Get ready for October 15th, when the "World's Biggest Eye Contact Experiment" is scheduled to take place in cities throughout the world. The idea is that on this day lots of people will "share a minutes eye contact with strangers in public to rebuild our sense of shared humanity."
If you participate, you'll obviously want to stare into the eyes of someone who's agreed to do likewise. Don't pick just any random stranger on the street and start staring at them. Even though that would probably produce more interesting results.
For those who wish to recover their sight promising research is being done by the Universities of Bern, Switzerland and Gottingen, Germany. The process is called Optogenetic therapy and is expected to help those who have lost their sight due to some degenerative diseases of the eyes. Certain proteins are inserted into cells in the retina causing those cells to sense light. The effected cells then act in place of the light sensing cell that were destroyed by the disease process. This treatment has already been successful in returning sight to mice. It is not a cure for all blindness but it is certainly a great step forward in treating blindness due to degenerative diseases. There seems to be a long way to go before it will be ready for human use but the journey has at least begun.
"The movie documents a classic experiment conducted in 1950 by Ivo Kohler and Theodor Erismann at the university of Innsbruck, Austria. Erismann is the older person the movie, and Kohler, his research assistant at that time, is the person wearing the inversion goggles. Subtitles are all in German."
Veterinary staff at Vancouver Aquarium have provided posthetic eyes for a fish. This was done so other fish would not pick it to death because it did not have eyes. So, it seems that humans are not the only species that picks on those who are different.
Pizza Hut is testing a new "subconscious menu" in some of its UK restaurants. Just look at the food choices on the screen of the tablet, and the eye-tracking technology will determine which food your eyes are lingering over longest. [wash post]
This made me think of Paul's post from a few days ago about the octopus in the farm yard, which demonstrated that our eyes "dwell on objects that are discrepant with expectations." So if there's an octopus on the menu, you'll just have to eat octopus pizza.
This sounds like some kind of new self-torture device from Japan. Available at Japan Trend Shop.
Masunaga Wink Glasses
These clever specs can detect when you haven't blinked in five seconds and fog up one of the lens. This simple function will then "jolt" the eyes and make them focus, thus waking you up before you drop off fully. Men blink once every three seconds; women once every four seconds. So any longer than this and you are slowing down, which generally means you are getting sleepy.
John Huttick was in court on the witness stand describing how he lost his eye in a bar fight. Suddenly said eye — the new prosthetic one, not the old one he lost — popped out of its socket and landed in his hand. The jurors gasped in fright. The judge promptly declared a mistrial.
This case has sparked my curiosity, so I'm going to keep an eye out to see what happens during the rescheduled trial. [nj.com]
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.