Because the Giants game has been delayed due to rain, they put some science & sports thing on. They are talking about distractions. First they had a basketball player shoot some free throws with no distractions. He got 9/10. Then they had “visual distractions” (but with a lot of noise) and he didn’t do as well. Now they are doing the “ear attack” which, I guess, will be even noisier than the visual ones. I’m guessing that will be the worst.

But what I thought, right after the “proved” that the visual distractions were bad, was about the order. What if they go back to no distractions now? Could it also be that the guy is just tiring? Would he still nail 9/10? I wonder if they should do the experiment over a number of days, changing the order each time.

I found the experiment interesting because we have to deal with distractions in the music world too. not like crowd noise, of course, but when we are working with the backdrop of silence even a small noise is heard and can be found distracting. The thing is, we just have to deal.

I do remember when a fellow oboist was playing an outdoor concert and I heard this, “Oh no!” or some sort of comment from my side, and looked over at the oboist and a fly was climbing up her face.

Now that is distracting! And icky too.

And yes, the audio distractions were the worst. But they were also last. He’d already tossed the ball 20 times.

So let’s see … we have low Bb attacks … they run this experiment on US … would we be tired by that 21st low Bb?

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I just don’t get it. I’m no scientist! 🙂

(And give me back my Giants game!)