Odd flicker fusion difference
Odd optical effect this morning. Standing at the bus stop on Wellesley, as I've done at least once a week for 25 years. One of the houses across from the stop is an immaculately kept late-40s CapeCodish type. When a house is so reliable and perfect for so many years, you notice small differences. Something was wrong. The mailbox contained mail, even though this was early Sat morning before the postman comes. And the porch light was flickering fast. About 10 cps, indicating that the bulb is about done. Usually a bulb flickers for only a few seconds before it goes, but this was steady.

I don't trust my old eyes, so I checked other porch lights and headlights. Nope, nothing else was flickering, only this one. And then I squinted to try each eye separately.

My right eye lost some of its color about 15 years ago. Never figured out what caused it. Might have been a shingles attack, maybe cataract. Whatever it was, it never got worse, so I didn't worry.

Here's the odd part. The porch light was flickering in my left eye but NOT in the right eye. It was less yellow, more white, as I expect; but I didn't expect to have a different flicker fusion threshold in each eye!

This model doesn't closely resemble the actual house, but it belongs to the same era. As seen by left eye:



And as seen by right eye:



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The homeowner is an older lady who seems unlikely to take wild spur-of-the-moment weekend trips, so I thought about calling Crime Check to see if the untouched mail indicated a problem ... but decided against it. I've seen frequent visiting among the old folks on that block, so I'll assume one of them will know what's going on without official interference.


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Sidenote: If most people have different thresholds per eye, it raises interesting possibilities for 3d animation effects.

Labels: TMI

  ¶ 5:59 PM