Wednesday 29 January 2014

The Amazing Mr. McGurk

Who or what is a McGurk? Is it the new, 10,000 calorie McDonalds sandwich?

Unfortunately, no.

It is actually what's known as the McGurk Effect, and boy is it neat.

If you have the searing intellect I do, you may already know of this effect if you watched TVO the other night.

Oh alright, "searing" might be too strong a word. I admit my intellect is brought down a few notches because I watch Locked Up Abroad, a show about people imprisoned in foreign countries under horrible conditions.

You can't completely blame me for this bad habit. I thought the show was called Locked Up WITH A Broad, and I was hoping to be the next contestant. I would be quite happy, satisfied, joyful, ebullient being locked up with Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams in a Turkish prison and only one cot.

Yes, I also watch Border Crossing from time to time. I whole Hardiedly call myself an Einstein compared to some of the people on this show.

On yesterday's show an American women wanted to visit a park in Canada and decided to bring a fully loaded hand gun that she packed with her babies's diapers. And she wasn't at all trying to hide the gun. She declared it to Customs.

No blame here either. She bought the gun as a two-for-one special with the diapers. Mothers showing that kind of love gets my tears going.

Anywho, the McGurk Effect is quite astounding and I guarantee you will enjoy watching the youtube link below. It's only 3 minutes and 25 seconds long.

The amazing thing about this effect is that there is no earthly way to avoid it. You can watch it over and over or learn as much about the effect as you want, but you can't stop your brain from causing the effect. It is a result of being human.

Enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0

Remarkable, isn't it. As I watched the clip, it occurred to me that there is one occupation that employs this effect every day.

That's right. Politicians.

They can move their mouth and lips in any manner but the same bullshit sound comes out.

Now we have a name for that!

Mr. McGurk goes to Washington, and Ottawa, and Paris, and…