DAVID ADAMS writes about the odder side of life…
• An image of Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison wearing two (clean) left shoes went viral on the internet this week in a photo-shopped mistake which lead the PM to release a picture of what his real shoes looked like. The mistake apparently occurred when someone at the Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet thought the shoes Morrison had chosen to wear for a picture with his family looked a bit scruffy and decided to replace them with clean ones. But they accidentally used two left shoes in an error quickly picked up by eagle-eyed web users. The image, which had been posted on the PM’s website, was soon replaced with the original. Morrison, meanwhile, laughed off the incident, tweeting that next time they intend to photoshop an image of him, he’d rather they “focus on the hair (lack thereof), not the feet!” along with an image of the real shoes he wore for the picture.
• There’s a fight brewing over which street is the world’s steepest. While the title has long been awarded to Baldwin Street in the New Zealand city of Dunedin (named by Guinness World Records as the steepest street with a 1:3 gradient), residents of the northern Welsh town of Harlech are reportedly challenging the claim, saying that the street named Pen Ffordd Llech is one degree steeper than Baldwin Street having a gradient of 36 per cent to Baldwin’s 35 per cent. Measurements are now reportedly being taken to be submitted to Guinness who are expected to hand down a decision later this month. The impact will be felt in Dunedin if Baldwin Street is downgraded – the street’s fame draws thousands of tourists each year (although some residents won’t apparently miss the influx!) – and, a result, there have been some tongue-in-cheek suggestions about how Baldwin Street could retain the title, including resurfacing it with an even steeper gradient.
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• Mona Lisa’s eyes do not follow you when you move about the room. That’s reportedly the finding of new research into what’s known as the ‘Mona Lisa effect’ – the idea that the eyes of a painting are following us. The German-based researchers have explained that the effect is generally caused when the subject of an image casts their gaze directly back at the camera or is portrayed appearing to do so, a phenomena which leads to viewers to feel as though the eyes of the subject are tracking them. But remarkably the researchers said that while the effect is “undeniable and demonstrable”, it isn’t the case with the Mona Lisa. “[W]ith the Mona Lisa, of all paintings, we didn’t get this impression,” said the study’s co-author Sebastian Loth. Might be time for a new name.
