And then there’s mass murder.

Blowing away a lot of people is an especially effective death-dread remedy. When guilt and ambivalence are removed from act—when act can be rationalized as serving a righteous or noble cause, like, say, extirpation of an inferior or evil race that’s corrupting a divine plan—it’s even better than especially effective. Mussolini’s son, returning to Italy in a state of euphoria after bombing Ethiopians, and, in an infamous remark, describing carnage he’d wrought as “beautiful,” was only being honest, candidly acknowledging ultimate high that murder can afford.

“High,” meaning of course, ABOVE body.

When we devote ourselves to preservation of a rain forest, we are performing a service for nature that might, come Judgment Day, earn us a special dispensation. When we bulldoze a rainforest we are getting nature out of our face. But when we are killing, when we are exercising destructive force of a supreme magnitude, and manifesting a blunt indifference to notion of sanctity of life, to unfinished business of our victims, and to grief of those who loved them, we become what it truly is to be “one” with nature. And reward is extraordinary. Claiming nature’s power and authority for ourselves, merging with source of death, we stop feeling vulnerable to nature, we achieve a sense of immunity to its victimization of us, a sense of immunity that, in turn, relieves us of burden fragility of our bodies inflicts on us. In period of killing we get what we most need and want, we get to experience ourselves as indestructible.

Murder kills death.

I’ve conceded that it would have been off Spielberg’s spectrum to make even an oblique or passing reference to a reality so repugnant. But I can still wish he’d been capable of taking his opportunity to toss a wrench into mindless reflex of hand-wringing astonishment and incredulity that is our rote response to atrocities. The truth of matter isn’t elusive. We make it so because it sits in shit. A certain percentage of humanity, unable to avail itself of less malignant death-denial techniques, or finding them insufficient, or seeing through them, will always be willing to become what Elie Wiesel termed “not human”; will, in fact, have no recourse but to violate social contract and enter madness in order to achieve respite from inhuman reality of living under a death sentence.

If anything should astonish us it's that this percentage isn't much higher.

A pigeon, to land, needs stereopsis in a triangular region in front and below. The cheeks of pigeon are hollow to allow optical axis of each eye to "sneak" past beak, allowing a small area of overlap for precision landing.

Otherwise, pigeon has eyes that give a panoramic view with little overlap.

This leads to obvious danger. What happens when pigeon is on ground? Is it vulnerable to attack by cats?

No. It JERKS ITS HEAD!

From one position it takes a "SNAPSHOT" of scene. Then it moves its head to a position that is removed by a distance remarkably similar to interocular separation of human eyes.

From new position, it takes a new "SNAPSHOT". It "knows" which image is front one, and which is back because its brain not only commanded movement but also received gnosisceptor confirmation.

So it needs only REMEMBER first image for a split-second, long enough to combine it with second image for a "Wheatsone glimpse", and it has perceived stereoscopic depth of its environment.

Does this only apply to pigeons?

Apparently not. When a human closes one eye, limbic system will no longer have two images for stereoscopic evaluation of environment. It will become dependent upon "TEMPORAL" data in one-eye image. That is, upon how perspective changes over TIME.

I have made some tools for stereoscopists available at http://www.wehner.org/3d/ or http://www.wehner.org ools .

Of interest in this context is LEN.COM lenticular stereogram maker. This creates an image of interleaved stripes for use with lenticular plastic.

However, suppose we make stripes HORIZONTAL instead of vertical. Suppose also, that we make a mask in GIF process where each odd row of pixels is black and each even row transparent. As mask slides over striped image, left-eye and right-eye images will be seen alternately.

Using Internet Explorer, trick works quite well. So you can see Professor Wheatstone rocking back and forth if you slide scroll-bar whilst viewing introductory page at http://www.wehner.org/3d/ .

Look closely, and it becomes quite obvious that tuft of hair to left of his head is moving forward and backward in space.

You can see effect EVEN WITH ONE EYE CLOSED.

Remarkable!

Charles Douglas Wehner