Truth and Gorillas

Many years ago, there was a story in the local paper in Utah about a shootout at a motel.  Some gunman had burst in and started shooting.  At least one person was killed before he left.  The police were happy that an eyewitness survived.  When the door had burst open, she had taken a dive behind the bed, and escaped the shooting.  

Now put yourself in the position of the "eye witness".  I know that if I had been that woman, I wouldn't have been able to tell the police anything.  The door burst open and shooting started and now I know what the carpet behind the bed looks like.  

Sometimes eye witnesses are really good.  Like when Richard's mom Bernice was held at gun point.  She assessed the height of the gunman by standing by him and judging from her height.  She also got a good look at the gun because she knew the police would ask about that.  Ever pragmatic, she also handed over all the drugs that were about to expire so she wouldn't have to do the paperwork on them later to send them back to the company.  Nobody got shot and there was no paperwork later.  It was a win win situation.

When my son was still in high school, I chaperoned a field trip to San Francisco. (I know... what was I thinking?)  We went to the Exploritorium and they had a display about vision and perception.  My cluster of students and I went up to a television that had a video running.  The instructions were that, even if the film had been spliced, you should count how many times a basketball that they were dribbling actually touched the floor.  So my group and I were determined to find the correct answer.  We knew that there were going to be abnormalities in the film since it was spliced, so we had to be very careful to actually see when the bounces occurred.  We were really concentrating on what was happening, so it seemed odd to us that people were looking over our shoulders and giggling at us.  We did count all the bounces.  What we had failed to notice was the guy in the gorilla suit who kept walking in and out of the picture.  Yes, if I'm busy counting, I do not see the guy in the gorilla suit.  People who weren't counting and only giggling, couldn't really believe that none of us had noticed the gorilla.  If police had interrogated us before the gigglers explained, I'm pretty sure that we all could've testified that there was no gorilla on the scene.  Would we have been telling the truth?  

In Hebrew the word for "truth" is "emet".  In Hebrew it is spelled aleph, mem, tav.  Aleph is the first letter of the alephbet, mem is the middle letter and tav is the final letter.  Because all truth is contained within the letters of the alephbet.  But apparently so are gorillas.