmatism but that's only an uneducated guess.
>
>
>
>      Russell McMahon
>_____________________________
>
>- http://www.easttimor.com
>       Updated regularly:
>       100,000 refugees STILL in  West Timor face starvation!
>
>- http://www.sudan.com
>    And you think Kosovo and Chechnya are bad!
>
>What can one man* do?
>Help the hungry at no cost to yourself!
>at  http://www.thehungersite.com/
>
>(* - or woman, child or internet enabled intelligent entity :-))
>

>I hope so.
>
>My PIC driven virtual car is going to be a fun item :-)
>
>Should be testing later this week.
>
>--
>Best regards
>
>Tony
>
>http://www.picnpoke.com
>EraseMEsalesspam_OUTTakeThisOuTpicnpoke.com
>
|

>
> Now I know I don't want to share the road with you... The remote control car
> is bad enough but tilted head drivers?
>
> All seriousness aside, I just saw on the web that automotive crashes are
> responsible for 90 percent of all travel related fatalities. We actually
> kill almost as many people on the freeways every year as we killed in 'Nam.
> No protests about road safety for some strange reason.
>
> ---
> James Newton RemoveMEjamesnewtonKILLspamgeocities.com 1-619-652-0593
> http://techref.massmind.org NEW! FINALLY A REAL NAME!
> Members can add private/public comments/pages ($0 TANSTAAFL web hosting)
>

> David VanHorn wrote:
>
> > You aren't born knowing how to relate hand movements to the motion of
> > a disconnected dot on the screen.
>
>   I'm not at all sure about that one.  (I won't be surprised if those
> psychology guys have a go at me on this one either!)  You *probably*
> aren't born with this particular linkage, though many animals obviously
> *are* born with similar behaviours hard-coded as they can for example
> get up and run to follow their mothers.
>
>   What is true is that you learn it within a few months of birth and I
> would suspect it is pretty hard-coded afterward.  I haven't read the
> full disclosure of the inversion spectacles experiments, but whilst you
> should be able to navigate reasonably well in a day or so, I might
> wonder just how close your reaction times would get to the normal ones
> or whether there would always be an extra delay involved in the "wedge"
> performing the spatial transform.
>
>   I would be greatly concerned about the safety aspects should anything
> sudden happen requiring automatic (cerebellar) behaviours which might
> not have been trained to match.
>
>   This skill is actually part of my job, by the way, guiding a camera
> held in one hand and to a greater or lesser extent, an instrument in the
> other, according to the image from the camera.
>
>   I figure I can cope with up to 90¡ rotation either way fairly easily
> (though some of the people I assist have more or less tolerance on
> this), more than that and up to 180¡ is much more painstaking.
> Inversion is often easier by reversing grip.  It's a bit like steering a
> car holding the bottom of the wheel.  That is fairly easy for the brain
> to re-conceptualise and "switch" the style to match.
> --
>   Cheers,
>         Paul B.

>You learned this the same way I did?,,, on a gravel road with an old beat
>up 350 honda.   Really hurt.
>
>
>>Cycle slowly
>>Place left hand on right handlebar (this is doable)
>>Now, carefully -
>>
>>I said ODN'T FALL OVER.
>
>
>'Grif'   N7IVS
>

>Its unbelievable that analytical thinking people continue to believe and
>state confidently that the cells of the human eye and the neural system of
>the brain essentially willed themselves to change how they function based
>on their recognition of a far removed apparent need of the body to more
>clearly resolve predators in the horizontal plain, and then spent a few
>million years making the cellular changes required to accomplish the goal.
>Why are they so afraid to concede to the blatant evidence in their face
>that evolution is a farce?

>I'm sorry to drag this out, but the ignorance and denial that is so
>prevalent in the pseudo science of evolution is really getting old.

>Its unbelievable that analytical thinking people continue to believe and
>state confidently that the cells of the human eye and the neural system of
>the brain essentially willed themselves to change how they function based
>on their recognition of a far removed apparent need of the body to more
>clearly resolve predators in the horizontal plain, and then spent a few
>million years making the cellular changes required to accomplish the goal.
>Why are they so afraid to concede to the blatant evidence in their face
>that evolution is a farce?

>I'm sorry to drag this out, but the ignorance and denial that is so
>prevalent in the pseudo science of evolution is really getting old.

>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> This is my last word on this in piclist, anything else can be done in email.
> I didn't feel right just letting it hang.  The motivator for my initial
> response was the statement that animals make some concious decision to
> modify themselves. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
>
> On the subject of moths, as I said, I'm not a biologist, but I will refer
> you to one.
>
> http://www.wm.edu/biology/melanism.pdf
>
> Creationists are fond of pointing out all the mistakes that are made in
> science, and apparently miss the point. Science is about forming an
> understanding of how the world works. A theory is only useful if it makes
> useful predictions.  When another theory comes up that makes more accurate
> predictions, it is adopted. The process is not ideal, because as always,
> human personalities come into play, but it is self-correcting over time.
> The important point is that while some people present it incorrectly, ALL
> of science is theory.  Science makes the distinction of "Law" on some
> theories that have been rigorously tested by many many people, in many
> ways, with no hint of failure, but even they are subject to revision if new
> facts come in that demand it.  Religion gives us the absolute truth, in
> god's own words, yet over time we see that many things claimed to be
> absolute truth in this manner, are absolutely false. Of course this is
> always blamed on incorrect interpretation, with reluctant and belated
> apologies to those that we tortured to death for pointing it out earlier..
>
> The central dichotomy seems to be that religion is about having faith in
> things you cannot prove, and science is about not having faith, but
> requiring proof. Therefore, the position of "God made it that way." is not
> acceptable in science, unless you can prove the existence of god. (beyond
> the usual tautologies)
>
> The theory of evolution seems to be useful, in that it seems to predict
> what is observed, and offers explanations for things that previously had
> none. It remains a theory though, because all that we can directly observe
> in the broadest sense, is essentially a snapshot in time.  There are recent
> developments if fact that suggest (based on DNA analysis) that we did not
> in fact evolve in a line through Neanderthal man.  New evidence, once
> verified, require adjustments to the theories, or new theories.
>
> Can creationism propose an explanation for the foot-like bone structure in
> a dolphin's flippers? The human appendix?  The large lung capacity of
> Andean Indians? (Other than "god did it for reasons we don't understand")
>
> While this may be true, it is not useful in terms of understanding anything
> about how the world works in a more general sense.
>
> A common proposal in creationism is that you never find in the fossil
> record, animals that are "half evolved". Actually, I think there are plenty
> of examples including the ones I cited above.  I would relate the fossil
> record to a family album. You take pictures at different intervals. I have
> pictures of me as a baby, all through the present. None of these pictures
> shows me inbetween the pictures, so let me play creationist for a moment,
> using my "fossil record"..  What we see here is obviously completely
> different beings, and I could not have simply grown larger over time.  At
> one point, I had no hair. Then the record shows me with hair.  How could
> you possibly propose that there were intermediate forms of me with only a
> little hair?  WHERE'S YOUR PROOF?
>
> Discovery channel had a nice special on this weekend about lions and their
> visual system.  By mapping the distribution of rod cells, they found that
> lions have about 6X better night vision than we do, and that their vision
> seems tailored for catching movement on a horizontal band, with somewhat
> less resolution above and below center. Now one can say "God made it that
> way."  Ok. But if you accept that, then that's all you can know about it.
> You can't extend your observations to any other animals, because you can't
> understand the mechanism.  OTOH, you might propose that the lions started
> out with a more or less even distribution on average, but individual lions
> had some variation. You might propose that some had variations that allowed
> them to have a higher success rate during hunting, and therefore compete
> more successfully in mating, and pass these charachteristics to the next
> generation for further refinement..
>
> This model then can be tested against different species, and over time, and
> refined as we gain understanding of the more subtle effects, or totally
> tossed out the window if we find some new model that does a better job.
>
> Evolution requires these things to be true:
> An organism's success in reproducing, on the average, is proportional to
> it's ability to find food, defeat predators, and to mate.
> In the reproduction process, charachteristics of the parents are passed to
> the children, and help determine the success of the children, as defined
> above, within their environment.
>
> If you can disprove either of these propositions, then you have killed the
> theory of evolution.
>
> It's interesting that when we apply this theory to software (genetic
> algorithms) that it seems to work. This does not prove that evolution is
> the driving mechanism in animals, but it does say that evolution is
> workable, in as far as the software in it's environment models an organism
> in it's environment.  If genetic algorithms couldn't be made to work, that
> would be a more interesting outcome.
>
> The theory of evolution is a statistical approach. It does not attempt to
> predict for any individual, only for large populations, and over long time
> intervals in terms of generations.
>
> If you look back through history, it is clear that while the current
> scientific position on any particular issue may be in error, it is moving
> twoard a more correct form. The religion-driven explanations are either
> untestable, or disproven.
>
> Does someone want to propose a "flat earth" model and explain how it always
> looks spherical to astronauts, or how the GPS system works in such an
> environment? Remember, this model of the earth was put forth by the
> christian church (and other religions) as absolute truth, from the creator
> himself.   Later, we have the theory that the heavens all revolve around
> the earth, another absoute truth from above, which is now observed to be
> false.
>
> Science tells us, using the theory of evolution, that we have misused
> antibiotics, and caused the evolution of resistant bacteria.  The
> triggering observation was a noticible increase in cases where conventional
> antibiotic treatment was much less successful than in the past. This fits
> the theory of evolution. With the fast reproduction of bacteria, it is
> possible to see more change in a shorter interval.  We have always known
> that antibiotics aren't 100% effective. Some bacteria survive to reproduce,
> and their offspring are more resistant. Exactly what the theory of
> evolution predicts.
>
> With this knowlege, we are modifying our use of antibiotics, so this will
> hopefully be less of a problem.
>
> Or, we can say "God did it, for reasons we can't understand", but it's not
> clear to me how this is a more useful theory, in that it does not point out
> anything that we can do to improve the situation.
>
> In the end, science may discover that God did indeed make it this way.
> But in that case, we will also understand some of the reasons, and by using
> the tools he gave us, we will better appreciate his work.
>
> (Or Her work, or.....)
>
> So, you have my current thoughts on the matter.
> If you have new evidence, please advise in email.
> If all you want to do throw unprovable assertions at me, don't bother.
> Nothing further on the piclist please.
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: PGPfreeware 6.5.2 for non-commercial use <http://www.pgp.com>
>
> iQA/AwUBOOkCpoFlGDz1l6VWEQIMHACfYAFfAKo9Zifnzyu/2ncAWqGGAw0AoMwZ
> U4ucDQ5Z4NO9U3p/rah7jw7T
> =d/RL
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> This is my last word on this in piclist, anything else can be done in email.
> I didn't feel right just letting it hang.  The motivator for my initial
> response was the statement that animals make some concious decision to
> modify themselves. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
>
> On the subject of moths, as I said, I'm not a biologist, but I will refer
> you to one.
>
> http://www.wm.edu/biology/melanism.pdf
>
> Creationists are fond of pointing out all the mistakes that are made in
> science, and apparently miss the point. Science is about forming an
> understanding of how the world works. A theory is only useful if it makes
> useful predictions.  When another theory comes up that makes more accurate
> predictions, it is adopted. The process is not ideal, because as always,
> human personalities come into play, but it is self-correcting over time.
> The important point is that while some people present it incorrectly, ALL
> of science is theory.  Science makes the distinction of "Law" on some
> theories that have been rigorously tested by many many people, in many
> ways, with no hint of failure, but even they are subject to revision if new
> facts come in that demand it.  Religion gives us the absolute truth, in
> god's own words, yet over time we see that many things claimed to be
> absolute truth in this manner, are absolutely false. Of course this is
> always blamed on incorrect interpretation, with reluctant and belated
> apologies to those that we tortured to death for pointing it out earlier..
>
> The central dichotomy seems to be that religion is about having faith in
> things you cannot prove, and science is about not having faith, but
> requiring proof. Therefore, the position of "God made it that way." is not
> acceptable in science, unless you can prove the existence of god. (beyond
> the usual tautologies)
>
> The theory of evolution seems to be useful, in that it seems to predict
> what is observed, and offers explanations for things that previously had
> none. It remains a theory though, because all that we can directly observe
> in the broadest sense, is essentially a snapshot in time.  There are recent
> developments if fact that suggest (based on DNA analysis) that we did not
> in fact evolve in a line through Neanderthal man.  New evidence, once
> verified, require adjustments to the theories, or new theories.
>
> Can creationism propose an explanation for the foot-like bone structure in
> a dolphin's flippers? The human appendix?  The large lung capacity of
> Andean Indians? (Other than "god did it for reasons we don't understand")
>
> While this may be true, it is not useful in terms of understanding anything
> about how the world works in a more general sense.
>
> A common proposal in creationism is that you never find in the fossil
> record, animals that are "half evolved". Actually, I think there are plenty
> of examples including the ones I cited above.  I would relate the fossil
> record to a family album. You take pictures at different intervals. I have
> pictures of me as a baby, all through the present. None of these pictures
> shows me inbetween the pictures, so let me play creationist for a moment,
> using my "fossil record"..  What we see here is obviously completely
> different beings, and I could not have simply grown larger over time.  At
> one point, I had no hair. Then the record shows me with hair.  How could
> you possibly propose that there were intermediate forms of me with only a
> little hair?  WHERE'S YOUR PROOF?
>
> Discovery channel had a nice special on this weekend about lions and their
> visual system.  By mapping the distribution of rod cells, they found that
> lions have about 6X better night vision than we do, and that their vision
> seems tailored for catching movement on a horizontal band, with somewhat
> less resolution above and below center. Now one can say "God made it that
> way."  Ok. But if you accept that, then that's all you can know about it.
> You can't extend your observations to any other animals, because you can't
> understand the mechanism.  OTOH, you might propose that the lions started
> out with a more or less even distribution on average, but individual lions
> had some variation. You might propose that some had variations that allowed
> them to have a higher success rate during hunting, and therefore compete
> more successfully in mating, and pass these charachteristics to the next
> generation for further refinement..
>
> This model then can be tested against different species, and over time, and
> refined as we gain understanding of the more subtle effects, or totally
> tossed out the window if we find some new model that does a better job.
>
> Evolution requires these things to be true:
> An organism's success in reproducing, on the average, is proportional to
> it's ability to find food, defeat predators, and to mate.
> In the reproduction process, charachteristics of the parents are passed to
> the children, and help determine the success of the children, as defined
> above, within their environment.
>
> If you can disprove either of these propositions, then you have killed the
> theory of evolution.
>
> It's interesting that when we apply this theory to software (genetic
> algorithms) that it seems to work. This does not prove that evolution is
> the driving mechanism in animals, but it does say that evolution is
> workable, in as far as the software in it's environment models an organism
> in it's environment.  If genetic algorithms couldn't be made to work, that
> would be a more interesting outcome.
>
> The theory of evolution is a statistical approach. It does not attempt to
> predict for any individual, only for large populations, and over long time
> intervals in terms of generations.
>
> If you look back through history, it is clear that while the current
> scientific position on any particular issue may be in error, it is moving
> twoard a more correct form. The religion-driven explanations are either
> untestable, or disproven.
>
> Does someone want to propose a "flat earth" model and explain how it always
> looks spherical to astronauts, or how the GPS system works in such an
> environment? Remember, this model of the earth was put forth by the
> christian church (and other religions) as absolute truth, from the creator
> himself.   Later, we have the theory that the heavens all revolve around
> the earth, another absoute truth from above, which is now observed to be
> false.
>
> Science tells us, using the theory of evolution, that we have misused
> antibiotics, and caused the evolution of resistant bacteria.  The
> triggering observation was a noticible increase in cases where conventional
> antibiotic treatment was much less successful than in the past. This fits
> the theory of evolution. With the fast reproduction of bacteria, it is
> possible to see more change in a shorter interval.  We have always known
> that antibiotics aren't 100% effective. Some bacteria survive to reproduce,
> and their offspring are more resistant. Exactly what the theory of
> evolution predicts.
>
> With this knowlege, we are modifying our use of antibiotics, so this will
> hopefully be less of a problem.
>
> Or, we can say "God did it, for reasons we can't understand", but it's not
> clear to me how this is a more useful theory, in that it does not point out
> anything that we can do to improve the situation.
>
> In the end, science may discover that God did indeed make it this way.
> But in that case, we will also understand some of the reasons, and by using
> the tools he gave us, we will better appreciate his work.
>
> (Or Her work, or.....)
>
> So, you have my current thoughts on the matter.
> If you have new evidence, please advise in email.
> If all you want to do throw unprovable assertions at me, don't bother.
> Nothing further on the piclist please.
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: PGPfreeware 6.5.2 for non-commercial use <http://www.pgp.com>
>
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> U4ucDQ5Z4NO9U3p/rah7jw7T
> =d/RL
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

> Imre wrote:
> >On Fri, 31 Mar 2000, Mark Peterson wrote:
> ......
> >> Take the simplest flash-an-LED PIC code you can come up with.  If just one
> >> bit in just one simple ASCII character byte is flipped, the program will
> >> not run.  We as on-lookers to the error would say "Of course it will not
> >> work.  All of the code, characters, bytes, and bits must be just right for
> >> the program, device, and circuit to work.  Someone must correct it.  It
> >> will not fix itself."  Yet, a single retina cell and in its functional
> >> relationship to the rest of the optical and nervous system, is many, many
> >> times more complicated and interdependent than the most complex devices and
> >> systems created by human beings.
> >
> >1. Ashby has proven it is possible to build such a system.
> >2. Imagine you use 1000 wires with 10x10x10 OR gates to detect whether
> >there is ONE input, instead of a single one. That system would not mind if
> >some of wires or some of gates drops out. This is a simplified way how
> >human (and other biological) beings does work. Using this analogy, you
> >will understand what happens if the last gate (the nervus opticus) is cut,
> >contrary to a small locus on the retina.
> >
>
> As Imre correctly alludes to, there are entire areas of science
> devoted to the study of neural organization - neurophysiology
> Hubel & Wiesel, Lettvin, etc), neural net studies (Rumelhart,
> etc), cybernetics (Ashby, etc). Models of the nervous system have
> been built which incorporate extreme amounts of redundant circuitry,
> in order that they will function correctly, even after many
> connections are cut. These are based upon observations that, in
> certain cases, the brain can compensate for severe nervous system
> damage, by virtue of built-in redundancy.
>
> The nervous system is more analogous a TV screen that is still
> easily readable, even after 1000s of CRT phosphor points have
> been burned, than to a single LED that lights or not. In fact,
> you don't need "someone to correct it". It is to some extent built
> to "fix itself", or at least to compensate.
> -------------
>
> To expand on what I wrote previously, regarding "modification of the
> internal organization of the central visual system of mammals based
> upon early visual experience",
>
> a) Retinas are more or less hard-wired.
>
> b) Cortical centers are probably more or less hard-wired in adult
>    animals, but of course, are still able to learn new things
>    throughout life, via some as yet not fully understood mechanism
>    of learning/memory. Probably the growth/efficacy of synaptic
>    contacts rather than structural reorganization.
>
> c) However, during early development stages, cortical centers are
>    "maleable", and can actually change their "internal organization".
>    This is different from learning. The work begun by Hubel & Wiesel
>    shows that young animals presented "biased" visual input are
>    subsequently and irreversibly unable to ever perceive inputs of
>    the opposite bias as well. Cells which would have become opposite
>    bias cells instead develop as same bias cells, and can't go back.
>    Instead of a 50-50 situation, you end up with 70-30 or 80-20, etc.
>
> The basic idea is that, during a "critical" period of early development,
> nascent cells can go either way, and the way they go is in large part
> due to what they experience.
>
> This all has potential ramification in terms of visual acuity,
> astigmatism, perception of lions in the savanna or monkeys in the
> trees, etc. Possibly also in the creation of society viewpoints in
> a potential "Brave New World" environment.
>
> Indeed, it almost looks as if there is a "plan" here. Lower animals
> are more hardwired, and less able to learn. Intermediate animals have
> some hard wiring, some ability for post-natal reorganization, and
> some for learning. In higher animals, "reorganization" may be present
> at a more abstract level, in terms of having a supreme ability for
> learning.
>
> [sorry if this isn't as much fun as running through stop lights
> at high rates of speed wearing a Ronald Reagan mask and with a
> James Bond revolving license plate].