Daniel Kish is amazing =) I think they've done scans and part of his visual cortex is rewired to interpret his echolocation (if I'm remembering the TV I saw a story about him in correctly). Watching him navigate a maze or ride his bike is so cool.
I know Echolocation has been done a in conjunction with The Eyes Have It (ML's
Blind (Super)Man's Bluff off the top of my head though I'm pretty sure there's more) and Nan used it in the Dagger series'
Blind Man's Bluff... and I never realized how close those titles were before... But, I'm playing with a way to try and explain the dratted X-Ray vision... I'm thinking it could be a combination of tricks Clark is using subconsciously in sync without realizing it and he just thought it was a new ability... the plan so far is a combination echolocation, seeing in different wavelengths (problem here is the *source* of the light more so than his ability to see it, which is why I have problems with the X-Ray idea in the first place... no X-Ray source), and some subconscious 'borrowing' of other people's eyes telepathically... not all hammered out yet though.
I have to admit the idea for the spinning games came more from the Double Dare and Wild and Crazy Kids shows I used to watch as a kid, Virginia... or rather my brother used to love to watch while I was doing homework.
Speaking of Nickelodeon, Lynn, I'm not sure about my brother and dizziness but he does seem to have a great sense of balance if not better proprioception than I do... I will never forget the time he decided to play Guts by jumping off an 2-3 ft high brick ledge off the back of the house... in roller blades. (I broke my arm doing the same thing *not* on skates a year or two before... though in my defense it was because my shoe caught on an elevated sprinkler head, heh, green stick fracture and broken sprinkler... >.> Ah good old Keds.) He skis and skates great too. But then, that sense of self is balanced by a complete lack of spacial awareness for anything not a part of his body... you have to really watch him when he's carrying his guitar or any bag/luggage, he *will* bang it into the doorway, wall, car, you...
The *only* time I can remember him using the word dizzy is the one time he got tipsy. (He hated *that* so much he won't touch alcohol at all now.) But it's hard to know if it's that he doesn't feel or if he just doesn't ever do things that would make him dizzy. He does not seem prone to motion sickness like I am either, heh. My thoughts for Clark is that he has a greater decree of sensory control that we do. When he hears the fluid in his semicircular canals moving erratically (that was the sloshing) he is able to block out that equilibrioception feedback and instead focus on other senses. It might be interesting to play with that thought if someone (Lois?) pushes him while he's doing it, would he be able to keep his balance? He could even have something like a Statocyst (a balance detecting organ in marine invertebrates or a gravity detecting system in plants, though these are more just up/down orientation than what we have) as a backup system...
For the mine incident, I was more thinking a group of kids going off and exploring on their own... I can remember exploring the pasture around my uncle's place as a kid with my cousins. We of course had to go poke around the cave entrances that littler the limestone out there. We would toss things down them and try and head them land (none of them are big enough for a kid to fit down). That was actually my original thought: an actual cave, but I couldn't verify that that exists in the area of Kansas Dandello so helpfully maps on her website... but I could verify coal mines! The other advantage of a group of 10 year olds exploring is Clark doesn't have to be as careful and can more easily assume leadership once they were trapped...
As for Martha and Jonathon, that conflict was supposed to be the focal point of Celebrate, but I think I was too rushed writing it up.
Wow that ended up long...
