What is Digg?91 Comments
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+53Is this why Michael Jackson always seems lost?
- Nougat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+46@iching:
I don't know how to find Polaris in the night sky either, and if I did, I wouldn't know what to do with that information. I don't need to know those things - BECAUSE I HAVE A COMPASS UP MY NOSE. - GnuTzu, on 10/12/2007, -3/+36And, next we'll start to hear about people who claim they can tap into this.
Now, if only I could fly south. - Chompy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+24"He didn't even know how to find Polaris in the night sky."
I can't find Polaris in the sky either, but I have an excellent sense of direction and rarely get lost. Not sure what your point is, here. - Humptydank, on 10/12/2007, -4/+22To be honest it's the protractor up my ass I'm more worried about.
- ABadInAlbany, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18I'd bet our sense of direction is poorer now than it was 10,000 years ago. they didn't have, nor need, street signs then.
- signal15, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13It's gotta be just miniscule, or the MRI machines would rip it right out.
- iching, on 10/12/2007, -9/+21Some people have no sense of direction let alone know what direction the sun sets or rises to find south from the position of the sun during the day. I know this from camping with a friend who could get lost without relying on his GPS device to find his way back to the camp. He didn't even know how to find Polaris in the night sky.
- trenchMonkey, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12Could this explain why men are drawn to look down at women's breasts? Could that really be true "North"?
- ABadInAlbany, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10wouldn't work thanks to fluid in your cochlea overwhelming all other perception of direction at that point.
- Ndiggnation, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9My grilfriend, apparently, was born without this..
- Nougat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8They are; the magnetite is inside a bone, not a booger.
- Aikinai, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7@theredbicycle
I know exactly what you mean. I've always felt that too, and most people don't believe me until I show it to them. I used to think it was psychological until I did some (unscientific) tests. You can have someone in a dark room (to discount shadows over the eyelids) and if you slowly put a pencil (real wood/lead pencils work the best) up near the person's nose between their eyes, they will feel it. Different people feel it at different strengths. I always felt like it was really pulling toward that spot. You can do it to yourself too, it's just that then you can chalk it up to psychologically not wanting something between your eyes. I used to think it was just touching tiny hairs I couldn't see or something, but this might explain it. Anyway, my sense or direction is horrible, but I have this effect really strong, so I don't think mine works right anymore. - rhettnyedotorg, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7So *this* is why i've been staring at my computer for 12 years.
the magnetic field just feels right. - mantlepro, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9Sweet! Now all I need to do is read the man page... $>man knosecompass
- illt, on 11/06/2007, -1/+7No one remember the home improvement episode where wilson explains this to tim??
- SkeletaLlama, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I also can sense magnets and magnetic metals when they're near my nose. Nobody believes me either. I read articles about this nose magnet thing years ago but people think it's pseudo-science and I'm making it up.
I honestly don't think it helps me find magnetic north, especially not indoors, where sometimes my nose starts tingling around electronic equipment and wiring. It's fairly sensitive but I've never attempted to navigate by it, I wouldn't even know how to begin. Maybe its something you have to practice and experiment with. I don't normally pay attention to it. I think I'm going to start paying attention and see if the sensation does change based on my orientation to north. - loqqq, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Toucan Sam was right all along!
- AWBoy666, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6A longer article I read in popular science a few years ago pointed out that only men have this fragment in their faces. They cited several studies where disoriented men could find north but disoriented women couldn't.
- xtmno3, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7The way to test would be blindfolding people and spinning them around on a device and asking which direction they think they are facing.
Then, do the same thing, but with a really powerful magnet near them on some non-North direction and see how their answers vary. - Netmindstorm, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Actually, they had a sign for Target (the store) way back then: http://www.ordernatural.com/newsletter/images/petroglyph.jpg
- Chompy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Are you kidding? The idiots are the one breeding massive litters these days; smart people only have one or two kids, if any. The future of humanity isn't looking very bright right now.
- anodos, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@theredbcycle, I too have always had that sensation and always thought it was just psychological. But I remember when I was a kid telling other kids about this sensation. They made fun of me, so I allowed them to blindfold me and pass metal in front of my face (I was also curious if it was for real). Sure enough, I could sense whenever they placed a metal object near my face and between my eyes. They even tried to trick me several times, but they never succeeded. Even after that, I still figured it must be psychological. Maybe my subconscious was picking up on their giggling, or the movement of their hands, or whatever. Perhaps it's for real after all?
- t.toe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5my guess is that anyone can develop their sense of direction if they try. I know this because I used to have no sense of direction whatsoever. after a few years of driving like that it started to drive me nuts, so I consciously started paying attention to whether I was heading North, South, East, or West, and guess what? my sense of direction improved. drastically.
as far as a magnet in my nose, well, I've never noticed it before... but now I'm gonna try to start paying attention to it... if it's still functional, that is. - Jelfish, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3How about rather than moving the blind-folded person, you only move the magnet and ask people to guess where it is?
- JackyTreehorn, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5"Some people have no sense of direction"
We call these people "women" - rnelsonee, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4The posts above may be joke, but that's now how evolution works. First off, if we have small magnetometers, it's most likely a residual artifact of a once-functioning organ - so if anything, it's on it's way out. But chances are it's here to stay. A mutation (such as having the little compass disappear) only takes hold if the new mutations allow the mutant organism to live to sexual maturity and have offspring more likely than it's non-mutated friends/brothers. Because us humans are such social animals, we're not going to choose a mate based on whether or not they have this thing behind their nose, so until the "no magnet in the nose" mutation becomes a dominant gene, it's not going to go away.
Now, there are plenty of other things that have gone away. Things like the appendix - once used to filter out hard-to-digest items like tree bark, went away not because proto-humans thought the smaller-appendix dudes cuter, it's because having a large appendix required upkeep and energy for the body to take care of. That, coupled with the fact that the appendix is basically poisonous, and when they erupted, reduced the lifespan enough so that more and more smaller-appendix related humans reached sexual maturity than the others, and then passed on the gene. - ABadInAlbany, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@Nougat: you're telling me they hunted over a very limited range and never migrated? try again buddy. not until the dawn of agriculture, which was JUST beginning to take hold at that point, if even then. your comment is pure fallacy. who says anything about returning? you still need to get where you're going to begin with, and visual landscape features alone won't do the job.
- Nougat, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5@abadincrotch:
They didn't usually go very far either, and if they did, they'd just make it back whenever, if ever.
You don't need to carry a compass when your range is very short, or if your range is long, you don't care when you return. - Manguskahn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I wonder if some people have larger magnetite crystals than others and if the size of the crystal can explain why some people have very little sense of direction while others have excellent senses of direction.
- Jelfish, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Oh, and of course at the beginning of the test, you would orient the person first by turning on the field and telling that person where it is.
- wepeel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2That was the first thing that I thought of too. I, on the other hand, thought Wilson was the smartest man alive, and always thought about the writers researching all these offbeat topics to put into the show.
- StarManta, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3When you find God's address, let me know. I need to RMA my sex life.
- santiago1, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5 Who, the guy you have barbeques with?
- elguando, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Sadly that was the first thing that came to my mind when I read the headline. I had always thought that everything Wilson said was BS.
- oddmanout, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1i havent seen that in YEARS, and that was the first thing i thought of..... that might be like 10 years old or something... i feel like my most vivid memories are of what happened on tv.
- mbthompson, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I think I broke mine from picking at it.
- rnelsonee, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Yeah, to be honest, as long as you have a map and a compass to back yourself up in case of GPS/battery failure, who needs to find Polaris? I mean, it helps, sure, but I'd bet most people that camp don't know a) How to find Polars, b) can't find any constellation except Orion's belt, c) can't start a fire without matches, d) let alone with just sticks. I've been camping a lot (Eagle scout), and I've never even need to do any of these things, because I have a compass, map, and matches with me at all times when camping.
Edit: I agree than sense of direction can be learned. Just learn the basics - like which building is where, or which direction roads face, and you'll get the hang of it. Anyone can learn what direction they're facing if they look at a map beforehand and learn the basics. Knowing that the sun rises in the East, is South at noon (in the northern hemisphere), and is in the West at night also helps. - zionKing, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6r6KC3QbK4
- Netmindstorm, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2"Don't worry, we'll come back to get it--it's only a loaner"
- zombieman, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5And now for something completely different - a man with a tape recorder up his nose.
- Ogopogo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1As for me, I was born without the ability to spell check..
It's not that difficult to spell check , unless you hear it as Czech ? - notguiltiest, on 09/12/2008, -0/+1Assuming your girlfriend is menstruating, she loses iron every month, making this navigational tool much less dependable, and leaving her to develop landmarks for orientation.
Postmenopausal women regain this orientation. - burningpenguin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I was pretty sure this was a vestigial structure. I doubt humans have much use for it.
- ZenMojo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2This is old news. I learned this from Wilson on an episode of Home Improvement over 10 years ago to explain why men don't ask for directions.
(By the way, from my experience, this is pretty accurate. I can tell which direction is north just by thinking "up" and rotating around. After a while you get used to using it.) - bronstad, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@Aikini
that is called facial vision, and it is a well-studied phenomenon - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1what do those have to do with this supposed natural compass?
- rationalist, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2"Do Humans Have a Compass in their Nose?"
Sounds painful. Bad enough when little kids stuff peas up there... - blynder, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2There is a study, and I can't site it, but they made an interesting point about the growth of bacteria being affected by magnets. Could the Magnetite in our nose be a vestigial, or do we actually use it, I think that is the real question.
- tdp05, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I need to RMA mine. I can get turned around and can't tell you which direction I'm pointed.
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