Incorrect Pleasures

Lili's next thought for the day

2012-01-29T06:41:00.000-08:00

That letter, that letter, I want to know what is written in that letter! One copy will be in the custody of a stern librarian for decades into the future. Where is the other copy?

Lili's thought for the day

2012-01-29T06:33:00.000-08:00

There are synaesthetes out there who want to know exactly how you non-synaesthetes manage to think without the sensory aids. Please explain.

Lili's thought for the day

2012-01-26T20:45:00.001-08:00

Julia Gillard's right shoe is more in touch with the people than it's owner.

'Julia Gillard Shoe' for sale on eBay
Stephanie Gardiner
Sydney Morning Herald.January 27, 2012
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/julia-gillard-shoe-for-sale-on-ebay-20120127-1qkyr.html#ixzz1kdAOZ3LQ

If I had the spare time....

2012-01-26T19:42:00.000-08:00

I'd be finishing and publishing my list of scientific and academic publications in which Daniel Tammet is mentioned or discussed. This list has a lot in common with other stuff I've published already. In most items in my list Tammet is discussed in an uncritical way, which is my point - that a story that is not the complete truth has become a part of the world's scientific literature, and that's a great shame, and this piece of stupidity that makes a joke of science is a lesson that everyone should try to learn from.

Fascinating documentary about the behaviour of a little girl

2012-01-26T06:51:00.000-08:00

I was entranced and fascinated while recently viewing the British documentary Can't Sleep Kid in full for the first time on the ABC. It was a repeat, but I never saw the whole thing when it was first broadcast. This documentary follows the search for a diagnosis or an explanation by the parents of an adorable little British girl named Jessica, who has had a disturbed sleep pattern since very early in her life. Contrary to what it says in one summary of this doco, the doco is not "a fascinating look at sleep disorders in children", as the doco focuses on one child patient (Jessica) of the Evelina Children’s Hospital paediatric Sleep Disorder Unit in the UK, and it turns out that she doesn't actually have a sleep disorder, but something which I find much more fascinating and amazing.

I urge the many readers of this blog who are interested in the tragic life story of the American girl Jani Schofield to take a look at this documentary, and maybe consider a couple of ideas while viewing it:
- how many similarities and differences can you see between the two cases of Jessica and Jani?
and
- if Jessica had lived in the US not the UK and like Jani had been covered by the Oprah Winfrey Show rather than a British documentary, what difference might that have made to the way that she was made to look to the viewer? The night-vision video of Jessica in the doco reminded me of similar video of Jani as a baby that was, as I recall, used by the Oprah show in a way that was given a very negative spin. Little Jess could easily have been depicted as a Possessed Child of Satan with a bit of misuse of the eerie night-vision video, with the glowing eyes and the inexplicable behaviour, but the makers of the documentary Can't Sleep Kid were responsible adults with ethics and values.

I can't resist adding one more comment about Jessica, a prediction. I bet she turns out to be a smart child, maybe even having an IQ as high as the one that Jani Schofield apparently has. I know that Jessica's parents have shown great dedication already in looking after a child who has had an extremely trying sleep pattern, but I hope that they are also prepared for a future in which their child is still different and still presents special challenges in parenting and also in education, because I suspect that little Jess might be more than a gorgeous kid who resists sleep. Resisting sleep is a common trait of little kids who turn out to be intellectually gifted.

I believe this doco is still available to view on ABC iview. I'm not sure whether people from the US can use this service.
http://www.abc.net.au/iview/?series=2997648#

For Pete's sake! Another new academic work that cites Tammet as a savant

2012-01-26T06:39:00.000-08:00

I was a bit excited at the prospect of finding some spare time to read this recent paper by Professor Tyler Cowen, who has been known to take an atypically positive view of the autistic spectrum, but Mr Anon has informed me that Cowen cites the questionable Daniel Tammet as an example of a savant in this paper, which kinda takes the shine off it for me. Probably still worth a look though.

An Economic and Rational Choice Approach to the Autism Spectrum and Human Neurodiversity.
Tyler Cowen
December 22nd 2011
GMU Working Paper in Economics. No. 11-58.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1975809

Petition against anti-vax ratbags in Australia - like to sign?

2012-01-26T06:32:00.000-08:00

Stop misinformation about vaccination #stopAVN.
Petitioning Federal Health Minister of Australia (Minister Tanya Plibersek)
Created by Sue Ieraci
Change.org
http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-misinformation-about-vaccination-stopavn

"Stop misinformation about vaccination by the Australian Vaccination Network."

"...in some areas where the AVN is active and eroding group immunity, cases of whooping cough rose by almost 400% in 2011."

Lili's other thought for the day

2012-01-26T06:19:00.000-08:00

The music of Paul Kelly is a celebration of dreariness. There are many dreary people. That is why he is so popular.

Lili's thought for the day

2012-01-25T23:10:00.000-08:00

Tony Abbott makes stupid comments which spark angry protests, then everyone else pays the price. This is a man who simply does not care.

The Australian of the Year 2012 is a Synaesthete!!!

2012-01-24T23:57:00.000-08:00

Top Australian - Geoffrey Rush. Sydney Morning Herald. smh.com.au January 25th 2012.
http://media.smh.com.au/entertainment/red-carpet/top-australian--geoffrey-rush-2915225.html
[video]

Geoffrey Rush named Australian of the Year.
by Jessica Wright
Sydney Morning Herald.
January 25th 2012.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/geoffrey-rush-named-australian-of-the-year-20120125-1qhig.html#ixzz1kSFA6xMg
http://www.smh.com.au/national/geoffrey-rush-named-australian-of-the-year-20120125-1qhig.html

Astle, David (2007) Geoffrey Rush: a man for all seasons. The (Sydney) Sun-Herald. May 20th 2007. Edition: first, Section: Sunday Life, p.24. Grippers.com.au http://www.grippers.com.au/grippers-articles/2007/5/20/geoffrey-rush-a-man-for-all-seasons/
["Rush confesses to a kind of synesthesia, where two senses cross wires. In his case, days of the week are linked to discrete colours..."]

Geoffrey Rush's top ten for 2012. The Age. theage.com.au January 21st 2012
http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/music/geoffrey-rushs-top-ten-for-2012-20120120-1q9pv.html#ixzz1kSJFgJZB
http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/music/geoffrey-rushs-top-ten-for-2012-20120120-1q9pv.html#ixzz1kSJyeGsm
["...he sees images, shapes and colours triggered by the sensory stimulation of music..."]

Famous synaesthetes or possible synesthetes: a list of amazing people with references.
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2009/01/famous-synaesthetes-or-possible.html

Lili's thought for the day

2012-01-23T08:49:00.000-08:00

Chinese men - small but often perfectly formed :-)

Lili's thought for the day

2012-01-22T00:57:00.000-08:00

My God! How many other parents have been wrongly accused or convicted of murdering their babies? And how could modern medicine allow such easily preventable deaths from happening?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328464.500-murder-trial-highlights-return-of-dickensian-killer.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-16107085?print=true

Lili's thought for the day

2012-01-20T21:44:00.000-08:00

For a fraction of a second I considered applying for the job. Out of curiousity I Googled the name of the supervisor in charge, and found a Facebook page. I don't think I'd last too long working for a boss who is a huge fan of Celine Dion. No point applying really.

The other Baron-Cohen is also good at comedy

2012-01-20T21:32:00.000-08:00

Mathematician's test score does not add up
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2011/05/mathematicians-test-score-does-not-add.html

A very horrible story that just can’t be ignored
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2011/04/very-horrible-story-that-just-cant-be.html

Is this guy for real? Baron-Cohen's latest book is a real urban legend!
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2011/06/is-this-guy-for-real-baron-cohens.html

A quote from a 2007 paper published in the Neurocase science journal
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2011/10/quote-from-2007-paper-published-in.html

The Curious Case of the Autistics Who Don't Really See Like Eagles: a reference list in chronological order
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2011/08/curious-case-of-autistics-who-see-like.html

Another Baron-Cohen autism-related theory looks like a real dog
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2011/09/another-baron-cohen-autism-related.html

Another blow to notions of testosterone and systemizing and gender and behaviour
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2011/12/another-blow-to-notions-of-testosterone.html

Freudian f***wittery still practiced in France, and they inflict their noxious nonsense on autistic kids

2012-01-20T07:42:00.000-08:00

A French Film Takes Issue With the Psychoanalytic Approach to Autism.
by DAVID JOLLY and STEPHANIE NOVAK
New York Times.
January 19th 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/health/film-about-treatment-of-autism-strongly-criticized-in-france.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

Lili's thought for the day

2012-01-20T07:41:00.001-08:00

Science hides it's dirty laundry behind paywalls.

Review of Spoilt Rotten: the Toxic Cult of Sentimentality by Theodore Dalrymple

2012-01-17T09:30:00.000-08:00

This book could be described as a work of ethics or moral philosophy which examines the malign influence of sentimentality on contemporary British society, except that Australian society also falls under the author’s critical gaze - the shameful Chamberlain case and the treatment of Joanne Lees following the disappearance of Peter Falconio are some examples that illustrate some of Dalrymple’s points. It’s nice to see that Australia has not been let off the hook, because as an Australian I know that my country is a similar kind of dystopia as the one that Dalrymple has been describing in his books for many years.

Dalrymple (not his real name) attacks the subject methodically. In one chapter, in workmanlike fashion the author defines sentimentality, lists arguments that have been made to defend it and then refutes these points one by one. Although I believe that at times Dalrymple (a psychiatrist who has had a long career dealing with the British underclass) underestimates the intellectual sophistication of his fellow man, this book is far from a bout against a man made of straw. This is one of those engaging books in which the author reaches conclusions that people aren’t allowed to make, even if the premises are true and the argument is rock solid. One example of Dalrymple’s refreshing emotional incorrectness would be his clear articulation of the misgivings that I’ve felt for a long time about the concept of the family impact statement. I know of no other writer who has explored the meaning and the role of these emotive public utterances and highlighted some of the more distasteful implications. When we see a family member or spouse or friend of a murder victim interviewed on the TV news or making a statement in court, listing the many admired and positive qualities of the victim in order to impress upon everyone the full scope of the loss, we cannot avoid reading the flip-side of this message – that the murder of a person who lacked the achievement, the likeability or the social connection of this victim would be less of a crime and less of a tragedy. I don’t want to live in a society in which notions of individual rights and justice have become degraded into something resembling the rules of a popularity contest.

The section of this book which I found to be the most powerful depiction of the evils of sentimentality in public life was also my biggest disappointment. Dalrymple examined the phenomenon in which people in the public eye are judged by the public and elements of the media to be cold or even a murderer because they have failed to make expected emotional displays in public in response to a tragedy. Lindy Chamberlain claimed that a dingo took her baby but she did not cry in public over it, so many concluded that she was the villain, not an unidentified dingo, in the absence of a body that could settle the mystery. Lindy was convicted of murder and sentenced to life, a truly horrible injustice for her and her family, and was later exonerated of all charges. When young Madeleine McCann disappeared her mother did not make the expected emotional display, so many accused her of murder. Joanne Lees was expected to have made more of a public display of emotion in the period following Bradley Murdoch’s murder of her boyfriend Peter Falconio in the Australian outback. The case remains unresolved to a degree due to a lack of a body, leaving open an opportunity for accusations that the survivor Lees was the murderer. When Diana, Princess of Wales was killed in a car accident, the media and the public judged that the response of the royal family did not meet the expected standards of public displays of grief, and inevitably conspiracy theories in which the royals were behind her death grew and prospered. The Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard had been criticised for “for seeming "wooden" during tours of disaster areas” following the flood crisis of the summer of 2011, and the importance of the public display of emotion in Australian public life was confirmed by the extensive media coverage when Gillard finally did the right thing by the nation and came up with some tears in parliament. Things had gotten to the point where some Aussies were making jokes that Gillard must have been behind the floods, due to her clearly guilty demeanour. I think it is just the greatest thing that Dalrymple has highlighted the utter stupidity and unfairness in the way that so many people make assumptions about others based on nothing more than body language, but at the same time I’m astounded at what Dalrymple has failed to note. He discussed all of the true cases above except for Gillard and the floods, but he failed to make comment on a very important common characteristic of all of those judged unjustly. These stoic public figures are all women. The author wanted to write a book about sentimentality, but I think he has inadvertently written a book about sexism and sentimentality. Why has Dalrymple ignored the bleedin’ obvious? I can only conclude that he has a great big blind spot when it comes to sexism, and that is not an attractive trait.

This is a wide-ranging book and I was pleasantly surprised to find a discussion of a subject that has become a special interest of mine in the last few months – deceptive autobiographies and their authors. Bruno Grosjean, Laura Grabowski/Lauren Stratford/Laurel Rose Willson, Monique De Wael, Margaret Seltzer and James Frey are discussed. Perhaps if Dalrymple had taken a good look at the autobiographical literature about autism and Asperger syndrome he could have enlarged his discussion.

Dalrymple has been accused of being many things, including a misanthrope. Having read a few of his books I believe this is far from true. I find he is a writer who cares about the truth, who cares what happens to people, who knows what evil looks like, and absurdity, and refuses to practice feeling as a substitute for thinking. I enjoy his books and I believe they add a very valuable perspective to our understanding of contemporary society, but there are just too many inconsistencies and oversights in his work and in this book in particular, for me to call it great. Dalrymple accuses the philosopher Peter Singer of being utilitarian to the point of an inhumanly cold impersonality, while Dalrymple’s insistence that we should let our fellow men suffer from the consequences of their own actions doesn’t seem much warmer. Dalrymple subjects his readers to pages of complaint about a decline in educational standards, carping on about bad spelling, then complaining about those who complain about those who make such complaints, then in a later chapter he makes the case that education is not a necessary or sufficient requirement for a functional society. This reader was left wondering what the point of the pedantry was, then. I suspect that Dalrymple is one of those folks who just likes to show off his education, at everyone else’s expense. Every time I pick up a Dalrymple book I encounter words that are new to my vocabulary. It’s impressive, but I’d be more impressed with ideas that are followed through with more diligence.

Some favourite quotes from the book:

“When sentimentality becomes a mass public phenomenon, moreover, it becomes manipulative in an aggressive way: it demands of everyone that he join in. A man who refuses to do so, on the grounds that he does not believe that the purported object of sentiment is worthy of demonstrative display, puts himself outside the pale of the virtuous and becomes almost an enemy of the people.”

“...the notion of tattooing oneself as a means of expressing one’s feeling for another is both savage and sentimental, a sign of an empty heart’s search for emotion.”

“ The cult of feeling destroys the ability to think, or even the awareness that it is necessary to think.”

Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spoilt_Rotten:_The_Toxic_Cult_of_Sentimentality&oldid=468217506

http://www.skepticaldoctor.com/Spoilt_Rotten__The_Toxic.html

Lili's thought for the day

2012-01-17T06:27:00.000-08:00

The Financial Ombudsman Service (Australia) is not an ombudsman in the accepted sense of the word. By all appearances, it is merely a dispute resolution service. Big difference. If you are a whistleblower who has witnessed a misdeed that was done by or involved a bank or financial institution, or has discovered that the bank or financial institution's normal procedures are not secure, I can't see how the Financial Ombudsman Service can intervene in such a situation. If you have witnessed a third party being wronged by a bank or financial institution, or through the misuse of the services of a financial institution or bank, I can't see how the FOS could take a role in that matter either. Some service.

http://www.fos.org.au/centric/home_page/about_us/what_we_do.jsp

Wilde on Sentimentalism / Sentimentality

2012-01-17T01:42:00.000-08:00

A sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it. - Oscar Wilde

OK, it's time to come back from holiday

2012-01-17T01:29:00.000-08:00

What's happened to the transcript of the ABC Radio National's Health Report story by Kathy Gollan about the "autie" autobiographer Donna Williams from 1996? This most interesting and controversial investigative journalism report has been available from the Radio National website for many years, then some time before Christmas last some older radio show transcripts disappeared from the Radio National's website, including this one, possibly in connection with a website revamp. One of those transcripts has re-appeared, but not the transcript of the report about Donna Williams, which calls into question whether she really is on the autistic spectrum, with suggestions from people who knew her a very long time ago that her autism was an act. It's a good thing that the Internet Archive Wayback Machine still has copies of the report, but I'm a bit troubled by the idea that Australia's public broadcaster might have self-censored it's own journalism.

Autism - a special report by Kathy Gollan
Health Report.
29th July 1996
ABC Radio National.
http://wayback.archive.org/web/20100130141653*/http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/helthrpt/hstories/hr290796.htm

Lili's thought for the day

2012-01-17T01:22:00.001-08:00

Holy Smoke! The Wikipedia (English version) is going on strike! Not happy about SOPA and PIPA:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout

Lili's thought for the day

2012-01-14T00:17:00.000-08:00

I've got to respect Hillary Clinton for looking as old as she is, but I still wouldn't trust her as far as I could throw her.

Lili's idle thought for the day

2012-01-12T07:03:00.000-08:00

In some parts of the UK the word "food" is pronounced "feeeeuuwed". Perhaps it is a linguistic echo of the way that the simple concept of food and eating has been complicated and f***ed up beyond all comprehension.

Lili's thought for the day

2012-01-12T07:01:00.001-08:00

We can send a man to the moon, but we can't build a double CD case that will actually hold the CDs in place for more than a couple of weeks of use.

Lili's thought for the day

2012-01-11T21:49:00.001-08:00

Many years after I started this humble blog, the figures for readership of this blog continute to climb and hit new heights. Thank you readers! You make it feel worthwhile.

Neuropsychology case study subject as celebrity: Jill Price and Daniel Tammet compared

2012-01-10T07:14:00.000-08:00

Both have or had their own publicist/PR representative and also a literary agent.

Both have written first books that are autobiographies which include description of their own (claimed, actual) cognitive exceptionalities.

Both have been the subject of at least one published neuropsychology journal paper as a case study.

Both have been questionably identified as being the first case of their type described in the scientific literature (Price as the first case of hyperthymesitc syndrome and Tammet claimed to be unique as the first known autistic savant who has the social and verbal ability to explain his own mind, and it has also been argued that he is a rare and newly discovered type of synaesthete because his brain scans were found to be not typical of those of synaesthetes).

Both have been written about in a journal paper by a professor researcher who has made many mass media appearances (Price described by Prof. James McGaugh and Tammet described by Prof. Simon Baron-Cohen)

Both have been the subject of a paper that was published in the science journal Neurocase.

Both have been referred to in journal papers and scientific articles with an anonymous name consisting of initials - Price's name being AJ and Tammet's name being DT (Tammet has also been given the name "Arithmos" in one brief paper, but this name didn't catch on.)

Both have been identified by researchers as having some superior cognitive abilities and also some deficits.

Both have fame based at least partly on their superior memory performances; Tammet's Pi recitiation and Price's hyperthymestic syndrome / superior autobiographical memory demonstrated to researchers.

Both have been the subject of scientific debate about the basis of their memory superiorities, with one faction of researchers arguing that repetitive self-directed training is the cause, while other researchers have argued that a developmental difference in brain structure is the cause.

Both have been identified by a synaesthesia researcher as a synaesthete, while this was not noted by other researchers.

Both have been the subject of an article in New Scientist magazine.

Both have been featured or interviewed in reports on the TV shows US 60 Minutes, Australian 60 Minutes and the Australian science series Catalyst (Tammet in the Brainman "documentary" screened in two parts in 2006 under the banner of Catalyst).

Both have been featured in many mass media reports in print and the electronic media, in a number of countries.

Both have been written about by journalist Joshua Foer.

Both have been discussed as a memory case study (directly or indirectly) by researcher K. Anders Ericsson.

Both have past intellectual achievements that have perhaps been understated (Tammet having performed very well twice in the World Memory Championship while this was not mentioned in his autobiography, and Price described as a mediocre academic achiever despite having a degree).

Both have been described as obsessive.

Both have achieved extreme and interesting results in tests of face memory (Tammet performing at an elite level in a test of matching faces and names in the World Memory Championship, but later found by a researcher to have scored at such a low level in a test of face memory that he was judged to be impaired in this area. Price scoring at an impaired level in the Warrington Test of face memory, while also getting a perfect score in the Benton Face Test of face perception (apparently perception of facial expressions)).

Both found by researchers to perform very well in "digit span" testing (Price scoring 15, "near ceiling" at the "Digit Span subtest of WAIS-R", and Tammet scoring 11.5 in some "visual digit span test" in one study and performing with "a high degree of accuracy" in a "Digit span task" in another study).

Both have been regarded with skepticism by some researchers and laypersons.

References

For the relevant Daniel Tammet references see the references in this post:

Daniel Tammet - The Boy with the Incredible Story
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2011/10/about-daniel-tammet-excerpt-from-my.html

For the relevant Jill Price references see my list:

Famous synaesthetes or possible synesthetes: a list of amazing people with references.
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2009/01/famous-synaesthetes-or-possible.html

Lili's thought for the day

2012-01-10T06:29:00.000-08:00

Isn't it ironic that Obama's "Secure Communities" program has caused so much insecurity and injustice to the Latino community in the US? I'd say the naming of that program is a political variation of what I call the Advertising Inverse Law, in which advertising sells a message that is directly the opposite of the truth. It's the reason why politicians have the word "Honourable" in front of their names.

Lili's thought for the day

2012-01-09T09:37:00.000-08:00

I want a personalized car number plate that says "Life is Suck". At least it is not quite as moronically meaningless as all those plates that say "Life is Such".

Why a chick lit novel is not a place to look for parenting advice

2012-01-09T08:04:00.001-08:00

I've just finished speed-reading the young Australian author Jessica Rudd's chick-lit novel sequel Ruby Blues, just to see how the other half thinks, and I know it is only supposed to be a work of fiction, but still, I think fiction shouldn't contain details that sound like facts but which are actually a long way from the way things are in the real world. On page 260 there's a male fictional baby born prematurely weighing 1.8 kilograms or just under four pounds. On page 270 it is revealed that this made-up premmie boy bub being cared for in a neonatal intensive care unit was born at 32 weeks of gestation, with a claim that such babies "can double their body weight in a week". On page 319 the fictitious infant is found to have doubled his birth weight in only five days! Talk about hot-house babies! They must be adding human growth hormone to the formula these days.

I very much hope that there isn't some forlorn mother of a newborn premature baby somewhere in Australia reading this completely ridiculous book and feeling very inadequate about her efforts at establishing breastfeeding because her baby boy has only REGAINED his birth weight in a week, as you'd sensibly expect a well-cared-for newborn premmie to do. I believe it is a general rule that babies, including premature babies, lose some of their birth weight straight after birth because they are water-logged or something after having bathed non-stop in uterine fluid for up to 40 weeks. In the first week after birth a newborn generally sheds this pseudo-weight while only starting to replace this weight loss with real body growth. After looking at a variety of growth curves for newborns, including some for preterm births, I feel confident in stating that it is completely and absolutely impossible for a newborn premmie to double it's birthweight in less than a week, whatever you feed it. I've got to wonder whether Ms Rudd had been taking advice on statistical matters from the Australian reporter Allison Langdon of 60 Minutes fame, you know, she's the pretty fair lass who apparently doesn't know that standard deviation isn't the same thing as multiplication. Life imitates blonde joke.

Growth of preterm newborns during the first 12 weeks of life.
Lêni M. Anchieta; César C. Xavier; Enrico A. Colosimo
J. Pediatr. (Rio J.) vol.80 no.4 Porto Alegre July/Aug. 2004
http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0021-75572004000500005

60 Minutes reporter stuffs up and the name of hyperthymestic syndrome changed again but still no recognition from US of link with synaesthesia.
Lili Marlene
Incorrect Pleasures
September 5th 2011
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2011/09/theyve-changed-name-of-hyperthymestic.html

Lili's disgusted thought for the day

2012-01-07T00:41:00.000-08:00

What kind of miserable f***s would prevent children from being given gifts at Christmas-time? What kind of power-crazed c*** would forbid children from having coloured crayons or coloured pencils outside of formal classes?

DASSAN Press Release: Serco Ruins Christmas for Children in Detention
Refugee Rights Action Network
5 January 2012.
http://rran.org/blog/2012/01/dassan-press-release-serco-ruins-christmas-for-children-in-detention/

Serco drops ban on coloured pencils and crayons for asylum-seeker children
by Kirsty Needham
Sydney Morning Herald.
January 7, 2012.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/serco-drops-ban-on-coloured-pencils-and-crayons-for-asylumseeker-children-20120106-1pogh.html#ixzz1ilC5Sacc

Serco drops ban on coloured pencils and crayons for asylum-seeker children
Refugee Rights Action Network
7 January 2012.
http://rran.org/blog/2012/01/serco-drops-ban-on-coloured-pencils-and-crayons-for-asylum-seeker-children/

Lili's thought for the day

2012-01-04T20:02:00.000-08:00

Those celebrity chefs with TV shows are a load of nonsense. Ever noticed how at the end of the show when they sample what they've just cooked, they give an instant rave review of their own cooking? Proper taste perception takes longer than a split second, and it can sometimes take quite a while. They are full of it!

Lili Marlene's List of Favourite Euphemisms

2012-01-04T07:36:00.000-08:00

"Excess adiposity" - overweight

"Tired and emotional" - drunk

"Non-standard design features" - birth defects

"Excess brain activity" - epilepsy, seizures

"1930s moment" - catastrophic global economic depression

Did Christopher Hitchens have a photographic memory?

2012-01-03T02:47:00.000-08:00

Mark Colvin on Christopher Hitchens -

"Hitchens spoke as most of us struggle to write - in unbroken sentences, organised into paragraphs. He was aided in this by an astonishingly capacious memory, which could give you the impression that he had instant photographic access to everything he'd ever read."

"I mentioned a line (Wodehouse's description of aunts calling to each other "like mastodons across the primaeval swamp"), which he instantly capped with half a dozen of his own favourite lines. And he could do that with dates, places, people, historical events: an enviable trait in itself, but also the foundation of his strength as an essayist and polemicist."

Colvin, Mark (2011) Don't be a fan. Never be a fan. The Drum. ABC News. December 16th 2011.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-16/mcolvin--/3735888

Mr Qayoom, I think you have a very naughty friend!

2012-01-02T21:45:00.000-08:00

http://anatheimp.blogspot.com/2010/10/imp.html?showComment=1287288449588#c3326857544748920034

Many thanks to "Mr Anon" for letting me know about this link to some interesting info. This is an untitled comment on a blog post titled “Imp” at a blog that is not the comment writer's blog, written by a person who appears to be Daniel Tammet’s childhood best friend who was mentioned by name in Tammet’s first book. In this comment Rehan Qayoom recalls how Tammet/Corney was once obsessed with Anna Anderson, presumably in his youth. Anna Anderson was one of many imposters who claimed to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov, who was one of the Russian royal family murdered by the communists. This is an interesting piece of information for a number of reasons. Firstly, it shows that Tammet had a strong interest in an imposter early in his life, which was perhaps the origin of his grand deception. Secondly, Tammet changed his surname in 2001 from Corney to Tammet. His explanation is that his original surname “...didn't fit with the way he saw himself” while he liked the name Tammet “It means oak tree in Estonian, and I liked that association.” (Johnson, 2005). But it seems to be too much of a coincidence that Tammet appears to be an imposter of a sort, and the surname Tammet was once used by an imposter who like Anna Anderson claimed to have been a surviving Romanov. His real name was Ernest Veermann, AKA Heino Tammet AKA Alexei Tammet-Romanov. The third reason why the link between Tammet and Anna Anderson is interesting is that some people believe that Daniel Tammet was the same person as the one who went by the name “Daniel Andersson” claiming to be a psychic at an internet forum, and also the person who went by the name “Dr. Daniel Andersson” claiming to be “a qualified medical practitioner with more than thirty years’ clinical experience” at an online internet forum. It would seem to be a neat arrangement for an impostor to take on the names of his predecessors in pretence for his deceptions, but is it true?

Sources

Qayoom, Rehan (2010) [untitled blog post comment on the post titled "Imp"] Ana the Imp. October 16th 2010.
http://anatheimp.blogspot.com/2010/10/imp.html?showComment=1287288449588#c3326857544748920034

Andersson, Daniel (2001) Psychic Daniel Andersson. Psychics. Yahoo Groups. August 2nd 2001
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/psychics/message/1712

Andersson, Daniel (2001) Doctor's Advice on the Atkins Diet. Epinions. October 19th 2001.
http://www.epinions.com/review/well-Nutrition-Diets-All-Atkins_Diet/content_43731553924

A tip for readers

2012-01-02T20:03:00.001-08:00

If you find a post of interest, go back later and check it out again, as I have a terrible habit of editing and ading to posts after I've published them, my more substantial posts altered and added to very substantially long after publication. I plan to do a major renewal of the list of references at my post titled "The boy with the incredible story". There is never enough time in the day!

I also often add tags to old posts, to help my readers to "see the connections".

A quote from a brief article in the journal Science from 2005

2012-01-02T19:23:00.000-08:00

"To see whether this form of synesthesia is at the heart of Tammet's talent, neuro-scientist Vilayanur Ramachandran and colleagues at the University of California, San Diego, gave the 26-year-old savant from Kent, Great Britain, a series of tests. The team now plans to investigate the multiplication skills of Tammet, who says he...."

What happened to these plans? Was there an investigation? If not, why not?

And I've just noticed an amusing detail in this article:

"This article reports that scientist Daniel Tammet has set the European record..."

Scientist? Really? I've also found a book published by the deplorable Jessica Kingsley Publishers in which Tammet was laughably described as a mathematician. People say blogs are self-published rubbish written by amateurs, but hey, there's a lot of crap in print, some of it in very prestigious science journals.

Holden, Constance (2005) Coloured memory. Science. April 22nd 2005 Vol. 308 Issue 5721, p.492. EBSCOHost Accession Number: 16911231

Lili's thought for the day

2011-12-30T22:32:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year to Laura and all of the other readers and commenters of my humble blog.

Who's this guy?

2011-12-29T19:19:00.000-08:00

This English man memorized the number Pi to thousands of decimal places, his IQ has been measured at around 150, he has demonstrated an ability to perform difficult calculations in his mind in seconds, he has an amazing talent for memorizing huge lists of numbers, names and faces and he can write backwards with ease. His memory has been described as "superhuman". Daniel Tammet? Nup! Taxi driver Tom Morton.

Memory man left Pi and dry.
BBC News. March 8, 1998
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/63006.stm

Don’t believe everything you read in a book: an incomplete list of books that are about, are by or mention Daniel Tammet, in chronological order

2011-12-29T09:00:00.000-08:00

Tammet, Daniel (2006) Born on a blue day: a memoir of Asperger’s and an extraordinary mind. Hodder & Stoughton. 2006.
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=gGrBCQYD3qEC&vq=face&dq=editions:ISBN0340899751&source=gbs_navlinks_s
[I think it is interesting that Karen Ammond who is the founder and president of the publicity company KBC Media which Tammet engaged to represent him in 2001 and was also an associate producer of the science-themed “documentary” Brainman (released in 2005), which brought Tammet to the attention of some British neuroscience researchers and launched him into fame as a celebrity neuropsychiatry case, is thanked by name in the acknowledgements section of the US 2007 Free Press edition of this book, but was not mentioned in the acknowledgements in the 2006 UK Hodder and Stoughton first edition. Ammond’s acknowledgement in the US edition is separate to Tammet’s acknowledgement of people described as the “team behind the Brainman documentary”. Is Ammond’s full role in Tammet’s career a sensitive subject?]

Treffert, Darold A. (2006) Extraordinary people: understanding savant syndrome. Backinprint.com, February 14th 2006.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/059509239X/ref=rdr_ext_tmb
[A brief outline of Tammet’s life story can be found in the epilogue in this 2006 edition]

Ward, Jamie (2008) The frog who croaked blue: synesthesia and the mixing of the senses. Routledge, 2008.
[Author a UK synaesthesia researcher. Dr Ward has communicated directly with Tammet, but his writing about Tammet in this book is not an interview format, and it appears that the quotes and material from Tammet in this book are excerpts from Tammet’s first book. Amongst his discussion of Tammet Dr Ward explains that extraordinary memory feats can be performed with the use of the method of loci, and it is clear from the details in this paragraph that Ward has read the “Routes to Remembering” study by Maguire, Valentine, Wilding and Kapur but disappointingly Dr Ward shows no awareness that Tammet was one of the subjects of that study (Ward 2008 p.113), and Ward shows no scepticism about Tammet’s self-account. Ward states that “...Daniel Tammet broke the European record for reciting 22,514 digits of pi without error...” (Ward 2008 p.110). One person has claimed this is untrue. Another quote from Ward's book: “As with other people with autism, he is little interested in faces and he believes that his memory for faces is poor.” Had Ward known that Tammet was one of the subjects tested for face memory in the "Routes to Remebering" study, and had performed brilliantly in a World Memory Championship competition in 2000 in a task titled "names and faces" Ward might have been sceptical about Tammet's claims of a deficit in face memory.]

Murray, Stuart (2008) Representing autism: culture, narrative, fascination. Liverpool University Press, 15/07/2008
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=dkSIEzPYQM4C&dq=tammet&source=gbs_navlinks_s
[Tammet is discussed over a number of pages. Although Murray does not question the truth of Tammet’s autobiographical story, he does compare representations of Tammet in the Brainman “documentary” and Tammet’s first autobiography with fictional representations of autism in the movie Rain Man and the novel by Mark Haddon The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time “For all Tammet’s achievements, it is the backdrop of fiction, and the expectations produced by such fiction, that appears as his immediate context.” (p.92)]

Zacharias, Karen Spears (2008) Where’s your Jesus now? Zondervan, 26/08/2008.
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=tye8MBDoMRoC&dq=tammet&source=gbs_navlinks_s
[Tammet’s synaesthesia is referred to a number of times in this rambling and personal book about religion.]

Tammet, Daniel (2009) Embracing the wide sky: a tour across the horizons of the mind. Free Press, January 2009.
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=E3fkLVpsb1wC&dq=%22daniel+tammet%22+face+recognition&source=gbs_navlinks_s
[The title of the German version of this book translates as “Clouds springer: from a genius autistic learning”. This book is a wide-ranging and light discussion of various areas of psychology, with some autobiographical info. On pages 73–74 of the Hodder & Stoughton edition Tammet explains in detail how memorization using chunking and a hierarchical structure is done, while also claiming that his mind does this spontaneously. On page 40 Tammet wrote that his IQ score was found to be 150 in testing by "a qualified educational psychologist" which he undertook as a part of his own inquiry into IQ testing, Tammet claiming this was the first time he had done an IQ test. Tammet's claims in this book are not consistent with information known about Tammet. In 2002 Tammet was one of the World Memory Championship (WMC) participants who volunteered as subjects in the “Routes to Remembering” study by Maguire et al, which had various tests of cognition as a part of the study. A quote from pages 90-91 of that study: "The superior memorizers were not exceptional in their performance on tests of general cognitive ability..." It is hard to imagine how an individual capable on attaining an IQ score of 150 could have gone unnoticed in this study of only ten superior memorizers and ten matched normal controls. Face recognition was also tested in this study, the WMC competitors as a group performing slightly better than controls and I found no note of any face recognition difficulties in any of the participants in this study, which conflicts with Tammet's assertion on page 61 of his book Embracing the Wide Sky that he has "great difficulty remembering faces". A possible explanation for this contradiction is that the test used in the study might be open to the use of non-face features for identification, thus possibly failing to identify prosopagnosia. Tammet has claimed to have synaesthesia in both of his books and it is generally accepted by media people that Tammet is a synesthete, but there is nothing in the "Routes to Remembering" study to indicate that any of the study subjects had synaesthesia, but we don't know if it would necessarily have been picked up by those investigators. Tammet does appear to have mentioned in the study having epilepsy as a child, as this is noted in the study.]

Williams, Mary E. (2009) Epilepsy. Greenhaven Press, 16/10/2009.
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=sAJaAAAAYAAJ&q=tammet&dq=tammet&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ML_4ToGHKYWuiQfg4pS6AQ&ved=0CEUQ6AEwAzgy
[Series title Perspectives on Diseases and Disorders. Tammet is discussed on a number of pages.]

Veague, Heather Barrnett, Collins, Christine and Levitt, Pat (2009) Autism. Infobase Publishing, 01/12/2009
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=F7EdNvaZJjoC&dq=tammet&source=gbs_navlinks_s
[Tammet is cited as an example of an autistic savant in this eBook, with a profile of him on page 9.]

Brown, Julie (2010) Writers on the spectrum: how autism and Asperger syndrome have influenced literary writing. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 15/01/2010
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=8qc9IxBYxO8C&dq=tammet&source=gbs_navlinks_s
[Tammet is discussed in a number of places in this book, on page 149 laughably described as a mathematician.]

Plotnik, Rod and Kouyoumdjian, Haig (2010) Introduction to psychology. Cengage Learning, 19/03/2010.
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=iSUSoasu8LkC&dq=tammet&source=gbs_navlinks_s
[Yes, Daniel Tammet has made his way into a psychology textbook. Tammet is profiled as an example of “incredible memory” on page 239.]

Happe, Francesca and Frith, Uta (2010) Autism and talent. Oxford University Press, 13/5/2010.
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=ej_bc09i0wYC&dq=tammet&source=gbs_navlinks_s
[Tammet discussed in a number of places in this book of essays by autism researchers based on papers published in a 2009 special edition of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.]

Kaufman, James C. and Sternberg, Robert J. (2010) The Cambridge handbook of creativity. Cambridge University Press, 30/08/2010.
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=1EBT3Qj5L5EC&dq=tammet&source=gbs_navlinks_s
[Tammet is discussed as a savant on page 399]

Robinson, Andrew (2010) Sudden Genius?: The Gradual Path to Creative Breakthroughs. Oxford University Press, September 16th 2010.
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199569953.do
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=k0ffIUIc5U0C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
[Tammet is discussed over a number of pages]

Treffert, Darold A. (2010) Islands of genius: the bountiful mind of the autistic, acquired, and sudden savant. Jessica Kingsley, 2010.
[Has a foreword by Daniel Tammet. Many famous and well-known autistic savants are written about and Tammet is included as one of this group. A surprisingly vacuous book, given the interesting subject matter. Clearly written for a popular and not professional or academic readership.]

Smith, Neil, Tsimpli, Ianthi, Morgan, Gary and Woll, Bencie (2011) The Signs of a Savant: Language Against the Odds. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=3PgyeypNqzYC&vq=tammet&dq=tammet+daniel&source=gbs_navlinks_s
[Tammet has been the subject of studies by some of the authors of this book. Discussion of Tammet can be found on p.151-2 “...we tested him on a variety of spoken languages...”, “He is reasonably fluent in Lithuanian, Spanish, Romanian, Esperanto and Welsh; he has some knowledge of French and German;...” It is interesting that Tammet is described as only having “some knowledge” of French and German considering that Tammet reported getting A grades in both languages in his GCSE in Born on a Blue Day (p.107 Free Press/Simon and Schuster ed, p.117 in Hodder and Stoughton ed), and Tammet promotes his own online language courses in French and Spanish from his own website Optimnem, and was reported in 2009 to have learned German in a week (Bethge 2009). In this book Tammet’s learning of British Sign Language was studied and compared with the disabled language savant Christopher, and was found to be different in some respects. Tammet's account of his participation in research studies with authors of this book can be found on pages 167 and 221 of the Simon and Schuster/Free Press 2007 edition of Born on a Blue Day, or on pages 181 and 237 of the 2006 Hodder and Stoughton edition.]

Geary, James (2011) I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way We See the World. HarperCollins, 08/02/2011.
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=nALGZMTeN1oC&dq=tammet&source=gbs_navlinks_s
[Tammet is discussed as an autistic savant exceptional for being an autistic who is able to understand metaphors.]

Baron-Cohen, Simon (2011) Zero Degrees of Empathy: A New Theory of Human Cruelty. Allen Lane, April 2011.
[Tammet is discussed on two pages of this bizarrely ill-conceived book by the Cambridge professor who initially gave Tammet’s legend credibility with some other scientists by describing Tammet in two journal papers. This book begins on a very strange note by presenting a medically impossible urban legend as a factual anecdote.]

Baron-Cohen, Simon (2011) The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty. Basic Books, May 31, 2011.
[The US version of Zero Degrees of Empathy. Tammet is discussed on two pages of this bizarrely ill-conceived book by the Cambridge professor who initially gave Tammet’s legend credibility with some other scientists by describing Tammet in two journal papers. This book begins on a very strange note by presenting a medically impossible urban legend as a factual anecdote.]

Sternberg, Robert J. and Kaufman, Scott Barry (2011) The Cambridge handbook of intelligence. Cambridge University Press, 30/06/2011.
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=FtYeTcNwzQ4C&source=gbs_navlinks_s
[Tammet is mentioned in an uncritical manner on a number of pages of this book]

Seaberg, Maureen (2011) Tasting the universe: people who see colors in words and rainbows in symphonies: a spiritual and scientific exploration of synesthesia. New Page Books, 2011.
http://www.tastingtheuniverse.com/
[Author an American synaesthete journalist with an interest in spirituality. Many famous synaesthetes discussed and/or interviewed including Daniel Tammet, who is interviewed and given a completely uncritical and unsceptical treatment. Seaberg breathlessly described Tammet as “another living genius, synesthete savant Daniel Tammet” (Seaberg 2011 p.252). Seaberg makes a hash of reporting Tammet’s supposed Pi record “...he was famously able to memorise the number Pi to 22,500 places-and even more in recent times” (Seaberg 2011 p.158). Two different Pi record attempts by Tammet? He stopped at 22,500 decimal places? I don’t think so. Seaberg gives one of a few recent reports of Tammet working on writing fiction (Seaberg 2011 166-167).]

Foer, Joshua (2011) Moonwalking with Einstein: the art and science of remembering everything. Allen Lane/Penguin, 2011.
[includes a chapter about Tammet in which Tammet’s achievements in the World Memory Championship under his original name of Daniel Corney in 1999 and 2000 are discussed, Tammet’s synaesthesia and savantism are questioned and the author considers whether Tammet’s remarkable talents are best explained as the result of training]

Unpublished or upcoming books by Tammet

Tammet, Daniel (2010) Fragments of heaven. Hodder General Publishing Division, 2010. ISBN 0340961376, 9780340961377. 288 pages. Subjects: religion, Christian life, spiritual growth.
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=lvmuPgAACAAJ&dq=tammet&hl=en&ei=6EXBTqvIDeSMmQWJtayMBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CD0Q6AEwAg
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fragments-Heaven-Daniel-Tammet/dp/product-description/0340961309/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=266239&s=books

Tammet, Daniel (2012) Thinking by numbers. UK publisher: Hodder General Publishing Division, US publisher: Little Brown, 2012. ISBN 1444737406, 9781444737400. 288 pages.
http://www.andrewlownie.co.uk/authors/daniel-tammet/books/thinking-by-numbers
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=LyGVZwEACAAJ&dq=tammet+daniel&hl=en&ei=lknBTpjtNeyOiAeP6omDBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&sqi=2&ved=0CE0Q6AEwBQ

......and a different list of some books about synaesthesia and/or neuropsychology that appear to be Tammet-free

Van Campen, Cretien (2007) The Hidden Sense: synesthesia in art and science. The MIT Press; 1 edition, October 31, 2007.
[I could find no references to Tammet in this book’s index and a partial search by Google Books]

Cytowic, Richard E. and Eagleman, David M. (2009) Wednesday is indigo blue: discovering the brain of synesthesia. The MIT Press; 1 edition, February 27, 2009.
[I’m pretty sure there is no mention of Daniel Tammet, Daniel Corney or DT in this book]

The books of Oliver Sacks?

The vast majority of the content of this old post is stuff written by other people

2011-12-29T08:56:00.000-08:00

and that's probably why it is so good.

Quotes that caught Lili's eye
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2006/11/lilis-favourite-quotes-autists-are.html

A resemblance between Tammet and fictional autism noted in 2008

2011-12-29T08:48:00.000-08:00

“For all Tammet’s achievements, it is the backdrop of fiction, and the expectations produced by such fiction, that appears as his immediate context.”

- Stuart Murray, page 92 in

Murray, Stuart (2008) Representing autism: culture, narrative, fascination. Liverpool University Press, 15/07/2008
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=dkSIEzPYQM4C&dq=tammet&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Lili's thought for the day

2011-12-27T21:30:00.000-08:00

I've noticed a fascinating biological difference between North Koreans and the rest of humanity - they cry without tears. An entire nation afflicted with Sjogren's syndrome?

Lili's thought for the day

2011-12-27T09:00:00.001-08:00

Off to the library tomorrow to check something out! ;-)

Shocking misuse of dangerous zombie-drugs on developmentally disabled people

2011-12-27T07:30:00.000-08:00

Something must be done now to stop what is happening. Please take action!

"Data from the National Core Indicators project, a national database run by the Human Services Research Institute and the National Association of State Directors of Developmental Disability Services, shows that the percentage of people with developmental disabilities receiving psychotropic medications is much higher than the percentage who have the co-occurring mental health conditions that might justify their use. The long term side effects of such inappropriate medication include obesity, diabetes, long term brain damage, injury, and even death."

"I saw people being medicated to control behavior to such a degree that to me it was obviously and clearly affecting their health, their safety, their quality of life, their ability to participate in the daily activities of living, and in some cases threatened their lives"

"And even the use of the drugs to control behavior is questionable. A 2008 study published in the medical journal The Lancet found that psychotropic drugs like Risperdal were less effective at treating behavioral outbursts than placebos."

"Ms. Vargha protested after her sister, 47, was given as much as 360 milligrams per day; the maximum dosage recommended by the Food and Drug Administration is 160 milligrams."

"At the same time, state officials conceded in records obtained by The Times that they did not really know what her diagnosis was; assessing her has been complicated by the fact that Ms. Vargha’s sister is far more fluent in Persian than English."

No proper assessment and no clear diagnosis but regardless this poor woman was put on an elephant's dose of one of those horrendous neuroleptic anti-psychotic drugs? I'd be shocked if this happened in some busted-arse backwater of country, so I'm completely at a loss to understand how such deplorably low standards of medical and social care can be tolerated in the United States of America.

"....people with developmental disabilities in group homes in New York are more likely to be given Ativan, an anti-anxiety drug that also serves as a tranquilizer, than multivitamins."

"... records examined by The Times show that some developmentally disabled residents received psychotropic drugs without ever getting a clear diagnosis of mental illness. Even among those who have a mental illness, the records indicate that the state’s use of the drugs can be overly aggressive."

Tell New York to Stop the Chemical Restraint of People with Disabilities (petition)
Change.org
http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-new-york-to-stop-the-chemical-restraint-of-people-with-disabilities

In Treating Disabled, Potent Drugs and Few Rules.
by Danny Hakim
New York Times
December 22nd 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/23/nyregion/potent-pills-few-rules-in-states-treatment-of-the-disabled.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=todayspaper

Is Tammet a good name for an imposter?

2011-12-26T19:05:00.001-08:00

According to his own account, Daniel Tammet changed his original surname of Corney to Tammet because he did not like his original surname while he did like the surname Tammet, which apparently has a meaning in Estonian that Daniel liked. I find it interesting that the surname "Tammet" is a name that was once assumed by an Estonian man who liked to change his name and make improbable claims. I've got to wonder, had Daniel been reading about impostors around the time that he chose his new surname?

Wikipedia contributors (accessed 2011) Alexei Tammet-Romanov. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alexei_Tammet-Romanov&oldid=434322796

Impostor Pretenders. General Books LLC, 2010.
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=uhugSQAACAAJ&dq=tammet&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ycf4TpLiO5CUiAe6iaXSBA&ved=0CDMQ6AEwADh4

A quote from a 2009 interview with Daniel Tammet

2011-12-25T22:35:00.000-08:00

"I did have a very restricted, regimented life," he says. "There was a kind of happiness there, a contentment, but it was a small happiness within very clear and delineated borders. I did eventually grow out of these, and part of that was due to the success of the book. I had to travel, meet journalists, give speeches and in that process I shed some of that remaining awkwardness, developed confidence and other skills. It was a very positive chance that I was given to open myself up to do that."

But Daniel Tammet did so many things and achieved so much in the years leading up to the 2006 publication of his first book! Can he really say that he led a very restricted life, presumably due to being autistic, when in 1999 he first competed in the World Memory Championships, and in the year 2000 attained a ranking of fourth in the world? Then in 2002 Tammet volunteered to be the subject of serious scientific study by researchers from three different universities, a study which was published in a major science journal. Sounds like a pretty exciting and interesting life, to be honest. And if Tammet was so restricted and content with his secluded, quiet life, why did he in the year 2001 approach a major PR company with the aim of becoming famous? That's a contradiction, if ever there was one! And before the writing of his first book Tammet, by his own account, travelled overseas to work as an ESL teacher a place where English was a second language, and at some point he started his own online teaching business, two achievements that showed an outgoing drive to succeed, which is in many ways admirable.

No, it's very clear that the impression that Tammet gave that his life before his first book hit the shelves was restricted and uneventful, and that he was at the time content with such a life, is complete rubbish. A reading of Tammet's first book alone would have cast doubt on that notion, and this is something that any journalist interviewing a writer promoting their second book should have done. But this is only the tip of the iceberg of events in Tammet's life that journalist Susan Mansfield never bothered to research or discover or report. Her 2009 article about Daniel Tammet which was published in The Scotsman was a sycophantic and sloppy piece of crap, but sadly also typical of the press and electronic media coverage of Tammet throughout his career. Shame, journalists, shame!

Source:

Mansfield, Susan (2009) Daniel Tammet interview: wide sky thinking. Scotsman. February 11th, 14th 2009.
http://www.scotsman.com/news/daniel_tammet_interview_wide_sky_thinking_1_828810

Lili's thought for the day

2011-12-22T21:56:00.001-08:00

You don't need some special iPhone app to find out which houses in this street are occupied by junkies.

Lili's festive thought for the day

2011-12-21T08:12:00.000-08:00

You know what they say - it's more about spending time than spending money.

Lili's thought for the day

2011-12-21T07:55:00.000-08:00

I will always admire Christopher Hitchens for being the bloke who dared to write the book in which it was argued that Mother Teresa was hardly Mother Teresa.

Lili's thought for the day

2011-12-19T01:03:00.000-08:00

If you think that a heightened level of awareness of mental illness, with the successful selling of the idea that it can affect anyone anytime can only be a good thing, consider the hazards of living in a world in which everyone is considered insane till proven otherwise - a murder can be written off by police as a suicide even in the absence of any existing diagnosis or warning signs, doctors working in under-resourced hospitals can send cases that look like mental illness off to the psychiatry department as a first response instead of spending time and resources investigating the problem as a physical illness, difficult children, neglected children and kids with special needs can be diagnosed as having a mental illness and medicated into an inert state, accidental or negligent deaths can be wrongly explained as the work of a unhinged mind and not properly investigated, legitimate complaints of all kinds and all situations can be dismissed as nothing more than a paranoid personality at work, and you or I or someone you know could be accused of doing any manner of batshit insane thing if it suits the interests of employers, family, police, the government, insurance companies or any agent who has to come up with an explanation for some situation.

A quote from Reg Mombassa

2011-12-17T22:52:00.000-08:00

“As far as exercise goes, I consider putting my trousers on a form of extreme sport.”

- from a 2009 article by biographer Murray Waldren in the Weekend Australian

Lili's thought for the day

2011-12-17T22:13:00.000-08:00

Let's hope that those bastards in the NT will be made to pay for what they did to Lindy Chamberlain and the Chamberlain family.

Lili's sad thought for the day

2011-12-15T21:16:00.000-08:00

Mr Hitchens has gone. Such a bright light extinguished!

Another blow to notions of testosterone and systemizing and gender and behaviour

2011-12-15T08:05:00.000-08:00

The grand theory of autism, the "extreme male brain" theory of autism, which has been championed and popularized by Professor Simon Baron-Cohen and his team at the Autism Research Centre of the University of Cambridge, asserts that autism is characterized by relative gifts in a set of abilities and interests labelled as "systemizing", and relative disability in a set of abilities and interests labelled as "empathizing". This theory also asserts that males are, as a group, naturally more talented at systemizing and less naturally talented in empathizing than females, male psychology being something like a mid-point between the autistic and females. It is hard to find a place for female autistics within this theoretical model, so lets just say that within the world described by this model, they (we?) are complete freaks. The biological mechanism proposed as an explanation in this model is the action of testosterone on the developing brain of a foetus or infant.

This model has implications way beyond the search for a scientific explanation for autism - this theory also tells us that the behaviour of males and females should and does generally differ due to biological factors, and the logical consequence of taking this theory seriously must be a degree of caution about taking steps to counter gender differences in participation in various aspects of life, and a greater tolerance of what appears to be a gender stereotyped world in which men and women generally take on different sets of roles. Mathematics is categorized by Baron-Cohen and co-researchers as an area of human endeavour that requires talent in systemizing but makes virtually no demands on empathizing. It has been cited as an ideal career or study choice for intelligent autistics for this reason, and the logical extension of this thinking is that males should have a greater natural talent for maths than females. This idea is also congruent with popular beliefs. A controversy broke out this year over the marketing of a T-shirt with the slogan "I'm too pretty to do math". Presumbly the idiots who are selling this garment believe the idea has enough currency to find some kind of market for this product. Baron-Cohen's team take the supposed similarity between being a mathematician and being autistic so far that they are doing a whole genome study of mathematicians versus non-mathematicians, mirroring the type of genetic research this is typically done studying the genes of autistics. They hope to compare the genes of mathematicians and people diagnosed with Asperger syndrome to see if there are similarites or differences.

Baron-Cohen's model of maths and testosterone relies on a number of assertions to be found to be true in the world of real people and real achievements. If it is found that there are no significant differences between the genes of mathematicians and a comparable non-mathematician control group, or that there are no unique genetic similarities between the mathematical and the autistic, or that there is no evidence of innate difference between mathematical talent between males and females, then the wings will fall off of this model and it shouldn't fly anywhere. I've been busy this year exploring the absurdity and failure of many of the ideas that have been promoted by Baron-Cohen, and here's another one. A newly published study of participation and achievement in mathematics of boys and girls in a large and varied range of countries has found that quite contrary to the idea that it is a waste of time encouraging girls to achieve in maths due to an innate feminine lack of systemizing potential, it is actually true that the performance of both boys and girls in maths increases with greater gender equity, and my reading of the study's findings is that in many counties, in single and in mixed-sex schools, girls are actually out-performing boys anyway. The idea that testosterone acting on the brain bestows an additional quantity of units of some mysterious source of mathematical or systemizing talent looks like just one more garbage idea to come out of Cambridge. It's time to put out the rubbish, because the trash is really on the nose.

Some quotes from the research paper by Kane and Mertz:

"In summary, we conclude that gender equity and other sociocultural factors, not national income, school type, or religion per se, are the primary determinants of mathematics performance at all levels for both boys and girls."

"Eliminating gender discrimination in pay and employment opportunities could be part of a win-win formula for producing an adequate supply of future workers with high-level competence in mathematics. Wealthy countries that fail to provide gender equity in employment are at risk of producing too few citizens of either gender with the skills necessary to compete successfully in a knowledge-based economy driven by science and technology."

Wealthy countries that fail to provide gender equity? I think they are talking about you, Australia!

References

Debunking Myths about Gender and Mathematics Performance.
Jonathan M. Kane and Janet E. Mertz
Notices of the AMS.
January 2012 Volume 59, Number 1 p.10-21.
http://www.ams.org/notices/201201/rtx120100010p.pdf

Major new study examines explanations for math 'gender gap'
EurekAlert
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-12/ams-mns120511.php

There really is no difference between men and women’s math abilities.
Alasdair Wilkins
io9
Dec 12, 2011
http://io9.com/psychology/

Whole Genome Study of Mathematical Ability
Autism Research Centre
http://www.autismresearchcentre.com/project_22_genome2

Do you live in Australia, the UK, Sweden or Europe? What you can do to help get justice for Julian Assange

2011-12-15T07:59:00.000-08:00

Justice For Assange
Action
http://justice4assange.com/Action.html

Lili's rather pointless thought for the day

2011-12-12T20:01:00.000-08:00

Don't you just hate it when you are visiting your grandmother in her home, and you're making yourself a cuppa, and you dig a teaspoon out of nanna's cutlery drawer, and it's pretty-much covered in a hardened layer of dried egg yolk from a breakfast boiled egg, and you return to the drawer in the hope of more luck, and there you go, there's a whole collection of egg-glazed teaspoons in there. Stone the crows, Nanna!

Donna Williams has come such a long way over the years

2011-12-12T18:01:00.000-08:00

Donna Williams is a high-profile Australian best-selling author of autobiographies about what is supposedly an autistic life. She was given a diagnosis of autism by the Australian clinician Dr Lawrence (Laurie) Bartak in her 20s. This is how Dr Bartak described Williams in a report broadcast by ABC radio in 1996:

"She is much more impaired in spoken language, and when one talks with her even now, although she's enormously more able, she still has quite a demonstrable impairment in spoken language. And her comprehension of other people's speech is not marvellous.
I've had to, for example, talk to her slowly and with as little intonation as possible, for her to be able to comprehend and to keep things reasonably concrete."

There's quite a contrast between the woman described by Bartak and Donna's current apparently excellent ability to make and comprehend spoken language, as is apparent when one listens to her library of podcast interviews with various people, which is freely accessible from Williams' podcast page. Williams is articulate, attentive to her guests, intimate, engaging and warm, and at times shares jokes. I've met autistics who never go anywhere near to having this type of social fluency at any time in their long lives. In the interview with a synaesthete musician promoting a new CD Williams and her guest even manage to keep a perky interview kicking along despite the constant distraction of a tradesman banging away with tools in the background, a situation that would drive many autistics (and many non-autistics) beyond the limits of civility.

Williams' page of podcasts includes an interview with Australian synaesthete musician Tracey Roberts in which both Williams and Roberts describe their own synesthesia experiences. Roberts lives in a geodesic dome, as do all synaesthetes. We are very creative people.

Oddpod: Podcasts by autism-friendly host, Donna Williams.
http://oddpod.donnawilliams.net/

Autism - a special report by Kathy Gollan
Health Report.
29th July 1996
ABC Radio National.

Lili's thought for the day

2011-12-12T17:56:00.001-08:00

Many thanks for your tips about interesting reading, Socrates! I wish I had more time to write about synaesthesia. I hope you are having a lovely festive season.

Some words of wisdom from Dr Allen Frances

2011-12-12T17:39:00.000-08:00

"The label schizophrenia is still with us, but hopefully not for too much longer. It is a tired, old concept that has outlived much of its usefulness. There is not one schizophrenia: more likely a hundred causes will gradually be teased out as research goes beyond description and discovers fundamental explanations."

I would argue that this statement applies as much to autism/the autistic spectrum as it does to schizophrenia.

"People mistakenly think that naming a psychiatric problem shapes it into a simple disease with a reductionist, biological explanation."

This is a quote from a review by Dr Allen Frances of the book American Madness by Richard Noll, which has just been published in New Scientist magazine. Unfortunately much of the book review is behind a paywall. Dr Allen Frances is an Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry and was the chair of the task force in charge of DSM 4, an edition of the "bible" of American psychiatry. The book that Frances reviewed is about the evolution of the diagnostic concept of schizophrenia, a concept that is very relevant to the many articles and discussions in my blog about two interesting subjects: Jani Schofield and the ambitions of Prof. Patrick McGorry. Dr Frances has been one of the most outspoken and influential critics of the mental health policies for Australia that have been advocated by Prof. McGorry.

Why psychiatrists should mind their language
by Allen Frances
New Scientist
Magazine issue 2842 December 10th 2011 p.51.
article published online 7th December 2011
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228425.800-why-psychiatrists-should-mind-their-language.html

Lili's thought for the day

2011-12-09T19:17:00.000-08:00

Julian Assange got his start in computers with a Commodore 64. We had a Tandy TRS-80. I think that's where we went wrong.

Difficulty coping with crowded places - what is the real issue?

2011-12-08T08:00:00.000-08:00

This is a video of David, who had a brain hemorrhage resulting in a number of problems including acquired prosopagnosia (face-blindness) and a problem with "route finding" or navigating. In this video David tries and struggles to explain what it is that he sees when he views faces. He has lost the ability to remember faces as a result of his brain injury.

The thing that I find most interesting about this video is when David explains that his disability in perceiving faces and another problem with visual perception has resulted in an aversion to being among crowds, and also difficulty with dealing with visually crowded places such as a very full refrigerator or a shop full of displayed goods. He describes this as a "dyslexia of vision". Because David has acquired prosopagnosia he can tell that this problem with crowds is due to his brain injury. Before the hemorrhage he used to love crowded places. People who have been labelled as autistic and parents of kids diagnosed as autistic often describe being unable to cope with crowds and supermarkets as a behavioural characteristic of autism. David's experience appears to indicate that a difficulty with coping with visually crowded places could have prosopagnosia, possibly in combination with other visual processing issues, as a cause, and in light of the fact that prosopagnosia (acquired and developmental) is thought to be a fairly common and under-diagnosed disability, I've got to wonder how many of these supposedly autistic people who can't tolerate crowds and supermarkets have disabilities that are really sensory and social problems caused by unidentified prosopagnosia.

Another aspect of prosopagnosia which could easily be mistaken for autism is a coping strategy that people without face memory typically use - memorizing many different details of a person's appearance for identification. For example, a person who cannot recognize faces might pay close attention to the design or colours on the shirt of a person who the prosopagnosic needs to remember, and also try to remember if that person wore glasses, or what their hair was like. An enhanced attention to details, including visual details, is a universally recognized feature of autism/Asperger syndrome, and it is easy to see how the detail-memorizing coping strategy of prosopagnosics could be misinterpreted as a special autistic gift for attending to details.

I think it's a very good thing that we can view David giving a first-hand explanation of his experiences and perceptions, rather than having to rely on an interpretation from a doctor or a researcher. Thank you David for sharing!

Lili's thought for the day

2011-12-08T01:51:00.000-08:00

You can't say that the Australian government lacks sensitivity - the deportation of two Sri Lankan asylum seekers has been scheduled for December the 12th and 13th because the 10th is Human Rights Day, and we must observe human rights on Human Rights Day.

Lili's thought for the day

2011-12-07T02:33:00.001-08:00

How many Indonesian children will be spending this Christmas in Australian adult jails? That's not just a rhetorical question. We apparently don't even know how many, but it's certainly way too many.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/children-in-jail/story-fn558imw-1226206495388

The stupidest thing I've read in the Guardian for at least a week or two

2011-12-06T10:13:00.000-08:00

"There is no cure for synaesthesia, but next year's UK Synaesthesia Association conference will include a speaker who claims to be able to reduce its effects."

WHAT? A cure for synaesthesia? What? Oh, f*** off. Why does a bit of colour in music and the alphabet require an intervention? I like my synaesthesia, and I suspect that there's a lot more to it than atypical sensory experiences. I don't want to "reduce its effects", in fact I'd be afraid to try such a thing. FYI synesthesia is not "a medical condition". It is a neuropsychological variation. It is not diagnosed by doctors, it is identified by researchers. The journalist who wrote this inappropriate application of the standard cliches of journalistic treatment of medical topics in a way that has inadvertently caused objection and offense has no excuse at all for her mistaken approach, as she has herself quoted in her article a synaesthesia researcher who advised that she has "met very few synaesthetes who feel that" synaesthesia is a thing that one would consult a doctor about, but the heedless journalist Laura Barnett just ploughed on.

Synaesthesia: when two senses become one.
by Laura Barnett
Guardian
December 5th 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/dec/05/synaesthesia-hearing-colours-mixing-senses

Lili's Christmas Wish List

2011-12-05T21:35:00.000-08:00

I want one of those cute little shopping bags that look like a rose or a strawberry when it is folded up.

I want to cancel my subscription to New Scientist and read Mad Scientist instead.

I want to find the right frequency to tune into radio station KLON, just to find out what music everyone else is listening to.

I want to introduce Kevin Rudd to Gregory Blackstock, just to see whether two baby-faced multi-lingual white nerds might strike up a conversation in Mandarin.

I want to feel the soft, heavy blue-green coolness of the sea on a perfect morning, and not get eaten or even sampled by a shark.

I want Golden Earring's entire back catalogue of CDs.

I want to be serenaded by the Choir of Hard Knocks singing Christmas carols written by Nick Cave.

I want to watch the great, the wicked and the crooked fall, to make way for something much better.

I want to know exactly when the traffic lights will be turning blue.

Lili's thought for the day

2011-12-05T09:16:00.000-08:00

When I look back and recall weddings that I've been to over the years, of some marriages that didn't last, but the absence of an official ceremony for some gay and lesbian relationships which turned out to be no less substantial, I think it's a sad thing. We can never be sure what the future will be like, and our plans may fail in time, but we must all be allowed to live our lives, fully.

Something odd from Tammet's past

2011-12-05T01:15:00.000-08:00

If the date given for this recording of June 18th 1995 is correct, Tammet would have been around 16 years at the time, and he would have been Daniel Corney. I believe the person who uploaded it was a childhood friend of Tammet's, who appears to have a non-British heritage. There are many questions and doubts about Daniel Tammet's past and his characteristics, but we can be sure that he was never just your average Joe. Perhaps this video is evidence that a desire to become famous had an early origin.

Lili's political thought for the day

2011-12-03T00:03:00.001-08:00

The ALP shouldn't even have a right-wing faction. Drop 'em all in the sea! Where's Doc Evatt when you need him?

Fascinating docos about fascinating people

2011-12-02T23:40:00.000-08:00

Tonight SBS Two will be broadcasting a documentary titled "Looking for Lowry" about the UK artist L. S. Lowry, who is one of the many famous people in my huge list of famous people who have been the subject of diagnosis or speculation regarding the autistic spectrum.

"Those who knew and appreciated him throw light on the character of this social recluse, who despite his solitary life, was affectionate and supportive to those who entered his limited sphere."

http://www.sbs.com.au/schedule/SBSTWO#evening

Not so long ago there was another documentary broadcast on Aussie TV about another famous loner artist who is in both of my big lists - the one about famous people and autism/Asperger syndrome, and also my big list of famous synaesthetes or possible synesthetes. The subject of this fascinting doco is Piet Mondrian, who was most famous for his bold geometric paintings featuring a limited rage of colours including black, white, blue, red and yellow, but he did much more besides. Mondrian hated the colour green, and it was with great reluctance that he created a few marketable paintings of flowers during the very lean times when his ground-breaking geometrical paintings would not sell. The title of that French documentary is "In Mondrian's Studio" and it's certainly worth a look if it is ever repeated.

http://sales.arte.tv/detailFiche.action?programId=2464

Making a Christmas cake?

2011-12-02T23:03:00.000-08:00

Lili Marlene's Christmas Boiled Fruit Cake with Brandy
http://incorrectattitudes.blogspot.com/2009/12/lili-marlenes-christmas-cake.html

Contains no friggin' palm oil!

Lili's festive thought for the day

2011-12-02T23:01:00.001-08:00

Another beach season soon to be ruined by a religious festival.

Lili's thought for the day

2011-12-02T22:55:00.000-08:00

Alex Perry would be less creepy if he didn't try so hard.

An short excerpt from a 2009 interview with Daniel Tammet published at Psychology Today

2011-12-02T22:43:00.000-08:00

......

S. It is remarkable. I am curious though, if you actually tried the calculation pi, could you actually do the calculation at all in your head to any digits?

D. I've never tried the calculation. I am not actually aware of the equations mathematicians use.

S. Okay.

......

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful-minds/200912/conversations-creativity-daniel-tammet-part-ii-how-prodigious-savants-mi

Perhaps not the answer that the interviewer was expecting?

Positive spin on autism genes in recent New Scientist article

2011-12-02T22:24:00.000-08:00

Last month New Scientist magazine published a feature article with an accompanying editorial that included speculation that genes associated with autism could have played a pivotal role in human evolution, which I like as an idea even if I'm not convinced by the evidence cited to support it. The bits that I don't like are the way this idea about autism is presented side-by-side with similar arguments about disorders and mental illnesses such as bipolar, schizophrenia and ADHD, and the way they put this article behind a paywall. Sigh.

Ravilious, Kate (2011) Different minds. New Scientist. November 5th 2011. Issue 2837 p.35-37. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228372.000-mental-problems-gave-early-humans-an-edge.html

The opposite of investigative journalism

2011-12-02T20:20:00.000-08:00

I'm still trying to figure this one out. J. K. Rowling and other celebrities have complained at a recent inquiry in the UK that they have been stalked by the press and had their privacy invaded, while Daniel Tammet has apparently had a dream run with the world's press and electronic media, including the same hard-arsed British media industry that the other celebrities have recently been complaining about bitterly. All these years Tammet has been sitting on the fact that Tammet was not his real surname up until 2001, and I don't even think it was a journalist who revealed to the world what his original surname was. And the name change is just the tip of the iceberg of the untold story of Daniel Tammet.

In 2005 one journo with the much over-rated newspaper the Guardian wrote a piece on Tammet which was totally lacking in any skeptical view except that it revealed the fact that his name had been changed, but the journalist kindly did not reveal Tammet's original surname of Corney, citing a desire for privacy on Tammet's part, and thus failing to give the readers of the Guardian the key that could unlock the significance of the publicly-available World Memory Championship records of Tammet's pre-2001 achievements. Tammet apparently made veiled references at his own blog to his participation in a "Memory Olympics", but without knowing what surname he did this under this information cannot be easily verified or researched.

The almost uniformly breathlessly sycophantic promotional tripe that has been written and broadcast about Daniel Tammet by the world's journalists over many years, contrasting with the invasive and obnoxious treatment that many other famous people have received from the media over the years begs the question - why has Daniel Tammet been such a sacred cow?

New wave and old-fashioned sex segregation in everyday Australian life, and around the world

2011-11-29T16:39:00.000-08:00

Gender segregation in........

Baby names

Girl’s names are more likely to end in a vowel sound and surnames used as first names appear to be more common with boy’s names.

Baby clothes

We are all familiar with the blue and pink cliché.

Skirts and dresses for toddler and baby girls are easy to find in the shops, even though such garments can be a hazard that can trip-up or impede an active crawling, climbing or toddling infant.

Schools

Many private schools are boys or girls only.

Single-sex classes are becoming increasingly popular in Queensland government schools, even though research has apparently failed to find an educational advantage in single-sex classes and negative effects have been found:
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2011/10/scientific-evidence-for-positive.html

Schoolyard play?

A recent study of Australian childrens' play in schoolyards by Kate Darian-Smith and Nikki Henningham has found that "No formal gender segregation was observed in the playground in Australian government and non-government coeducational schools", but what about informal gender segregation? It appears that the report did not directly address this question, even though a fair number of the photos in the report showed single-sex groups of kids playing together. A possible negative impact of girls' traditional school uniforms on their play was observed: "In all schools many schools (sic) girls preferred to wear shorts, including under dresses, so as to be more able to participate in physical play." Co-educational play possibly broadens the play options of all: "A teacher at the all-boys school noted with interest that when girls are involved with holiday programs, skipping and clapping rhymes become evident..."

Youth clubs

Many youth clubs and movements, including church and religion-based youth groups, started out long ago as single-sex organizations, and some remain so. The Boy Scout movement started as a male-only organization, and the Girl Guides developed as a parallel to cater for girls who wanted to participate in similar activities. As with some adult service clubs, gender segregation has remained in the female version of the organization but not in the male one. According to the Wikipedia “Even when most Scout organisations became coeducational, Guiding remained separate in many countries to provide a female-centred programme.”

Community health centres, counselling and health advocacy services

Examples:

Mensline (telephone counselling service)
MensTime (relationship counselling, group programs and seminars, run by Anglicare, funded by a state govt. dept.)
Women's Health Victoria (advocacy)
Logan Women's Health and Wellbeing Centre
Women's Healthworks

The idea of health service centres specifically for women is widespread and long-established. These places may offer support groups, counselling, gynaecological and/or educational services for women delivered by a women only staff.

Services promoted as “men’s health” appear to have more of an emphasis on counselling, psychology and recreational activities, and there appears to be more businesses advertised as men’s health services. Men’s and women’s health services may be government or charity funded.

Social and informal social support organizations

Some examples:

Dads only playgroups
Freemasons
Red Hat Society
CWA
Mens’ Sheds – an organization that is rapidly growing and being allocated a lot of government funding in Australia, and enjoys the patronage of the Prime Minister’s partner (a man).
The Women’s Connection
Asperger Women Association

Service clubs and business networking organizations

There are many regional and larger networking organizations specifically for businesswomen.

Many service clubs have a male-only membership past that has been modernized in past decades to allow women to become members of the organization as a whole or members of individual branches. Men’s and women’s only branches can be found in some service clubs and societies. The YWCA and YMCA are obvious examples of service organizations that have at least started with a single-sex focus.

General informal socializing (parties)

Parties for adults in Australia in the 1960s and 1970s have been described as strictly gender segregated by many social commentators, to the extent that the notion of parties where the men gather at one end of the room and the womenfolk cluster at the other end has become a cliche. It was noted that this was not limited to any particular strata of society - it has been observed among the privileged and the working class. Most definitely attitudes did improve in Australia during the latter parts of the 20th century, but I can report encountering some negativity from some older women during the 1990s in Australia as a result of me talking with their husbands as we all sat around a campfire during some off-road travelling. Their reaction seemed to echo an experience recounted in an interesting article about the controversial Australian movie Wake in Fright: "At one party, I remember my wife, who plays Janette Hynes, got tired of talking about hats and recipes and so decided to wander over towards the men’s circle. Later, she said to me, “I was greeted like I was a harlot, so I immediately scurried back to the women and the women were furious and thought I was trying to steal their men!” I recommend that movie as a striking depiction of gender segregation in socialising in Australia in the 1960s. Men who dared to stray to chat with the women at Australian parties in the past were apparently paradoxically regarded as a bit gay. I'm really not sure what the present situation is, as I don't go to a lot of parties. Sex segregation at parties is definitely one Australian tradition that is not worth resurrecting!

Consumer products marketed to one gender for no obvious or compelling reason

Some examples:

Chocolate bar lines in Ikea stores, with Karlfazer brand in blue packaging right next to Geisha brand in cute pink packaging

Eggs by Ellah in artsy pink packaging http://eggsbyellah.com.au/

Coffee Chill iced coffee (special promotions with a blokey theme)

Red Balloon "his and hers" leisure activity gift voucher packages - the men's pack includes activities to do with beer, action, sport and the outdoors, and the women's pack includes wine, relaxation and classes for learning how to make food or drink (cookery and barista classes), because after all that work as a kitchen slave a woman needs a bit of relaxation and a glass of wine.

Magazine racks in virtually all newsagents – magazine racks are typically segregated according to gender stereotypes that apply to the subject area of magazines, with “women’s magazines”, fashion, slimming, cooking, parenting and celebrity gossip mags displayed on the female side, and business, science, computers, motor vehicle, fishing, fitness, smut and current affairs mags are often shelved on the male side of the rack.

Book shelves at the David Jones department store – sex stereotype segregation in much the same manner as the typical newsagent shop’s display of magazines – sport books, humour and biographies of males on one side, cookery, slimming and biographies of women on the other side.

Books

Some examples:
Womens’ Stuff by Kaz Cooke
The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn and Hal Iggulden
The Daring Book for Girls by Andrea J. Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz

Some fictional genres are thought to have a readership of predominantly one gender, for example “chick lit”.

Book authors

A quote from page 53 of the paperback edition of the 2011 book Spoilt Rotten! by Theodore Dalrymple:
"Yet I had never seen books classified in this way before, and the novelty of the arrangement surely tells us something about our present Zeitgeist, as does the classification of books by the race, sex or sexual practices of their authors."

Fictional plotlines

In the "chick lit" sequel novel Ruby Blues by Jessica Rudd, daughter of Australian politician K. Rudd, a club for women involved in politics forms in Canberra in which the members get together to gripe about how hard it is to be a woman in politics.

Entertainment

The free-to-air TV channel 7Mate is marketed explicitly to men and the programming of the GEM TV channel is designed to appeal to a female audience.

Movie genres

Some genres seem to be created with only one gender in mind, such as romantic comedy and action movies. Every Hollywood action movie includes at least one stripper scene, by law.

Parenting advice

Relationships Australia, a counselling organization that is largely funded by government, advertised workshops about parenting girls for Dads and workshops about parenting boys for Mums, presumably based on the presumption that female parents need help in understanding their male offspring, and vice versa.

Books or advice about raising kids of one gender generally originate from a person of that same gender, for example:
Dannielle Miller is promoted as a parenting expert who specializes in the area of raising girls and her book The Butterfly Effect is about raising teen girls. The area of books of advice about parenting teens seems to be particularly affected by division by gender.

The popular but evidence-free book Raising Boys was written by Steve Biddulph, who was voted Australian Father of the Year in 2000 for his work encouraging the active role of fathers, a job surely only fit for a man.

A gender division can even be found in specialized areas of parenting advice:

Smart Girls, Gifted Women by Barbara A. Kerr

Smart Boys: Talent, Manhood, and the Search for Meaning by Barbara A. Kerr, Sanford J. Cohn and Audie Alcorn

Asperger’s in Pink by Julie Clark and Rudy Simone is just one of many recent books on the subject of Asperger syndrome and the autistic spectrum and girls, an area characterized by much speculation by people regarded as Asperger syndrome experts but supported by little scientific research

Raising Boys with ADHD: Secrets for Parenting Healthy, Happy Sons by James Forgan and Mary Anne Richey

Events – organizational and informal

Reclaim the Night (men are reputedly banned from these marches)
Movember (Women are not encouraged to grow a moustache to help raise awareness of men’s health issues, although heaven knows, many of us could.)
Hen’s nights
Buck’s parties
International Women’s Day
International Men’s Day

High school chaplain-delivered programmes for students

Single-sex programs offered by high school chaplains in Australian government schools include programs that go by the names Strength and Shine and Bloke and Chick, which makes me want to puke and chuck. Apparently the Strength and Shine programs are the products of the powerful fundamentalist Hillsong church.

Religion-required sex segregation

There are too many examples to attempt to list. Some particularly striking examples include sex segregation in Islam and in some Islamic societies, and also in Orthodox Judaism. FaceGlat is an Israel-based and sex segregated version of Facebook.

Crime and social deviance

Outlaw bikie clubs appear to have a male-only membership

Research studies

Example:
Health in Men Air Quality Study by researchers from the University of WA, Edith Cowan University, CSIRO and WA Centre for Health and Ageing.

Female and child subjects have routinely been excluded from medical research studies, for various reasons, limiting the applicability of the research findings. There are good reasons why some research studies only have subjects of one sex, but for others the reasons are far from clear.

Colours

Baby boys are dressed in baby blue and baby girls in pink, but the colour-coding of humanity certainly doesn't stop there. In the last 10 years or so there has been a trend in which an overwhelming proportion of girls' clothing is coloured in the stereotypical girly colours of pink, magenta, salmon, mauve and purple, and this trend of gender segregation in clothing colours extends less obviously to boys, whose clothing range in department stores is predominantly in a range of colours that aren't those above, including black and dark colours. The Barbie-doll pink fad has now extended into women's wear, with hues in women's fashion that would have been unusual years ago becoming the mode, colours such as bright salmon and hot pink. Menswear has always been produced in a quite limited and sombre range of colours, and I don't think this has changed much in a long time.

Gendered colours are not limited to clothing, school bags, kids' lunch-boxes or fashion. Any toy section in a variety retail store in Australia will have it's pink aisles full of female and baby dolls, and other aisles full of action-fantasy play toys and moving vehicle toys in which colours such as black, blue, green and browns that are not pretty predominate.

Charity and celebrity patronage

A recent news report described Michelle Obama being greeted very warmly by an audience of schoolgirls, and another very wealthy and famous African-American woman, Oprah Winfrey, funded a school in South Africa for girls, the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls.

The Priceline Sisterhood appears to be one of those charity projects done by a retailer as positive PR. It also appears to be marketed to women and promoted as benefiting women through supporting health charities that address issues that have apparently been identified by Australian women as top concerns. Priceline is a cosmetics retailer and the website of this project is bright pink.

References

Caputo, Raffaelle (2009) Wake in Fright: an interview with Ted Kotcheff.
Senses of Cinema. Issue number 51
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2009/feature-articles/ted-kotcheff-interview/

Darian-Smith, Kate and Henningham, Nikki (2011) Childhood, tradition and change: a national study of the historical and contemporary practices and significance of of Australian childrens' playlore. June 2011.
http://ctac.esrc.unimelb.edu.au/objects/project-pubs/FinalReport.pdf

Australia has become a place in which boys and girls and men and women are routinely and unquestioningly sorted into two separated groups. Aussies generally don't like to see racial or ethnic groups segregated in this manner, but it appears that we have become accustomed to the sexes being sent off to different places and labelled and defined very differently. This isn't the kind of world that I wanted to raise my children in!

The girl in the video below is not my child, but I'd be proud if she was my daughter.

Lili's thought for the day

2011-11-28T09:58:00.000-08:00

I'm growing a moustache for Movember.

A quote from Bjork

2011-11-27T06:56:00.000-08:00

"You have 1,000 colors of emotion, and each album is one color exaggerated. It’s so exaggerated that it’s not me, but it’s one color, you know? And I feel like that color is in everyone."

Is she just being metaphorical or perhaps describing a cross-modal experience? Only she would know for sure.

Bjork.
by Mathias Augustyniak, Michaël Amzalag
Interview.
June 2011?
http://www.interviewmagazine.com/music/bjork/#/page4

Comments and replies

2011-11-24T18:52:00.000-08:00

The comments are coming thick and fast to many of my posts, including my main articles about Jani Schofield and Daniel Tammet:

Daniel Tammet - The Boy with the Incredible Story
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2011/10/about-daniel-tammet-excerpt-from-my.html

Jani Schofield - I’m sorry that I’ll have to add this sad and shameful tale to my list of famous synesthetes
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2010/04/jani-schofield-im-sorry-that-ill-have.html

Lili's astonished thought for the day

2011-11-24T09:48:00.000-08:00

Gosh, I could have sworn that this old CNN article about synaesthesia used to have a collection of disapproving comments attached to it!

http://www-cgi.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/02/09/synesthesia.genes/index.html

Lili's exasperated thought for the day

2011-11-24T09:32:00.000-08:00

For crying out loud! Researchers are still writing papers that cite the case of Daniel Tammet as evidence of something to do with savantism, and respected journals are still publishing them:

http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001205

Lili's thought for the day

2011-11-24T09:28:00.000-08:00

MIRACLE CURE FOR ADHD! Boy's symptoms instantaneously disappear as he is moved by parents to a school that ain't a joke!

This is why I'm not buying any Christmas puddings or mince pies that contain palm or vebetable oil

2011-11-24T07:01:00.000-08:00

Orang-utans killed for 'pest control'
Sydney Morning Herald.
November 24, 2011.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/orangutans-killed-for-pest-control-20111124-1nw59.html#ixzz1edRLuyvU

I guess it is at least a good thing that these Indonesian a***holes were arrested. I hope the authorities in Kalimantan stay on the job of properly enforcing the conservation laws of Indonesia, but for now I'm staying away from palm oil and all processed foods that do or might contain it as an ingredient.

This is a link to the recently-published research paper that was referred to in the SMH article. It appears to have roughly half of Indonesia's research scientists as co-authors:

Quantifying Killing of Orangutans and Human-Orangutan Conflict in Kalimantan, Indonesia.
PLoS ONE.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0027491

They should call this the Daniel Tammet package

2011-11-22T20:16:00.000-08:00

I was up late the other night with the telly on and a friend and I were making jokes about the silly infomercials, and an infomercial came on which appears to be an educational package for teaching lightning maths calculating tricks and memory techniques to kids. It looked a lot like some of the skills which Daniel Tammet appears to have used in ways that have impressed some researchers so much that they have claimed that Tammet's ability could only be due to the mysterious gift of savant syndrome. If schoolkids can be taught this stuff, then how much of a savant did Tammet need to be to perform such tricks?

The name of this package is Brainetics, and I do not recommend it or advocate it. It's just interesting to see what kinds of skills they claim can be taught to children. Another interesting aspect of the advertisement is the predominance of girls, including some purportedly diagnosed with ADHD, among the kids shown performing the mental calculation tricks. I suspect that this is not an attempt to counter negative gender stereotypes about females and maths, I rather suspect that the message that the viewer is supposed to take away is that this learning program is so easy and effective that it can even be used to teach girls and ADHDers maths (!) It's a sad old world.

Shopping for story books for a young child?

2011-11-22T20:14:00.001-08:00

Then you might find this of interest:

Lili Marlene's List of Delightful Children's Picture Books
http://incorrectattitudes.blogspot.com/2009/08/lili-marlenes-list-of-delightful.html

Lili's politico-demographic thought for the day

2011-11-20T16:51:00.000-08:00

Did you see all the old people celebrating the election win in Spain? A sea of chrome-domes!

Lili's exasperated thought for the day

2011-11-20T08:53:00.000-08:00

Boycott all Christmas-themed decorations and foods that are on sale before Halloween! We must draw the line somewhere, or one day half the damned year will be devoured by the silly season.

Lili's thought for the day

2011-11-20T08:47:00.000-08:00

Jeanette Winterson should get some kind of prize just for the title of her new autobiography - "Why be happy when you could be normal?"

Lili's disapproving thought for the day

2011-11-17T03:50:00.001-08:00

I don't want to eat any Christmas pudding made with palm oil or unspecified "vegetable oil" this Christmas!

Lili's enjoyable thought for the day

2011-11-17T03:21:00.000-08:00

Is it just me, or is it impossible to watch that slim brown Obama, with his slightly badass swagger, and not be reminded of Cleavon Little in the movie Blazing Saddles?

Lili's political thought for the day

2011-11-17T03:15:00.000-08:00

When the Australian government sends asylum-seekers back overseas to death and danger, the shame is upon all of us.

Lili's thought for the day

2011-11-17T03:13:00.000-08:00

Was the Ding Palace the forerunner to the McMansion? Someone should study this.

Tammet compared to a language savant

2011-11-14T09:21:00.000-08:00

When some highly qualified researchers from universities compared Daniel Tammet with a man who appears to more closely conform to the established concept of the savant, a language savant named Christopher who has definite disability, Tammet's performance was quite different in at least two different ways. Who'd have thought? As far as I can tell from his own account of the testing that he did with two of the authors of the book below, Tammet might not have known that his performance in one of the tests would later be compared with that of a(nother) savant.

Neil Smith, Ianthi Tsimpli, Gary Morgan, Bencie Woll
The Signs of a Savant: Language Against the Odds. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=3PgyeypNqzYC&vq=tammet&dq=tammet+daniel&source=gbs_navlinks_s

See pages 167 and 221 in this book for Tammet's account of this research:

Daniel Tammet
Born on a blue day: inside the extraordinary mind of an autistic savant : a memoir. Simon and Schuster, 2007.
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=gGrBCQYD3qEC&vq=christopher&source=gbs_navlinks_s

A bit of unsolicited advice about fruit mince pies as the festive season draws closer

2011-11-13T09:48:00.000-08:00

I've got a bee in my bonnet over many different issues and causes, and I so much love to share my thoughts and opinions with my readers. I'm against buying processed foods that contain palm oils, even though this is a difficult thing to avoid, as for some reason palm oil is used in a great many processed foods and even in non-food consumer goods such as toiletries. I'm against palm oil for two reasons - the big one is the loss of habitats of endangered animals such as the orangutan due to the clearing of tropical forests in countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia to make way for palm oil plantations. The other reason to shun palm oil is that it is apparently one of the worst fats and oils for health.

Avoiding buying foods and products that contain palm oil is not as simple a task as it should be. Because we have a mob of spineless fools in Canberra making our laws, there is no legal compulsion for food producers to specify exactly what type of oil is in processed food products, and as a consequence palm oil in foods is often described as "vegetable oil" or sometimes "palmolein", which isn't much help to the consumer, who is forced to act like a Sherlock Bloody Holmes just to find out what he or she is eating. So one must assume that all products that contain "vegetable oil" or "vegetable oils" contain palm oil, and I'm sad to report that this applies to every single brand of fruit mince pies that I have checked in a number of different supermarket chains. God only knows what "margarine" as an ingredient is made of, so I'm avoiding that mystery gloop as well. It looks like it's going to be a fruit mince pie-free Christmas for palm oil avoiding consumers like myself, unless I should make a happy discovery of a brand of pie that uses a luxury ingredient such as butter. What kind of f***ed-up world do we live in when you've got a supermarket shelf full of baked goods, but no pastry made of tasty, natural butter to buy?

Lili's thought for the day

2011-11-11T21:14:00.000-08:00

Fraus meretur fraudem.

from More mottoes from 16th-century sources by Jeff Lee
http://www.shipbrook.com/jeff/mottoes2.html

New study challenges the standard scientific view of emotion perception

2011-11-11T19:41:00.000-08:00

"Visual scenes, voices, bodies, other faces, cultural orientation, and even words shape how emotion is perceived in a face, calling into question the still-common assumption that the emotional state of a person is written on and can be read from the face like words on a page."

So does that mean that simple tests of reading facial expressions, such as Baron-Cohen and team's Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test, have limited relevance to real-world emotion perception?

Lisa Feldman Barrett, Batja Mesquita and Maria Gendron
Context in Emotion Perception.
Current Directions in Psychological Science.
October 2011 vol. 20 no. 5 286-290.
doi: 10.1177/0963721411422522
http://cdp.sagepub.com/content/20/5/286.abstract

Can you help ASAN in their investigation into improper use of personality testing in job hiring?

2011-11-11T01:05:00.000-08:00

"The Autistic Self Advocacy Network is investigating employers' use of personality tests to screen job applicants as part of applications for employment and the broader hiring process. These tests may unfairly screen out qualified Autistic applicants and those with other hidden disabilities through the use of subjective questions unrelated to job performance"

I query the use of the word "tests" in this statement, as I doubt that personality features of job applicants are put to any test in most hiring processes. Much more likely job applicants will be given a multiple-choice questionnaire to fill in, which is not a test of any type, but a mere self-report battery of questions, of which the truth of the answers given by job applicants often cannot be checked or tested.

I you live in the US and have been turned down for a job in which personality testing was used, ASAN would like to hear from you:
http://www.autisticadvocacy.org/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=163

I've been protesting about this kind of thing for many years now. Irrespective of whether autism or a perception of autism is a factor in the rejection of job applicants who are rejected because of percieved personality traits that are irrelevant to the job, this type of practice is unfair and unecessary and discriminatory. Formal personality testing is not the only method by which job applicants are discriminated against on the basis of personality. I was once told that I failed to win a job due to a lack of smiling in the job interview. How much a person naturally smiles is a feature of personality and I beleive is also associated with gender, and there are a number of ways in which this type of discrimination coould be interpreted. I could characterize it as me being discriminated against because I refuse to comply with feminine stereotypes of body language and behaviour. I could also characterise this as discrimination on the basis of autism or personality. Either way, if smiling is not an essential and important feature of the job, and the applicant is otherwise fully qualified, the applicant should be knocked-out of the competition based on a smile-count. It is my intuition that smiling in a male job applicant would not be judged as such an important selection criterion, and that is just fine, but not fine for us females who are often expected to jump through hoops in the workplace that males are not required to negotiate.

My best advice to any job applicant who is faced with a personality questionnaire with questions that appear to be irrelevant to the job - if you have the choice open to you, politely withdraw your application for the job and go look for another job opportunity, or else do your best to figure out what the "correct" answers are, and give them irrespective of whether this is a reflection of your true situation. A bunch of discriminatory dicks who foist such rubbish onto job applicants deserve to be lied to. As they say, you ask a stupid question, you get a stupid answer!

Lili's thought for the day

2011-11-10T21:07:00.000-08:00

Is Daniel Tammet to neuropsychological research what Helen Demidenko was to the Australian literary establishment?

Love me, I'm a celebrity autistic/ethnic fictional writer!

Lili's list of top five pop songs that used to give me major goosebumps when I was a little girl

2011-11-08T05:39:00.000-08:00

1. Song for Suzy by The Dudley Moore Trio. This tune was a big hit in Australia, and I remember seeing it on some old black and white TV. All modern jazz gives me goosebumps, because it doesn't sound quite right, alien and strange and alone, and because of that it evokes colours like you wouldn't believe, but the freakiest thing about this tune is the grown man wailing like a wolf or something. My blood runs cold. I love it.

2. Fool on the Hill written by The Beatles, sung by Sergio Mendez, Petula Clark, Shirley Bassey and many others. I used to find the lyrics of this tune ambiguosly creepy and creepily ambiguous. One particular version of this tune was full of tension and drama, which really gave me chilling pause for thought as a young child. I wish I knew which version it was.

3. Horse With No Name by America. Riding through a featureless desert on a horse that doesn't even have a name? That is lost, existentially lost.

4. Wichita Lineman by Glenn Campbell. I can hear a wide, open landscape in this music, and home seems so far away.

5. Venus by Shocking Blue. It's a siren's song. That is by definition creepy and disturbing, but all great rock songs give me the goosebumps anyway. That loud wailing will surely attract men. I think that is the desired effect.

A brief speculative thought about the Tammet controversy and prosopagnosia

2011-11-07T10:27:00.001-08:00

To date I've not been able to find any writing by the popular writer on neuropsychological topics Dr Oliver Sacks on the subject of Daniel Tammet. I invite my readers to let me know about any pieces of writing, or material in other media, by Sacks about Tammet that I am unaware of. Tammet is the type of person that one would naturally expect Sacks to write about - Sacks writes about neurological case studies that are curiosities and interesting, and Tammet could be seen as belonging to that category. Tammet has presented himself to the world as an unusual and extreme case of synaesthesia, and Sacks has written some worthwhile stuff about synaesthesia, despite that fact that Sacks lacks a first-hand insight into the condition as a non-synaesthete. The apparent absence of interest in Tammet as a writing subject on the part of Sacks seems odd.

I've got to wonder why Sacks apparently hasn't written about Tammet. I'm tempted to speculate. Could the fact that Sacks is a quite severe case of developmental prosopagnosia be relevant to this matter? Sacks wrote a full and interesting account of what it is like to have a major dose of face-blindness in his last book The Mind's Eye along with a related severe problem with recognizing buildings and landscapes, and this chapter was I believe based on an article that he wrote for New Yorker magazine. Clearly severe prosopagnosia, a face recognition disability, is not a minor issue. It can be a major spanner-in-the-works of one's social life, if Sacks' description of the disability can be taken as a typical experience of prosopagnosics at the more severe end of the scale. Daniel Tammet has also claimed to have a serious disability in recognizing faces, in his second autobiography published in 2009 Embracing the Wide Sky, and also in a 2009 interview with the US version of the 60 Minutes TV show. In Tammet's first 2006 autobiography Born on a Blue Day he claimed to have a poor sense of direction. It is an interesting exercise to contrast Tammet's books with Sacks' written account of life with prosopagnosia. Sacks recounted in detail many episodes of social embarassment and difficulty resulting from his face recognition problems, while Tammet described in his first autobiography Born on a Blue Day finding an old friend who was waiting for him at an airport; "a familiar face", just the type of scenario which I would imagine might be a social nightmare for Sacks. How did Tammet positively identify his old friend? He didn't explain in the book, nor mention any difficulty in doing so. The reader would no doubt assume that Tammet recognized his friends and school acquaintances by their "familiar faces", but this is in stark logical contradiction with Tammet's claim in his second autobiography to have "great difficulty remembering faces, even those of people I have known for many years". Tammet seems to be a most unusual case of prosopagnosia, with an onset in adulthood, for no apparent reason, in between autobiograpies. The author Joshua Foer and myself have both been able to find a variety of pieces of evidence that throw into doubt Tammet's claims about being face-blind, and I have written about this in a post that I published in early October. I can't help wondering whether Sacks has felt skeptical about Tammet as a supposed case of savantism, synaesthesia, Asperger syndrome and prosopagnosia all in one person, one might expect that the best person to detect a pretend prosopagnosic might be a genuine case, and perhaps it might be particularly galling to behold a person who appears to be pretending to have a disability which one genuinely suffers from? I can only speculate.

Oh, and one more point worth mentioning. Did you notice that Oliver Sacks has claimed to have severe face-blindness, but I recall that he has also claimed that he does not experience synaesthesia somewhere in one of his books. Despite the common misconception, prosopagnosia and synaesthesia do not necessarily go together. I believe there are some people who do have both unusual conditions, but I don't think there is any hard evidence that synaesthetes are any more likely to have face memory issues than non-synaesthetes. Some of the earlier, more speculative and less evidence-based writing about synaesthesia from the modern era of synaesthesia research has included speculation that synaesthesia might be linked with issues such as a poor sense of direction, poor left-right discrimination and prosopagnosia, but I don't know of any research that has supported these claims, which appear to have been based on anecodes. In contrast, Tammet claims to have a laundry list of unusual neurological conditions and disorders, as well as a range of disorders of the mind in his family history. I wouldn't be at all surprised if a reading of the earlier, more speculative literature about synaesthesia, such as Dr Richard Cytowic's popular and influential book The Man Who Tasted Shapes was an influence on Tammet when he wrote his first autobiography.