Good point! Though I think nowadays that myth is mostly gone. All the people on the red ones only see yellow ones in the rear view. The yellows can see no one behind, and the reds up ahead quickly disappear!
On the theme of Casablanca: NEAR THE ENTRANCE TO A 1940’s AIRFIELD DEPARTURE SHED. NIGHT. RICK: ... and you used to drink... no... it’s gone... my mind’s a blank... Anyway, if you don’t get on that train you’ll regret it... ILSA: Train? RICK: Beg pardon, plane... if you don’t get on that plane... I’ll regret it... I mean, you’ll regret it... maybe not today... maybe not yesterday... but one weekend fifty years from now you’ll see that the troubles of three... cartoon Little People... chasing each other round and round... in the middle of the table... well, apparently they’ve gone now... don’t amount to a hill of apples in this... ILSA: I thought it was ‘beans’? RICK: ... what’s bigger: a hill of apples or a hill of beans? ILSA : Apples weigh more. RICK: Not when the beans are in tins! ILSA : I knew a man dropped a tin of artichokes and a bag of apples off the upper observation level of the Eiffel Tower, and which do you think hit the ground first? RICK: They hit the ground at the same time. ILSA : Wrong, the apples landed first. The artichokes hit a tourist peering over the edge of the lower observation level... The artichokes and the tourist hit the ground at the same time though... They put safety nets up after that. Perhaps you’d like to compare our feelings for each other to a hill of tourists?... They could be on that train you’re so keen on... Or did you have some other point? RICK: The point is: we’ll always have Doris! We didn’t have, but... Okay, I’ll always have Doris... ILSA : Then I shall have Paris! You’ll have your love and I’ll have the Louvre. I’ll drink Américaine coffee in the café, and in that palace of fine art I’ll gaze breathless on Venus... then go to Pigalle where I’ll find a big peen... RICK: Pinot Noir! That was your drink! Remember the bar in Marrakesh? ILSA : ‘The Bunch of Grapes’? I hear it’s a Macdonald’s now! RICK: ... but they don’t put ketchup on their fries, they use Anusol... You know how stodgy that stuff is! ILSA : ... I thought that was mayo. RICK: ... You’ll miss your flight. ILSA : ... I don’t suppose it has an in-flight movie... RICK: Yes, it does, actually. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in ‘Batman Knocks One Out’... I wish I was going with you – Sam told me of this little place in Mexico where they do wonderful tea; where the song ends and the story begins... ILSA : ... It sounds really yar. ILSA KISSES RICK ON THE CHEEK, THEN PICKS UP HER CASE AND HEADS OFF FOR THE AIRPLANE. RENAULT: That was a very noble thing, Rick. RICK: Yes, it was a gas, wasn’t it? RENAULT: You know, I’m not sure there’s room in this two horse town for both of us. That’s why I’m no longer a Citroen. RICK: Louie? Louie, me gotta go now. Me sail across the sea. RENAULT: I happen to know where four tonnes of finest Moroccan Hashish is just begging to be relocated. RICK: Louie, this could be the start of a beautiful friendship. RENAULT: True love? It’s in the stars, Rick. You know how to see the stars, don’t you, Rick? You just put your lips together and don’t bogart that joint. The British pass the port. RICK: Da, the Russian pass the port! Well, it makes me laugh.
What I have and continue to notice is how the Malverns look reasonably close, but in my photos they're pretty distant. And yesterday I was looking in that direction and saw what I presumed was a bird - I thought a buzzard, which are a common sight over Cheltenham; but could have been a seagull or even a pigeon - perched on a lightning conductor on a church possibly a mile away. And I thought I should barely be able to see it. Despite my being long-sighted. And it comes to me we foreshorten. What in cameras leaves the near ground out of focus. Which, I suppose, we can do because we only focus on a tiny, central area. And scan back and forth. And the brain fills in missing, or presumably temporarily unfocused, detail. And if you have a camera show the same amount of detail, it looks weird, so you can't really reproduce a panorama as we see it. This is much as you said, but I was still thinking of it in astronomical terms. Ironically this was pretty much dealt with in the PBS Nova documentary I cited. I must be getting old and stupid. I must be getting old.
Saccades. Oddly, I learned about this neuro-ophthalmological phenomenon at the California Superbike School. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccade
Inattentional blindness - even more oddly the brain can also completely miss detail which, when pointed out in a second viewing, is blindingly (sic) obvious. There is a famous experiment which demonstrates this and, from what I recall, it was used in a criminal case to show how it's possible for witnesses to not see everything that actually occurred. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inattentional_blindness
