OK, if you've got nothing else to do for one minute, let me mess with your head.

Below, you will see two circles composed of parallelograms. There's a dot in the middle of the image. Focus on the dot. Move your head in, then move it out.

Weird, no?

The circles seem to rotate.

(Of course, they don't really rotate; if you focus on a single parallelogram, you can move your head in and out all day and that sucker won't move at all.)

Something curious is going on.

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The other day I put two words into Google Search: "whale" and "tangle" and this list popped up. (Actually, it goes on and on, but here are the first five ...)

We live in a crowded world. We're the crowd, and everybody else, especially the bigger animals, keep bumping into us, which is kind of sad.

But not always.

A little further down, I noticed this entry, another, more promising whale/tangle tale ...

When I clicked, I found myself inside a video adventure (which sometimes reads like an ad for whale conservation, but no matter) from Micheal Fishback, who was in the Sea of Cortez off Mexico on Valentine's Day this year. He and his friends from The Great Whale Conservancy happened onto what looked like a dead humpback whale.

Turns out, it wasn't dead.

Not at all.

For those of you who wonder what the whale was "saying" to the folks on the boat, we at Radiolab (the science/adventure show I do with Jad Abumrad) have wondered the same thing. If you've got the time, here's a second whale tale, this one takes place off the coast of San Francisco. In it, we try to understand what whales are doing when they appear to be "thanking" human rescuers.

They're doing something. But we're not sure what.

There are two apartment buildings in my Manhattan neighborhood that share a block. They sit very close. One is about nine inches from the other. In the small vertical space between them, a horde of finches have built themselves nest upon nest upon nest rising for nine human floors. It's a finch skyscraper. In March and April you can see finches busily flying in and out of this vertical crack, bearing twigs, grasses and nest-building material. By my estimate, at roughly 12 nests per human floor, these birds have created a tower that's 108 nests high — more levels than the Empire State Building.

Finches can do this because they're small.

Now a person has decided to imitate a finch.

Etgar Keret, a writer from Israel, has commissioned what looks to be the narrowest house in the world. Like the finch skyscraper, it will be wedged between two buildings on Chlodna Street and Zelazna Street in Warsaw, Poland. At its widest point it's four feet across. At its narrowest, it's just 28 inches, that's the width of a front door. The bedroom is, by my count (I'm counting books at the head of the bed) 17 books wide: a trip from bed to toilet will require crawling down the mattress, over a chair, down a ladder and then sideways through the dining and kitchen area. Opening a refrigerator will require stepping into a different room, but hey, some people might find this charming.

Here's the space.

Here's the building-to-be.

According to Suzanne LaBarre, senior editor at the journal Co.Design:

When construction's finished in December, it'll be the thinnest house in Warsaw and possibly the whole world....[Polish Architect Jakub] Szczesny designed the house to be a work space and home for [Keret]. It'll also be a "studio for invited guests — young creators and intellectualists from all over the world." If, that is, they're willing to drop half their body weight to fit inside.

Kidding, kidding. In all seriousness, though, the house is a pretty remarkable feat of architecture. If everything goes according to plan, Szczesny will manage to squeeze in designated rooms for sleeping, eating, and working. The place will have off-grid plumbing inspired by boat sewage technology and electricity lifted from a neighbor. To save space, the entry stairs will fold up at the press of a button and become part of the first floor."

Here's what it looks like when the first floor is folded up from street level.

I'm not sure why Mr. Keret wants to live so narrowly. It might be a money thing.

He's certainly not following one of the basic rules of ecology, called the "Size/Abundance Rule", which says bigger animals live farther apart, smaller animals live closer together. Mr. Keret is hundreds (maybe thousands) of times bigger than a finch. His home territory should reflect that. Midsize mammals shouldn't live like midsize avians.

Plus, says editor Suzanne LaBarre, the place is not all that beautiful.

It's been compared to everything from a pregnancy test to a sanitary napkin. (Our vote is for "pregnancy test.") Our biggest concern, though, is that it's hardly got any windows. How's it going to..."become a significant platform for world intellectual exchange," if it feels like a sensory deprivation chamber? Won't Keret go insane? But maybe that's the point. It's not like he'd be the first artist to benefit from going [totally] crazy.

The building will be completed in December. Mr. Keret will move in sometime after that. His admirers will be watching, anxiously.

There should be a law that says food on a plate shouldn't move.

Especially when you're about to eat it.

But this food in the video below? It moves. Oh boy, does it move. And thereby hangs a tale.

(And before you watch, a warning: the squid you're about to see is dead. Completely, totally dead, like a steak...and yet...)

Let me say this one more time, the squid (head removed, tentacles left on) was killed, like a lobster, just before the meal was served. If you eat animals, this squid died the way cows, fish and birds die; to feed us. Nothing especially cruel in that. But being dead, how come it "danced" off the plate?

Blame the soy sauce.

Soy sauce, rich in salt, caused its muscle cells to fire. To get motion, add sauce.

Because this squid was just killed, its muscle cells were still intact and operational. A live squid moves it tentacles by sending an electrical command from its brain to its muscles. The commands say "contract" or "relax." But since this animal lost its head, its brain can't send signals. Salt acts as a substitute.

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We think great scientists know so much, but really, they know very little. "Science," said the physicist Richard Feynman, "is the belief in the ignorance of experts."

Even the most famous "experts," the Einsteins, the Newtons, who elegantly measured, tested and examined the universe, were mystified by what they saw. The things they discovered didn't fit together. Big things followed different rules than little things. Strange ghostly particles, careening and clashing randomly, somehow produced rainbows, galaxies and the shy gaze of a puppy. We can't explain it all. We aren't even close, but to explorers like Feynman, that's OK. That's the point:

Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick have produced a book-length cartoon biography of the American physicist Richard Feynman, who helped develop the atomic bomb, pioneered work in quantum mechanics and famously helped investigate the Challenger disaster in 1986. Feynman was also an eloquent science teacher, who often confessed to his audiences how hard it is for scientists to make sense of the world, because so often what scientists learn defies common sense.

You know this.

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It's hot. I know, I know.

But, have you ever wondered how much heat you can take?

232 years ago, three British gentlemen decided to find out.

They designed a room, sealed it off, and heated it to 211 degrees, that's one degree shy of water-boiling hot.

What would happen, they wondered, if they stepped in and stayed? Could they take 211 degrees? How about 212? How about higher?

At what point does a person start to boil? These were very daring gentlemen. And just to make it more interesting, they brought three other "subjects" into the room:

• A raw egg.
• A raw steak.
• A live dog.

Who or what boils first?

Bernd Heinrich, biologist and science writer, told me this totally true story, which doesn't turn out like you'd think.

Here's the tale, as told (a couple of summers ago) on Morning Edition.

So, to everyone's surprise, this "When Will I Boil?" experiment became a lesson in the Extraordinary Importance of Sweat.

Here's the same tale, commissioned for the radio-impaired among you, folks who prefer to see as well as listen. It comes from cartoonist/animator Lev Yilmaz.

He made it just for us.

It's a simple question, really, but a cunning one, because the answers are so embarrassingly, voluptuously personal. Alex Bellos thought it up. He's a writer, math enthusiast, and nut.

Here's what he wants: He wants to know your favorite number. Just that. Tell me your favorite, and tell me why, he says.

He's set up a website, www.favoritenumber.net and he's asked people to write in. So far he's had about 13,000 submissions. He wants more. So I'm pimping his site here, and while it's early in the running, Alex has already noticed that odd numbers are more popular than even numbers, prime numbers more popular than non-primes, birthdays are often favorites, but the real fun is how people fantasize.

For example, why choose "37?"

Because, says a 37-liker, "It looks mysterious, like a cloaked villain from a silent movie." Really?

Or how about "17?" One person chose 17 because ...

It just seems like a colossal misfit. Many numbers, even some prime numbers, if they are not even, they still feel "round." Not 17, though. It's awkward and slightly difficult to deal with.

Not everybody is this peculiar. The most common reason to have a favorite number is it's the day you were born, especially if you were born on the 3^rd, the 5^th, the 9^th, the 13^th. "If you were born, like me, on the 22^nd," Alex says, "you are unlikely to choose your birthday as your favorite number." He has yet to find anyone who chose 30, even if they were born on the 30^th. "It just doesn't happen," he says. He doesn't know why.

Another mystery: Not many people like 1 or 10.

But the deep surprise, he says, is how passionate people are. "It's looking at numbers in a totally different way. You learn mathematical things, you learn human things, sometimes you want to laugh, sometimes you want to cry."

Here's one submission, from a guy who chose "6":

It's a bit of an underdog — some think it's evil (666), when it's only just a number; it's halfway to a dozen (and six of one), which makes it an average amount; the rather boring shape of a cube has six sides; it's stuck between 5 (a nice definite number — of fingers, of golden rings, of basketball players) and lucky number 7 (a religious number; God rested on the 7th day ... the Seven Lucky Gods of Japanese mythology). All these reasons make 6 a bit of an underdog.

He's not done:

I like how it looks. I also enjoy the more uncommon letters, so the 'x' within the simplicity of 'six' makes it sound enigmatic (although I also love how it sounds in Spanish: 'seis'). Maybe the Latin prefix 'sex' has something to do with it, although I've liked the number since I was way too young ... quite possibly since I was six. Additionally, for unexplained and coincidental reasons — or perhaps because it is my favorite number, and thus it has a subconscious edge — some of the best songs on many of my favorite albums happen to be the sixth track. Oh, and there's Six Degrees to Kevin Bacon. That's kinda cool.

Who's Winning?

Though it's early in the running, right now, "7" is leading the race to be the World's Favorite Number. And right behind 7 are 3, 11, and 13. All primes. Why this primacy of primes? Alex, going a little mystical, says these numbers, being indivisible, feel "strong and kind of trustworthy."

But 7 seems to have a special glow; 7 leads across religious, national, gender, even educational lines, and double-7s are common too. Then there's the woman who likes "7.07":

This number is 10/root(2). I had been doing a lot of trig homework for a calculus class I was taking in undergrad and this number appears a lot. At the time I was sort of weirded out by the fact that I kept waking up at 7:07 am instead of 7:30, when my alarm was set for.

Anyway, one Saturday I went to my local art supply story and bought some paintbrushes. To my surprise the total came to $7.07, and I sort of blurted out, "Oh, that's 10 over root two again," to the very cute cashier, for whom I had a rather pathetic crush, and who I was constantly embarrassing myself in front of. After explaining myself, he was duly impressed and began embarrassing himself in front of me whenever I came to the store. And from that point on I realized there's a brand of arty guys that like nerdy girls, and this still makes me happy some 15 years later.

Alex says so far his respondents are fallen into two broad categories, folks who like numbers for their mathematical qualities, divisibility, indivisibility, roots, etc. and those who slip into anthropomorphized fantasies. Either way, he notices, "as humans, we impose patterns when there aren't any, or give human characteristics when there aren't any." If there are differences between genders, nationalities, ages, it's too early to say. He needs more data.

So, if you want to help him out, here, one more time, is his address: www.favoritenumber.net. Notice it's not an "org" or a "com," it's a "net."

And, by the way, passionate devotion to a number is not required. A mild, puzzled attraction is ok. Like this guy who chose "37":

More recently I've also taken a liking in — what appears to me and many others — as the oddest number: 37. There just seems to be nothing you can divide it by or much you can do with it.

Me? I'm done pimping. I'm off to cuddle with one of my favorites. Not a prime, but it has this soft, relaxing, sleepiness to it, something to snooze with, no?

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Alex Bellos' book on adventures in mathematics is called Here's Looking at Euclid, (Simon & Schuster, 2010).

Before we argue, let's agree: When you are trying to say something important, words matter.

They matter a lot. Here, because it's so deftly done, is a video reminder:

OK, now that you've been softened up by an ad agency, Purplefeather, in Britain, we're ready for the counter-punch.

Here's a question. It began an argument between two poets, so it's about words, about whether using words helps our planet or hurts.

After all, we all have eyes, hands, tongues and noses. We don't have to talk about things, we can breathe the world in, get dirty with it, attach with our senses. Even poets know that words aren't always necessary.

But what if they hurt?

The two poets were at a conference called "Poetry and the Earth."

"I can't remember which of us spoke first," recalled one of them, Mark Doty, in his new book, The Art of Description, "but here's the substance of our positions: Yusef [Komunyakaa, a poet from Louisiana] said that language comes between us and things, and that as soon as we had NAMES for what we saw, we experienced a certain degree of removal from the world."

When you give something a name, the argument went, you can stand back and address it, talk about it, so you detach ... make it 'other,' not you. Then later, if you hurt that thing, poison it, or take away its habitat, what's happening is no longer happening to you. It's happening over there, to 'it;' so you have the illusion of distance, safety.

What Yusef was saying is "If we could remove ourselves from kinship through the agency of language, then we could wreak havoc upon the world without feeling that we harmed ourselves."

Here's Mark argument:

"I said that the more we can name what we're seeing, the more language we have for it, the less likely we are to destroy it. If you look at the field beside the road and you see merely the generic "meadow," you're less likely to care if it's bulldozed for a strip mall than if you know that those tall, flat-leaved spires are milkweed, upon which the monarchs have flowed two thousand miles to feed ... [or if you can give names to all the wild, stalky things poking the air ...] sailor's breeches and purslane, lamb's quarter, or the big umbrels of wild carrot feeding the small multitudes ... Isn't the world larger and more valuable, if you know what an umbrel is? Thus, in Eden, paradise became a more intricate place, artfully arrayed, and its loss was felt all the more sharply."

Obviously both sides are right. Words divide us. Words attach us. But if I had to choose, I'd tilt word-wise, I think. The video says it nicely. But this is nicer. This comes from a poet, A.R. Ammons. It's winter, and he's appreciating blue jays ...

Winter Scene

There is now not a single

leaf on the cherry tree:

except when the jay

plummets in, lights, and

in pure clarity, squalls:

then every branch

quivers and

breaks out in blue leaves.

Case closed.

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Mark Doty and Yusef Komunyakaa's debate at the Poetry and the Earth gathering in the 1990's was described by Mark Doty in his recent book The Art of Description, World into World (Graywolf Press, 2010); the video from Purplefeather was scored by Giles Lamb and filmed by redsnappa; A.R. Ammon's poem, Winter Scene, has been reprinted from COLLECTED POEMS: 1951-1971 by A. R. Ammons, Copyright (c) 1972, used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Some of you are going to look at this video — the story of a young guy named Dave (that's Dave in the picture just above) who's on his way home to an apartment where his stove, lights, vacuum cleaner, microwave and fireplace are feverishly anticipating his return, and you're going to say, "Ahhhhh, let me be Dave. If only I could have a place wired like his."

Others of you are going to want to take a sledgehammer to every lamp, toaster, vacuum cleaner and microchip in the place — and perhaps to Dave.

I don't know which side of the Dream Technology Divide you are on, but trust me, this is a polarizing video.

Take a look. It's short. Three minutes. Then we'll talk.

Spoiler Alert! If you haven't watched the video yet, don't ruin it for yourself. Don't read beyond this point. Because in the next paragraph I'm going to say what I think and I don't want you to be contaminated by one guy's opinion, even if it's my own and this is my blog.

OK.

What is wrong with this video?

Aside from Dave's haircut, his standing order to "block" his girlfriend Sophia (Shall we "unblock" Sophia? asks his smarmy computer), and his preference for godawful-looking Chinese food. Anything else?

Well, yes.

There is something about Dave's apartment that makes my skin crawl.

Which is weird, because this is an ad. It comes from Sweden's telecommunications giant Ericsson (makers of "Bluetooth"), and this is their version of a near future where machines, like Stepford wives, are there to help you, protect you, soothe you, feed you.

And yet ... there is something so "off" about this bachelor paradise.

For one thing, the bachelor. Dave is not cool. He's cold.

He, the only living creature in the place, is detached, self-satisfied and strangely unaware that he's being coddled.

The appliances, on the other hand, are the warm ones. Maybe not as warm as the fabulous Rosie (Rosie, you may remember, is the robot maid from The Jetsons who'd been rescued from a junk pile, so she had a back story, a reason to be fierce and loyal), but in Rosie's spirit, Dave's machines are emotionally alive, crazy for Dave, and vulnerable. Dave is the robot.

That's not only creepy. It's a strange way to celebrate technology.

As the folks at Ericsson must know, machines don't feel. People feel. This ad flips the truth, and I'm wondering why.

Dave Says Yes To TV, No To Sophia

Well, here's a clue: Dave's decision to spend the night with his machines instead of a person (the willowy Sophia). Do the folks at Ericsson want us to choose their products (called "Friends" on his computer screen) over flesh and blood companions? Is that what this ad is advertising?

Machines won't laugh or flirt or challenge Dave. "The real demands of friendship, of intimacy, are complicated. They're hard," says MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle. Choosing TV over Sophia is what lots of young folks do these days, Turkle says. They choose technology to hide from real (and difficult) social intercourse.

So, summing up, you know what's wrong with this ad?

It's wrong about machines.

It's wrong about people.

It's wrong about values.

It's wrong about men's hair.

That's one man's opinion.

You?

Send me your thoughts.

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Sherry Turkle's new book on technology and alienation is called Alone Together (Basic Books, 2011). he appears — along with a host of others — on Radiolab's recent show about human/machine confusions.