12 October 2007

Dance, my little firebrand! Dance!

Do you know that whole thing about left-brained and right-brained people, about the former being logical and the latter being intuitive and all that? If you don't, and if you can't draw, it's well worth getting your hands on Betty Edward's brilliant Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Seriously.

Anyway, have you seen this left brain/right brain test?

It troubles me. For ages I watched the dancer, thinking she's clearing spinning clockwise, pivoting on her left leg. So I'm right-brained, apparently, which may come as a surprise to those poor unfortunates who've experienced me in strategist mode, cautious, painstaking, and with an eye for every detail.

And I showed it to a physicist friend, who was even more surprised to see the dancer spinning clockwise. How can she be right-brained, for heaven's sake? She's a physicist!

And then I showed it to NMRBoy, who saw her turning anti-clockwise. This astounded me. How could this be? I could well believe that my comrade-in-arms is thoroughly left-brained, but not that he's mad.

She's blatantly turning clockwise!

And then I read the lists of characteristics again, and out of the corner of my eye I saw her turning anticlockwise, spinning on her right leg.

And now she does whatever I tell her to, the saucy minx.

Neil says that it's a sinusoidal projection, whatever that is, and that both directions are valid. I have no idea what that means, but I'm sure he'll explain it on his blog. I certainly hope so.

There's a comment below the dancer which says 'Her breasts are very perky...I'm mesmerized. Been watching her for 2 hours now.'

That's all. He's happy just to watch her - admittedly - perky breasts. But which way does she turn for him? Can he make her turn at will?

Now that's the challenge.

It's like poledancing for nerds.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bloody hell, been looking at it for half an hour now. I can only see her turning clockwise and can’t for the life of me make her change direction. Does this mean I have no logic at all?

By the way, glad to see you back. Was worried I’d have to find another habit to go with my morning coffee.

Anonymous said...

it is very hard for ppl to see counter clockwise if they have at first seen it clockwise. i think that this is because you need to see the details of the reflection at the bottom and make this be in time with the floating up and down of the dancer. if you put the two together you get that it is spinning clockwise. if you ignore the up and down motion you get counter clockwise