Not all that productive a day, but then again...

Life is not all about productivity.

My major accomplishment today was getting a fair chunk of the upstairs picked up and sorted, the mention of which probably does not reflect well on me (as we are expected to generally keep things picked up and sorted, no?), but there you have it. Among other things, I ran across a letter that Boris Spassky sent me back in August, 1985, as well as a bilingual Russian–English glossary of fleshy fungi that I had been given by a ukulele-playing, mushroom-hunting acquaintance. Like any such document, it will require some revision, but as a starting point, it is well put-together.

The coincidence of the day was running across an email that had been sent to Earth fifteen years ago today by astronaut David Wolf while he was aboard the Mir space station (the predecessor of today's ISS). The letter is available online, and is a pretty good read. As a taste of Dr. Wolf's writing style, here's my favorite passage from the letter:

I would like to report a persistent and annoying effect relating to the visual perception of free-floating objects in a spaceship. On Earth, if we lay a wrench on a table we are quite easily able to look back and see it. In space, if we let go of this wrench it of course floats and changes orientation and position. It is uncanny how we are literally unable to see it when we look back. It is there, for sure. And it is just plain invisible against the complicated background. Somewhere between the image on the retina and our brain's cognitive center, it is being erased. The following hypothesis would be testable, and therefore possibly useful, in determining why this happens. "In order to help us find things in a complicated visual field, our minds have evolved 'filters' which 'block' images which are probably not what we are looking for." This could be quite useful when we hear a rattlesnake in the woods. We would like to quickly determine its position and direction without checking every tree branch and root. So we just check the ones that look like a snake. We don't really see the others. It would also be an advantage in quickly identifying the ice cream man, on a busy street, before he sells the last ice cream sandwich. The concept is actually central to the field of human factors, from design and placement of street signs to laying out an aircraft cockpit. In order to "see" things they should be placed in expected and constant orientations (colors...). Our hypothesis would predict this and thus explain why we have a particularly tough time "seeing" objects in space, as we and the objects float around. This hypothesized "visual filter" stubbornly conceals the most familiar of objects. We just don't expect the pliers to be pointing straight at us, at eye level, one foot in front of our face. So it can't be the pliers and they therefore aren't noticed at all, while we are looking for pliers. Ironically, the specific act of searching (i.e., filtering) seems to conceal the object of our desire. Sounds like love is involved here somewhere. You really feel like an idiot as the pliers hit you in the forehead moments after you gave up looking for them. Interestingly, the following is what usually happens. As soon as we give up looking (turn off our pliers recognition filter) and turn away, we happen to notice a floating object. Take a closer look and there's our pliers. It really works. In this crazy place sometimes you have to quit looking in order to find something.

Aside from the fact that the phenomenon of not being able to "see" something that's squarely in front of me—while sitting at the bottom of a gravity well, no less—has happened to me more times than I care to think about, I think Wolf's narrative is quite readable. Then again, I may be a little prejudiced in Wolf's favor, as he once, at a critical time, made some very positive remarks about the quality—and more important, the style—of a brief translation I wrote about some kind of electrical gadget.

Wow, is it late! I don't feel particularly tired (probably because I've fallen into the dissolute habit of sleeping in until nearly 10 am the past few days), but I better get to sleep and try to bring some normalcy back to my waking hours. Holiday time or no, I do have work on the plate.

Cheers...