reading research or brain research?

On 8/27/05, Carol wrote:


ALZHEIMER'S EYE TEST


Count every "F" in the following text:





FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE
SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTI
FIC STUDY COMBINED WITH
THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS...
(SEE BELOW)






HOW MANY ?




3?


WRONG, THERE ARE 6 -- no joke.
READ IT AGAIN !


The reasoning behind is further down.




The brain cannot process "OF".

Incredible or what? Go back and look again!!



Anyone who counts all 6 "F's" on the first go is a genius.
Three is normal, four is quite rare.





.......
Okay, I have seen something like this in my teaching reading classes, and i don't know about the whole "brain can't process the word OF" idea. I'm curious about what Milan, my brother-in-law psychologist thinks. I think it is more of a reading issue - we read over such small words because we know they are there and we don't even pay attention to them. I would also say that as we read we tend to pay more attention to the first letters of words, and this would account for skipping of the F in OF. And why did that test feel the need to split up the word 'scientific'? Was that just so we would be sure to see that F and therefore be 'proving' their point? Because if they had kept the word together, some people probably wouldn't have noticied it first-hand, and then we would see that this is indeed, a reading issue. However, I'm still open to hearing what the brain-ologists of the crowd have to say.

SST

So, a new chapter of my life has begun this year. I was asked to be part of the 'singles servant team', which is a group of several people in my church fellowship who organize, direct, lead, serve us. Our goal is to help make the people who gather for sunday school into a body of believers who develop relationships, grow closer to God together, and serve together. My specific role is in the socials area.

This morning the new team for the year had its first meeting. We met at the home of the Seatons, as Scott is our head. Chris and Scott are both really wonderful about wanting to get themselves connected in the lives of singles at church, and one way they are doing this is to open their home for the servant team to meet.

Being the sort of person that likes to talk about direction and philosophy, and argue with the status quo, it is really exciting for me to be on this team. We are getting to talk about the way things run, the ideas behind what we do, and we're shaking things up a bit.

I'm really excited about the new ideas that we talked out this morning. One neat thing is our desire to steer the fellowship toward fostering deeper conversations so that we challenge one another in the faith. We also talked about how we want to see each of our jobs on the servant team as connected -- so that we don't segregate service events from social events, but realize that through any event, we have opportunities to serve, to draw in others, to make friends, to challenging and be challenged.

So I'm working with Courtney and Brian to plan social events for the year, and we make a fun little committee. Courtney, a dear friend, is a high school English teacher who says that if she wasn't a teacher she would like to be a party planner. So, her detail and organization skills will come in handy.


This is a really neat opportunity for me to serve and to take ownership of the community I have at church. It's also neat that I get to know this group of 11 people better.

my grocery store

The farmers' market* is really and truly one of my favorite places in Atlanta. I took a friend there tonight. She's been living in atl for several years, but has never been there. She agrees -- it is a great place.

more on that to come.


* any suggestions, recommendations, requests on what to do with that apostrophe?? It is possessive, is it not? Their slogan has nothing. I know a sister of mine will have something to say.

by the way

If anyone is good at navigating these things, and can give me a few tips about how to adjust some stuff, I'd love some help. I'd like to add some things in the sidebar, but I don't really know how to use computer language to do that...

here it is

Well folks,
here's my addition to the blogging world.

i'm going to try to keep it up, but school has me pretty busy, so, we'll see what happens. but for starters, i have this really crazy story of something that happened to me last friday, so enjoy.

k

crazy miracle

It's been a long time since I've tried this - actually I nearly gave up on blogging. but i've recently be inspired to start, because i've had such a good time looking on todd's and stano's and kelly's blogs. and then something crazy happened today, that is just so amazing I want to share it all over the place.

When I got to work this morning I parked my car, as usual, near the front entrance, facing away from the church doors. Soon after I got into the building, I was downstairs making copies and I heard the loudspeaker asking for the owner of a black elantra to please come to the front office. So, I walked upstairs, not thinking too much about it--really hoping that no one hit my car. I walked up to Alex, who is in charge of the building, and said, "Alex, that's my car. What's up?" and he says, "Well, your car rolled a bit." I went to my classroom to get my keys, and when I stepped outside, my car was Not There. It was NOT in the parking place - I could not see it. Alex leads my down the parking lot, and there about 50yrs down from where my car had been parked, my car is parked, FACING the building, perfectly in a parking space. perfectly.

It had turned completely around and rolled down the lot, and landed into a new parking space. I wish I had a picture of the lot, to express how amazing this is. It had to have done a k-turn to come all the way around. It was just a miracle.

So, obviously i hadn't put up the emergency break, and so i pulled it up, and walked away. Back in my classroom i had a perfect view of my car, and every time I glanced out at it, it kind of shook me up. It was so weird to see it parked somewhere i had Not driven it -- and in such a perfect place. God's hand really must have been on it.

and something else was cool about today. all day long there was a praying mantisse on my classroom window - like it was looking out over my car, praying.



This evening, at the school's kick-off picnic, a parent told me that he had witnessed the whole thing, and described to me the path my car took. He was waiting, about to pull up to the doors to let his kids off, and he saw a car back up. It backed up slowly, and he sat and waited to let it go. But then it continued to roll backwards, pass in front of him - roll completely around him doing a 180, and he saw that there was no one in the front seat!! Then, it bumped up over the curb hitting some shrubbery, rolled across the lot and over the other curb, back down and over to the other side, and then back again where it gently glides to a stop. -- on the opposite side of the parking lot -- facing the opposite direction.