Ocular Motor Function...

I heard a rather interesting article today regarding the way our eyes move and magic.

Here's a wee experiment. Take some sort of pendulum and swing it in front of your eyes. Your eyes can follow the curved motion very smoothly in what is called motion pursuit. Now put both your thumbs up in front of you and move your eyes between them. Your eyes don't do an exact smooth movement. This is called the saccadic movement. It's something to do with orientating your vision to the world around you.

Now magicians exploit this difference in eye movement when doing sleight of hand. When distracting your attention they'll use a curved motion of something, say taking something out their pocket, to take the viewer's attention away from what they are trying to cover up. With this motion pursuit movement, your eyes don't pay much attention other than to the thing they are following.

On matters of something completely different. Today was the first day I went head on, no qualms, into the rain to cycle home. Wasn't very heavy but I felt equipped enough to tackle it.