Face Blindness

Or Prosopagnosia, as it is identified medically.

I've discussed it before and I understand that it is difficult to imagine for those who do not have the problem I do.

60 minutes ran a story on the subject on Sunday.  I missed it because the NCAA playoffs must have run overtime so my DVR did not record the full 60 minutes show.

Happily the clips of the show are online.  And I link to them below.  Since I'm asking you to watch them to understand my issue, let me first differentiate me from the extreme examples in the clips.

1.  If I have met someone only once and spent a relatively small amount of time with them, I will recognize them again later, if at all, by their hair, their body shape, their size, facial hair, companion, context or if they put it together for me.  If someone has no features my brain finds to be remarkable (not a value judgment!) then I won't recognize them.  I have actually been told, upon introducing myself to someone, "Yes, we've met like five times."  My strategy has been to go ahead and introduce myself to people, and let them tell me we've met...then "remember".  As Oliver Sacks says in the video...it is also helpful to smile and be kind to everybody.

2.  Occasionally under the conditions above I will meet someone and be able to recognize them later.  If I am truly recognizing the face it is because the face has something that stands out about it.  WC  Fields' nose, for instance...although to be fair it is much, much easier for me to recognize wearing a hat than in the other photo that for some reason I feel looks like Orson Welles.

After repeated exposure - especially meaningful interaction - or just over a lot of time I begin to have a memory of the face (unlike the four people featured in 60 minutes).  Thus I can recognize Tom Cruise.  My deficiency is only a fraction of those featured in the story.  Once I "have" the face it tends to stay with me.

3. Context is ridiculously important.  Meeting someone at church then seeing them with no cues at the grocery store I will probably fail to be aware I've ever seen them before.

4.  I previously blamed myself for "not caring" about other people, else I would recognize them, right?

5.  If you do watch both videos and you want to know the part on the video closest to what my confusion is, in the second video they describe a strategy of hair color and face shape - showing a picture of a brunette aside one of a blonde.  Then the replace the blonde's picture with another brunette.  With the two brunettes side by side, my brain yells "impossible".  This is why I have problems watching movies if it contains what I consider to be similar looking people (you probably wouldn't think so, but I do) whose faces are new to me.  I cannot keep up which character is which.

OK - Here is part one.  Here is part two.  I'm happy to answer questions if you have any.  Oh - I took the test and did well...because I have been habituated to most of those faces.  But - today I read a story about the wife of the Syrian Dictator.  I saw a photo of her.  I wouldn't recognize her if we shared an elevator today.

How??

There's a town in Georgia named Fitzgerald? How did I not know this?

Have a Look

I am looking for constructive, useful criticism of the new Right Brainworks website.

Please have a look and let me know.

Thanks!

Last Laugh

Peter Bergman, Firesign Theater founder, dead at 72.

wicked excitement

Well.......here's the news.....Sylvia is going to be a greatgrandmother!!!! At her tender age, that's what happens when you get married at 17. Her oldest grandson, Paul, and his wife Marthita are expecting in the fall. And her oldest granddaughter, Patrice, Paul's sister.....has been excepted to a bunch of PHD programs, including UMass Amherst. Also...THE Ohio State University. We're proud!!! UMass is close....and since she has lived in Arizona, far away, we're rooting for UMass.

For iPhone (and maybe other iThings) Users

This is a very cool link to allow you to build a signature for your iPhone email without having to jailbreak your iPhone.  It can include your logo, and buttons to directly connect to your Linked in Account, Facebook, etc.

Thank me later...

Two Years...

Thank you for remembering, Deb!

CONGRATS!!!!!

Happy 2nd Soberversary to Tim!!!!!!!!!!!!

Was This Frank's Inspiration?

To be one with the road?

Pettily Childish

In my mind that is what PC stands for.  And while I hoped we were getting past this stage of uncalled for hypersensitivity, I find this indicator we are not.

University of North Dakota teams risk forfeiting any post-season games if their athletes, cheerleaders or band wear or display the school's Fighting Sioux nickname and American Indian head logo, an NCAA official said Wednesday.

...the university "must forfeit competition" if "it has not adhered to this requirement" in any post-season games that UND teams have been invited to play in.

The NCAA has long said the nickname and logo are hostile to American Indians...mention of forfeiting games is a new development.

 The mascot "Fighting Sioux" is hostile to American Indians.  Seriously?  How about a broader view?  Pettily Childish is hostile to the entire notion of free speech.  Seriously.

I hardly know where to begin.  Should I start with the notion that the NCAA's business is athletics, not constitutional law?  No?  Let's step beyond that then to the NCAA's composition of post-secondary education institutions where, once upon a time, enlightened discussion on such fundamental matters as 1st amendment rights was in vigorous exercise.

The right to free speech was of such import to our founding citizens that ratification of the constitution was contingent upon the inclusion of the Bill of Rights, in which free speech holds the premier position.  Why  have a  1st Amendment if an unelected NCAA executive VP can simply decide that something is hostile and the athletes' prowess in competition is irrelevant in, well, an athletic competition?

Hostile?  Hostility, as is beauty, talent, and worth, is decidedly in the eye of the beholder.  Let's grant for the sake of argument that the logos and monikers may be objectionable to some.  Is this grounds for skilled athletes, whose seemingly principal fault is to attend a given university, to forfeit games in lieu of kissing the rings of the Pettily Childish?

Might it be that the NCAA's unilateral action insisting on forfeit is regarded as hostile by the athletes of the University of North Dakota?  Ya think?

As an American I find it hostile that Jeremiah Wright rails about America being "founded on racism", that he declares we "do terrorism to others" and he invites God to damn America.  But as an American I comprehend the fact he is allowed to say it, protected by the first amendment.

As an American I find it hostile that the Westboroo Baptist idiots rudely and insensitively insert themselves into the most poignant moments of the lives of our fallen servicemembers' families.  But the hostility I perceive is nothing more than something I have to live with, get over, or seek remedy to through the justice system.  It is not something some Pettily Childish body is going to, or should, fix for me.  Homage, my friends, to the first amendment.

Might NY taxpayers of a certain conscience find that New York libraries regard the right to surf hard core porn sites on library computers to be "hostile"?  Highly likely.  Is that right exercised?  Yes, and theoretically protected by the first amendment.

I don't follow college basketball until the number of teams in March Madness has been reduced to a single digit.  I have no idea what teams are viable this year.  But if there is a chance that Notre Dame gets a tournament bid is the NCAA going to determine on my behalf that The Fighting Irish nickname is hostile to those, such as myself, of proud Irish heritage?

I doubt it, for Pettily Childish seems not to extend to white Europeans.

Nor should it. Pettily Childish is an infringement of imagined ownership over common sense and free expression.  In all of history no language has ever become more precise by reducing its vocabulary. Yet the Pettily Childish seek to "enhance" our culture by eliminating elements of it.   And this is a game of endless escalation.  Since Pettily Childish is a function of one's heritage and sympathies there can be no single satisfying rule of application; each offended group asserts its ownership in different ways and to differing extents.  The game is rigged for tit-for-tat reprisal and resultant up-the-ante antics from the next perceived slight.

So we will all just let it pass by unnoted that the Fighting Irish logo is a an amazing assemblage of stereotypes: a wee, ill-humored, shamrock-wearing, green-clad, bare knuckled white guy sporting a thin jawline beard and looking for a fight.  Is this logo representative of me?  Not especially.  But I think I am in a healthier frame of mind by being amused at my heritage and proud for being selected.  (No one ever named their basketball team the Fighting Swiss.  Should the Swiss be offended?)  

The NCAA should stick to athletics, and get out of the business of threatening talented athletes on behalf of  the Pettily Childish.

For the record....

Timothy Patrick

A Proper Entertainer

Gee I Love the Internet

I wrote below about finding terrific music via iTunes radio.

The story just keeps improving for me.  See, I think somehow I was time-ported from an earlier era.  I am completely captivated by the so-called standards, the music of the orchestras and singers of the 40s and 50s and early 60s.

I found a station an online station that scratches that itch.  It is one of the streaming stations available through TuneIn.  This particular station is known as The Penthouse, Jazz from New York, NY.


TuneIn has an iPhone app, by the way.  These music finds are good for me, is it weans me from my addiction to news sources on the internet.  I'd rather listen to Ella than to the bickering in DC.  Always.

Happy listening.  Please share what you find.

Hey Janet!

A Head Start?

I've seen this story on two different news outlets today.

As Congress pays lip service to Americans seeking tax reforms, an underrepresented constituency has a hairy proposition -- getting lawmakers to approve a $250 tax refund for mustached American

Now, I could be just overly cynical, but has nobody else noted the date of their proposed "Million Moustache March"?

Makeover

In one of my online courses we had to write discussion points about Anorexia, Bulimia and what we feel contributes to the existence of these disorders.

One guy posted this link to a minute and a half makeover.  I think he made his point!

iTunes Radio

Sometimes I don't see what is directly in front of me.  iTunes radio, for instance.

I've been playing around with it recently.  If you don't know where it is, open iTunes on your computer.  On the left under "Library" there is a radio tower icon.

There are innumerable streaming radio stations there.

I found one that I think Frank will like...it is one listed at the bottom of the picture.  Note that for some reason it shows up under the Ambient genre.

Let me know if anyone else finds good streams.  Way too many to sift through all by myself.