Just stumbled upon an article written last year about the topic of the time delay between occurrence and perception. I'd heard of it before but this is a pretty interesting read. A reference to The Road makes it that much sweeter.
<blockquote><p><em>When light strikes your eyes, it takes some hundreds of milliseconds before you become conscious of the event. As a consequence, you are always living in the past. This strange fact of our existence is well known is neuroscience, but there’s an interesting, underappreciated consequence: you may not ever become aware of the thing that kills you.
Cormac McCarthy addresses this point in his post-apocalyptic novel The Road, in a scene in which the main character has his pistol leveled on a miscreant. The malefactor challenges: “you won't shoot....they [my companions] will hear the shot.�
The protagonist replies, “Yes they will. But you won’t.�
“How do you figure that?�
“Because the bullet travels faster than sound. It will be in your brain before you can hear it. To hear it you will need a frontal lobe and things with names like colliculus and temporal gyrus and you won't have them anymore. They’ll just be soup.�</em></p></blockquote>The article continues here.
Spotted @ Sentient Developments
