shychemist:

Some blind people can echolocate by producing sounds, or ‘clicks’, with their tongues to ‘see’ where they are going.

SYDNEY: Humans can echolocate - just like bats - and scientists are now learning how the brain adapts to perform this skill.

Last month, Daniel Kish, an American blind expert in using sonar to ‘see’ where he is going, visited Sydney to work with Guide Dogs NSW/ACT. In the same way bats use sonar, blind people such as Kish have displayed an ability to echolocate by producing sounds, or ‘clicks’, with their tongues. They can then interpret the different rebounding echoes to understand their spatial surroundings - the position, distance, size, shape and even texture of objects.

Recently, a team of Canadian researchers have discovered a surprising region of the brain that interprets these echoes. “The most exciting finding for us was that the ‘visual’ part of [the brain] was even more activated by the tiny echoes than the auditory part of his brain,” said co-author Melvyn Goodale from the University of Western Ontario of a 2011 PLoS ONE paper. “Clearly, there is something about the organisation of [the] ‘visual’ cortex that makes it particularly adept at interpreting the echoes.”

Click title to read more.

George Carlin

(via psychotikmouse)

popthirdworld:

Sinead O’Conner was ahead of her time. In the 1980s and 90s, she spoke up in protest against the Catholic Church’s cover up of child sexual abuse across the world. Her protest reached its height during a guest spot on Saturday Night Live where she ripped up a picture of the Pope and, looking down the barrel of the camera, told the audience to ‘fight the real enemy.’ Unfortunately, this was before the rest of the world was aware of (or, at least, had accepted) the fact of the Catholic Church’s involvement in the abuses, and so Sinead was, well, crucified.

Sinead is fearless, and never let this backlash or any of the other scorn she received throughout her career, compromise her message or artistry. She also didn’t let the temptations of pop success compromise her message or artistry either - something she wishes her fellow Irish pop contemproraries, Bono and Bob Geldof would do (she praises them for their work in Africa, but is disappointed with their silence on the abuse happening in their own homeland).

I’ve cherry picked this info from an excellent article on PopMatters by Bill See that profiles Sinead. Read it here.

(Source: gay-anti-theist)