I heart stroop bumper sticker

The Stroop effect is the notorious psychophysics observation that the reading comprehension of colour words gets discombobulated if the colour of the word contradicts the text. We can simulate the effect using fonts. Behold: bold. italics. N'est ce pas? Why should you love the Stroop effect? Well, for one it was used to ferret out spies. The idea was the following: have a senator, coworker, flatmate, neighbour, or spouse state the colour of each entry in a list of improperly-coloured words, the words being written an a suspect language like Russian or Eskimo. If they complete the task without hesitation or difficulty, all is well. However, if their puzzler gets discombobulated it is a indication that they secretly grok the given foreign language. Ergo: spy. Believe it our not, there was a time when these sort of parlour games were all that stood between us and thermonuclear annihilation. I heart stroop, with colour-inverted text and clip art heart.