Monday, September 22, 2008

Obama and If a Tree Falls...

Is it just me? I seem to pass scores of political signs every time I'm out and about in the 'burban, and lots of them say this:

Obama
Biden

My brain almost always tells me I'm reading Osama Bin Laden. I try not to, but it just pops into my brain. According to my Family Fun magazine, it's not just me: "Language experts aren't entirely sure why, but one theory is that we don't usually read words letter by letter, we read them as whole units. So keeping the first and last letters of jumbled words in the right positions helps us decode them." (they were not talking about Obama Biden, just mixed up/jumbled words) I wonder if Senator Obama considered this phenomenon when he chose his running mate?

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On Friday when Caleb and I returned from our walk, I noticed that half a tree had fallen on our property. A big one. After the initial "Yikes" and "I'm glad no one was standing there when it fell", my first thought was, gosh that would be a good place for a letterbox or geocache (there's a big hole in the trunk of the tree right above where it separated). When Scott returned Sunday night from his kayaking adventure, I told him about the fallen tree, and he (of course!) asked me, "did it make a sound?"

1 comment:

  1. I received a FWD from someone once that talked about spelling errors and that the first and the last letter are the most important letters when we read words. I could see where our minds would mis-read those words.

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