Bob Hayes Online

Sit at your desk or in a chair. Lift your right foot slightly off the ground, and start moving it in a clockwise circular motion. Keep rotating it throughout the exercise.

Now take your right hand and draw a “6″ in the air in front of you, starting at the top of the six and moving down (the way they taught you to draw it in elementary school). If you’re like most people (everyone in my house who tried it, at least), your right foot will reverse direction, quite independently of your conscious volition, and start going counter-clockwise.

From my field notes:

It also works for the left foot/left hand. It does not work for right foot/left hand or vice versa. If you draw the “6″ from the inside out (so that the top of the figure is the last segment you draw), it doesn’t work – your foot will maintain its direction of motion. This leads me to think that each side of your brain has a rotation-direction module, which does not multitask, so that body movements on the same side have to rotate in the same direction.

Even moving very slowly and with great conscious effort, I was not able to make my same-side foot go contra-cyclically with my hand. As soon as I tried to move my hand the other way, my foot either changed direction or just spazzed out. I had no difficulty making the opposite side foot move contra-cyclically or in the same direction – it seems clear that the two brain halves have independent circuitry for this.

Last night, I dreamed that Hillary Clinton got lost in a city where (for some reason) I was a resident, and she needed to take the bus to get back to her hotel, but she didn’t know the system. For some reason her Secret Service people were nowhere to be found, although Chelsea Clinton and a boyfriend were tagging along. I offered to take her on the bus route, which I was apparently an expert in, and we had a very gracious and respectful conversation on the route. I think we talked education policy, mostly. When we got to our destination she went off with her Secret Service people.

The same night, my wife had a dream about John McCain, that she was campaigning with him and they were riding on an airplane together, but on the outside of the plane. She worried that they would fall off, especially when the plane came dangerously close to a mountaintop, but they landed safely.

I think tonight maybe we’ll watch “Firefly” episodes on DVD.

For years, I’ve assumed that the reason that the music sucks in Catholic services was that some previous Pope had lost a bet with our Protestant brethren. I was never sure of the details – it’s a hierarchy, after all – but it was fairly obvious that we had agreed: any Catholics showing musical talent would be pointed towards the Protestants instead, so that there would never be good music in a Catholic church.

Now we see it was actually a cunning plan – turns out good church music may undermine the experience over time by raising unrealistic expectations. Those Popes, they’re clever ones.

H/T Evangelical Outpost.

Well, he says it nicer.

Not unrelated.

(H/T Evangelical Outpost.)

Because everyone is stupid. Even the people who came up with this list fall into these traps.

(H/T Evangelical Outpost.)

Most parents agonize a little bit about Santa Claus. What do we tell our kids? Religious people, especially, have to consider the nature and nurturance of belief, and what we owe our kids. This is being discussed In the Agora. Sample:

I am of the very un-festive opinion that lying to your children about anything is bound to have negative consequences, but particularly when it involves a figure like Santa. In the eyes of some this makes me a Grinch or Scrooge, but I’m not sure that’s altogether a bad thing.

I am in agreement. It doesn’t ruin Christmas for the kids, and they don’t generally ask until they’re ready to know. My daughter is five; she still sort of believes, but when she asks me, I tell her the truth. I tell it gently and in a way supportive of loving Christmas and Santa and thinking Rudolph and Clarise is the greatest love story in history – because that’s all mythology and storytelling that she embraces.

(Hat tip: Evangelical Outpost.)

…through a practice of constructive slovenliness. This is genius.

“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Here’s a weird one.

Do you believe in reincarnation? (George S. Patton did, you know.)

In late 1977, the plane carrying the rock group Lynrd Skynrd crashed into a swamp outside of McComb, Mississippi. The crash killed “Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, Steve’s sister Cassie (a backup singer), and road manager Dean Kilpatrick.” One male rock legend, a lesser but still excellent male musician, and that musician’s no doubt talented but professionally unremarkable sibling. (And the road manager, Dean Kilpatrick.)

McComb is a town of about 13,000 people. It is a complete no-account burg, or would be if it weren’t for the connection with the famous plane crash – and for one other thing. McComb is the birthplace of a number of notable musicians, from King Solomon Hill (1897) on. After 1950, no musicians of account were born in McComb – except for Britney Spears (1981), Brandy (1979) and Brandy’s younger brother Ray J (also 1981).

That is, a rock legend, a lesser but still illustrious talent, and someone who hasn’t quite made the big time on their own, but who does have a connection to fame. All born within a few years of a tragedy that saw the deaths of some of rock’s great lights, within a few miles of the birthplace of the latter-day talents.

There are two possible reactions to this story. (Well, more than two, but two that lots of people would fall into.)

1) “This is weird. That’s too many coincidences to just be random chance. Something mystical or ghostly is going on.”

2) “This is weird. But it’s just a random concatenation of factors.”

Which of these reactions do you have? Or do you think something entirely different?