Monday, October 31, 2011
Lili's ashamed thought for the day
Australia voted against Palestine being admitted as a member into UNESCO - F*** THAT SHIT!
Saturday, October 29, 2011
A quote from a 2007 paper published in the Neurocase science journal
From the acknowledgements section:
"We are greateful to Martin Weitz and the production team of 'Brain Man' (Focus Productions) for introducing us to DT as part of their science documentary. This work was supported by the MRC, UK."
I notice that Karen Ammond from the marketing and publicity firm KBC Media wasn't mentioned, even though she was apparently an Associate Producer of that documentary. She was also engaged by Daniel Tammet, the subject of that journal paper, to represent his interests, since 2001. Is this really a science documentary or is it just a bit of sciency showbiz? The borderlands between entertainment and science is a place that is full of problems.
It looks like the joke is on you, MRC, UK!
There is a similar acknowledgement in the other journal paper about Tammet by the Baron-Cohen team published in 2007, in the Journal of Consciousness Studies:
"We are grateful to Martin Weitz for introducing us to DT..."
Sources:
Bor, D, Billington, J, Baron-Cohen, S. (2007) Savant memory for digits in a case of synaesthesia and Asperger syndrome is related to hyperactivity in the lateral prefrontal cortex. Neurocase. 2007 Oct;13(5):311-9.
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/psych/nncs http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a791809555
[Unfortunately this revealing paper remains behind a paywall. Daniel Tammet is definitely the subject of this study, named “DT” in this paper. The fMRI study failed to find expected activity that would indicate synaesthesia, but did find activity consistent with the use of the memory technique known as “chunking”. Authors tried to explain findings with a claim that Tammet’s synaesthesia is a special type.]
Baron-Cohen S, Bor D, Billington J, Asher JE, Wheelwright S and Ashwin C. (2007) Savant Memory in a Man with Colour Form-Number Synaesthesia and Asperger Syndrome. Journal of Consciousness Studies. volume 14, number 9-10, September-October 2007, p. 237-251. http://www.imprint.co.uk/jcs_14_9-10.html http://www.autismresearchcentre.com/docs/papers/2007_BC_Savant_J%20Consc%20St.pdf ["DT", the subject of this study, is explicitly identified in the paper as Daniel Tammet]
"We are greateful to Martin Weitz and the production team of 'Brain Man' (Focus Productions) for introducing us to DT as part of their science documentary. This work was supported by the MRC, UK."
I notice that Karen Ammond from the marketing and publicity firm KBC Media wasn't mentioned, even though she was apparently an Associate Producer of that documentary. She was also engaged by Daniel Tammet, the subject of that journal paper, to represent his interests, since 2001. Is this really a science documentary or is it just a bit of sciency showbiz? The borderlands between entertainment and science is a place that is full of problems.
It looks like the joke is on you, MRC, UK!
There is a similar acknowledgement in the other journal paper about Tammet by the Baron-Cohen team published in 2007, in the Journal of Consciousness Studies:
"We are grateful to Martin Weitz for introducing us to DT..."
Sources:
Bor, D, Billington, J, Baron-Cohen, S. (2007) Savant memory for digits in a case of synaesthesia and Asperger syndrome is related to hyperactivity in the lateral prefrontal cortex. Neurocase. 2007 Oct;13(5):311-9.
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/psych/nncs http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a791809555
[Unfortunately this revealing paper remains behind a paywall. Daniel Tammet is definitely the subject of this study, named “DT” in this paper. The fMRI study failed to find expected activity that would indicate synaesthesia, but did find activity consistent with the use of the memory technique known as “chunking”. Authors tried to explain findings with a claim that Tammet’s synaesthesia is a special type.]
Baron-Cohen S, Bor D, Billington J, Asher JE, Wheelwright S and Ashwin C. (2007) Savant Memory in a Man with Colour Form-Number Synaesthesia and Asperger Syndrome. Journal of Consciousness Studies. volume 14, number 9-10, September-October 2007, p. 237-251. http://www.imprint.co.uk/jcs_14_9-10.html http://www.autismresearchcentre.com/docs/papers/2007_BC_Savant_J%20Consc%20St.pdf ["DT", the subject of this study, is explicitly identified in the paper as Daniel Tammet]
The key to understanding the Daniel Tammet story
THIS ARTICLE IS NOW PART OF A BOOK!!!!
Daniel Tammet: the Boy with the Incredible Story
Daniel Tammet: the Boy with the Incredible Story
by
Lili Marlene
Published by Smashwords
find it here:
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Lili's unpatriotic thought for the day
The Great Southern Land Australia - home of the world's ugliest billionaires.
Lili's cynical thought for the day
When you instantly get dubious commercial spam comments after publishing a short blog piece on the subject of publicity and marketing, that's ugly, sleazy capitalism working harder than ever.
Lili's Marxist thought of the day
When a science research study subject has publicity and marketing people working for him, and a professor psychiatrist who drives government mental health policy has his own campaign director, that's ugly, sleazy capitalism at work......
.....and it's time for all who care about science and the pursuit of scientific truth to get angry.
.....and it's time for all who care about science and the pursuit of scientific truth to get angry.
Lili's bitchy thought for the day
Being the woman who is the richest person in all of Australia means never having to care a heap what you look like. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but at least it puts wealthy women on an equal footing (with falling arches) with those fat-cat blokes.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Lili's critical thought for the day
Some of the most unbelievable fictional characters that I've ever viewed or read are in a highly-rated Douglas Sirk movie.
Lili's questions for the day
Alan Jones and Rat-in-a-hat - why the same voice? And why are the campy characters in kids' TV shows so often villains?
Lili's next thought for the day
Geography, history and politics are in my opinion three under-recognized subjects of autistic special interests or obsessions. There's more to autistic obsession than maths and computers.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Interesting reading...........
Doerfler, Ron (2008) Lightning calculators III: the media. Dead Reckonings. April 15th 2008.
http://myreckonings.com/wordpress/2008/04/15/lightning-calculators-iii-the-media/
Doerfler, Ron (2008) Lightning calculators. April 16th 2008.
http://myreckonings.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/LightningCalculators/lightningcalculators
http://myreckonings.com/wordpress/2008/04/15/lightning-calculators-iii-the-media/
Doerfler, Ron (2008) Lightning calculators. April 16th 2008.
http://myreckonings.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/LightningCalculators/lightningcalculators
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Still ferreting out more info about Tammet/Corney
I continue to collect and investigate and annotate and compile information in video, print and any available media on the subject of Daniel Tammet. So much garbage has been said and written about Daniel Tammet over the years! In this investigation I feel like a dumpster-diver trawling through a pile of rubbish looking for anything that is interesting or revealing, but not necessarily a thing of quality.
The handful of synaesthesia researchers and writers in the area of neuropsychology who have either not written about Daniel Tammet or have written with great caution on this subject are looking so much better in my eys than their colleagues who have jumped on the bandwagon and recycled questionable facts, but I am still disappointed that so little has been done by people who call themselves scientists to expose the full story of Daniel Tammet/Corney.
Daniel Tammet - The Boy with the Incredible Story (an excerpt with references from my famous synaesthetes list)
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2011/10/about-daniel-tammet-excerpt-from-my.html
The handful of synaesthesia researchers and writers in the area of neuropsychology who have either not written about Daniel Tammet or have written with great caution on this subject are looking so much better in my eys than their colleagues who have jumped on the bandwagon and recycled questionable facts, but I am still disappointed that so little has been done by people who call themselves scientists to expose the full story of Daniel Tammet/Corney.
Daniel Tammet - The Boy with the Incredible Story (an excerpt with references from my famous synaesthetes list)
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2011/10/about-daniel-tammet-excerpt-from-my.html
Don't forget the comments!
I hope you are aware that some of the best and most interesting writing at my blog these days is in the comments.
Lili's later thought for the day
I've heard of the proverbial dunny rat who is so flash that he has a gold tooth, but a sewer rat wielding two golden pistols is new to me!
Lili's husband's amusingly disrespectful comment of the day
"Look out for bushfire season, mate!"
- a comment made while watching a news report featuring a man with very bushy eyebrows
Lili's seriously concerned thought of the day
I don't think I'd want to be an asylum seeker imprisoned in a remote Australian detention centre run by a company which employs locals as guards who would otherwise be unemployable. I don't think anyone at all should be put into such a situation.
Lili's thought for the day
Someone at the 7mate TV channel has a sense of humour - they are broadcasting the movie The Man With the Golden Gun this Sunday.
Some sources of information about Daniel Tammet's 2004 recitation of the number Pi
WARNING
The list of sources below is incomplete. For a more complete list of relevant sources of info about Daniel Tammet and his feats see my new book:
Daniel Tammet: the Boy with the Incredible Story
by Lili Marlene
at Smashwords
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/288635
How you can help: NSE events: Pi in the sky. (2004) National Society for Epilepsy.
http://www.epilepsynse.org.uk/pages/involved/fundevents/pi.cfm
This link is now dead, but a record of it's content in June 2004 can be accessed through the Internet Archive Wayback Machine http://www.archive.org/
[I believe this piece could have been written before the actual event and left unedited, because it does not actually state the number 22,514 which is supposed to be Tammet's actual record: "A Kent man has succeeded in his attempt to set a new British and European record by using his incredible memory to recall the mathematical constant Pi (3.141...) to over 22,500 decimal places." Another quote from the webpage: “Daniel was part of a research study on prodigious mental ability at London's Institute of Neurology. The data appeared in the new year 2003 edition of the prestigious neuro-scientific magazine 'Nature'.” This certainly would have been the “Routes to Remembering” study by Maguire, Valentine, Wilding and Kapur.]
March, Stefanie (2004) Learn these 500 digits of pi by heart. That is about 2% of what this man can remember. Times, The March 13th 2004 Section: Home news, p.5. Accession number 7EH3642629466.
[I accessed this thru the Australian/New Zealand Reference Centre at EBSCOhost. A breathless article promoting Tammet’s Pi recitation to be held the next day. A quite lengthy and detailed article considering it is about an event not yet performed. A target figure of 22,500 for the number of decimal places expected for Tammet’s Pi recitation is given. There certainly must have been a lot of psychological pressure on Tammet to perform as planned. The venue is given as the Museum of the History of Science at Oxford University. March explains that Tamet’s mnemonic ability is “abnormal” and due to him being “one of only a handful of “acquired savants”” as a result of epilepsy at age 3. Tammet claims to be not autistic, but the journalist claims he exhibits some “symptoms”. There is discussion of Tammet’s supposed peculiarities of thought and behaviour. “Epilepsy and schizophrenia both run in the family.” After this quote there is a description of visual experiences which could be interpreted as schizophrenia hallucinations or as synaesthesia, but which I don’t think are typical of either. Tammet does not appear to like being asked to account for how he does his memory feats: “Because I am not autistic, people expect me to be more accountable than I want to be” “I can no more explain what I can do and the limits of my ability than anyone else. I do not need to prove myself.” At the end of this article is given a link to the National Society for Epilepsy's page about Tammet's Pi recitation: http://www.epilepsynse.org.uk/pages/involved/fundevents/pi.cfm]
New Pi record. (2004) Times, The March 15th 2004. Section: Home news, p. 14.
[No writer is cited for this one paragraph article reporting that “Daniel Tammet smashed the European record for Pi recollection, reciting 22,514 decimals from memory...” It seems odd that the promotional article about this event was much more long and detailed, while the article reporting what actually happened appears to be merely an anonymous afterthought.]
A fair slice of Pi. (2004) Herald Sun (Melbourne). March 17th 2004
Edition: 1 – First. Section: News, p.7. Accession number: 200403171007282512.
[Writer not named. This report did not even give the exact number of the record: “A REAL life Rain Man said he was exhausted yesterday after counting his way into the record books by reciting the number pi to more than 22,500 decimal places.”]
Lyall, Sarah (2007) Brainman, at Rest in His Oasis. New York Times. February 15th 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/15/garden/15savant.html
[regarding Tammet’s Pi recitation: “The recitation took place at the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford, lasted five hours and nine minutes and was monitored by students from the department of mathematical sciences at Oxford Brookes University. Mr. Tammet made no mistakes.” Oxford Brookes Uni is apparently a different uni than the University of Oxford, but located close by. The Museum of the History of Science in Oxford is a department of the University of Oxford, so there were apparently two different unis involved in Tammet’s Pi recitation event.]
Pi Memory Feat. (2008) University of Oxford.
http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2004/040315_1.html
Daniel Tammet (accessed 2011) Pi World Ranking List.
http://www.pi-world-ranking-list.com/lists/details/tammet.html
["This was long time claimed as a European Record, as Daniel recited 22,514 decimal places. Unfortunately he made his first mistake at postion 2,965 and did not correct this error immediately and without outside help, but only after he was told that there was a mistake."]
Pi Record (2011) Optimnem: Daniel Tammet: the official website.
http://www.optimnem.co.uk/pi.php
Friday, October 21, 2011
Some interesting quotes from Daniel Tammet and the National Society for Epilepsy from 2004
“Because I am not autistic, people expect me to be more accountable than I want to be”
“I can no more explain what I can do and the limits of my ability than anyone else. I do not need to prove myself.”
The time has come when Daniel Tammet really does need to explain how he does his memory feats, because many people now believe that his impressive past memory performances have been the result of the same type of training that other memory competition champions and memory record holders use, and are now skeptical of the idea that Tammet is neurologically special in some way.
Source of these quotes:
Learn these 500 digits of pi by heart. That is about 2% of what this man can remember.
by Stefanie March
The Times
March 13th 2004
Section: Home news, p.5.
Accession number 7EH3642629466.
I accessed this article through the Australian/New Zealand Reference Centre at EBSCOhost.
At the end of this article is given a link to the National Society for Epilepsy's page about Tammet's Pi recitation: http://www.epilepsynse.org.uk/pages/involved/fundevents/pi.cfm This link is now dead, but a record of it's content in June 2004 can be accessed through the Internet Archive Wayback Machine http://www.archive.org/ The old webpage for the event by the National Society for Epilepsy (NSE) is notable because it is another source that asserts that Tammet was one of the subjects studied in the "Routes to Remembering" study of 2002:
"Daniel was part of a research study on prodigious mental ability at London's Institute of Neurology. The data appeared in the new year 2003 edition of the prestigious neuro-scientific magazine 'Nature'."
Although it seems likely that this information was taken from the same source as a similar claim by Dr Darold Treffert at the website of the Wisconsin Medical Society which is currently published on the internet with the original source cited by Treffert as (an old version of) Tammet's own Optimnem website, the info once published by the NSE about Tammet's participation in the study is given as a direct statement of fact, and not as a quote from a second source. It is very clear that any confidentiality about the subjects of the "Routes to Remembering " study of 2002 by Maguire, Valentine, Wilding and Kapur was broken many years ago with regard to the study subject Daniel Tammet (formerly Daniel Corney), so I see no ethical reason why the authors of that study should feel constrained about openly revealing the potentially scientifically important research data that they collected in 2002 regarding the study subject Daniel Tammet.
The article by Stefanie Marsh in The Times is a breathless article promoting Tammet’s Pi recitation to be held the next day, a quite lengthy and detailed article considering it is about an event not yet performed. A target figure of 22,500 for the number of decimal places expected for Tammet’s Pi recitation is given. There certainly must have been a lot of psychological pressure on Tammet to perform as planned. The venue is given as the Museum of the History of Science at Oxford University.
March explains that Tamet’s mnemonic ability is “abnormal” and due to him being “one of only a handful of “acquired savants”” as a result of epilepsy at age 3. Tammet claims to be not autistic, but the journalist claims he exhibits some “symptoms”. There is discussion of Tammet’s supposed peculiarities of thought and behaviour. “Epilepsy and schizophrenia both run in the family.” After this quote there is a description of visual experiences which could be interpreted as schizophrenia hallucinations or as synaesthesia, but which I don’t think are typical of either.
Tammet does not appear to like being asked to account for how he does his memory feats: “Because I am not autistic, people expect me to be more accountable than I want to be” “I can no more explain what I can do and the limits of my ability than anyone else. I do not need to prove myself.”
“I can no more explain what I can do and the limits of my ability than anyone else. I do not need to prove myself.”
The time has come when Daniel Tammet really does need to explain how he does his memory feats, because many people now believe that his impressive past memory performances have been the result of the same type of training that other memory competition champions and memory record holders use, and are now skeptical of the idea that Tammet is neurologically special in some way.
Source of these quotes:
Learn these 500 digits of pi by heart. That is about 2% of what this man can remember.
by Stefanie March
The Times
March 13th 2004
Section: Home news, p.5.
Accession number 7EH3642629466.
I accessed this article through the Australian/New Zealand Reference Centre at EBSCOhost.
At the end of this article is given a link to the National Society for Epilepsy's page about Tammet's Pi recitation: http://www.epilepsynse.org.uk/pages/involved/fundevents/pi.cfm This link is now dead, but a record of it's content in June 2004 can be accessed through the Internet Archive Wayback Machine http://www.archive.org/ The old webpage for the event by the National Society for Epilepsy (NSE) is notable because it is another source that asserts that Tammet was one of the subjects studied in the "Routes to Remembering" study of 2002:
"Daniel was part of a research study on prodigious mental ability at London's Institute of Neurology. The data appeared in the new year 2003 edition of the prestigious neuro-scientific magazine 'Nature'."
Although it seems likely that this information was taken from the same source as a similar claim by Dr Darold Treffert at the website of the Wisconsin Medical Society which is currently published on the internet with the original source cited by Treffert as (an old version of) Tammet's own Optimnem website, the info once published by the NSE about Tammet's participation in the study is given as a direct statement of fact, and not as a quote from a second source. It is very clear that any confidentiality about the subjects of the "Routes to Remembering " study of 2002 by Maguire, Valentine, Wilding and Kapur was broken many years ago with regard to the study subject Daniel Tammet (formerly Daniel Corney), so I see no ethical reason why the authors of that study should feel constrained about openly revealing the potentially scientifically important research data that they collected in 2002 regarding the study subject Daniel Tammet.
The article by Stefanie Marsh in The Times is a breathless article promoting Tammet’s Pi recitation to be held the next day, a quite lengthy and detailed article considering it is about an event not yet performed. A target figure of 22,500 for the number of decimal places expected for Tammet’s Pi recitation is given. There certainly must have been a lot of psychological pressure on Tammet to perform as planned. The venue is given as the Museum of the History of Science at Oxford University.
March explains that Tamet’s mnemonic ability is “abnormal” and due to him being “one of only a handful of “acquired savants”” as a result of epilepsy at age 3. Tammet claims to be not autistic, but the journalist claims he exhibits some “symptoms”. There is discussion of Tammet’s supposed peculiarities of thought and behaviour. “Epilepsy and schizophrenia both run in the family.” After this quote there is a description of visual experiences which could be interpreted as schizophrenia hallucinations or as synaesthesia, but which I don’t think are typical of either.
Tammet does not appear to like being asked to account for how he does his memory feats: “Because I am not autistic, people expect me to be more accountable than I want to be” “I can no more explain what I can do and the limits of my ability than anyone else. I do not need to prove myself.”
Words of wisdom about mental health from Jon Jureidini on the radio
I so much love the concept of the "unexplanation" in relation to mental illness labels which child psychiatrist Prof. Jon Jureidini has created and used in his talk which was recently broadcast on ABC radio, on the radio show All in the Mind on Radio National 810am. Prof. Jureidini cites depression and most mental health labels as "unexplanations", and I'd certainly agree with him on that point. I would argue that for many cases, a diagnosis of autism or Asperger syndrome or "ASD" is an unexplanation, and that in many cases a diagnosis of a genetic syndrome would be much closer to a full and proper explanation. We should never be satisfied with "unexplanations" from doctors or psychiatrists or psychologists or counsellors. We deserve so much more from highly paid and highly educated professionals who wield a lot of power in our society.
Prof. Jureidini is one of many critics (including myself) of Prof. Patrick McGorry who has had a great level of influence on federal government mental health policy, particularly under the Gillard Government, and this has concerned many people. Many thanks to Natasha Mitchell and the ABC's Radio National for giving airtime in two different radio shows to rational and science-based critics of "big pharma" such as Prof. Jureidini and the multi-award-winning Australian health journalist and author Ray Moynihan.
Juredini, Jon (2011) Sick, Screwed Up or Just Lazy? - 2011 Adelaide Festival of Ideas. All in the Mind. ABC Radio National. 22 October 2011.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/stories/2011/3340004.htm
Moynihan, Ray (2011) A noble cause. Background Briefing. October 16th 2011.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2011/3337618.htm
Healthy Skepticism.
http://www.healthyskepticism.org/global
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Important recent research paper by Soulières, Dawson, Gernsbacher and Mottron
"Autistic spectrum intelligence is atypical, but also genuine, general, and underestimated."
Soulières I, Dawson M, Gernsbacher MA, Mottron L, (2011)
The Level and Nature of Autistic Intelligence II: What about Asperger Syndrome?
PLoS ONE 6(9):e25372.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0025372
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0025372&annotationId=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fannotation%2Ff1b7bb41-969d-42ec-a6d2-8f5cc16119eb;jsessionid=5F05A190B67952941CBEF8E9045B3A95.ambra02
Friday, October 14, 2011
Daniel Tammet - The Boy with the Incredible Story
THIS ARTICLE IS NOW A BOOK!!!!
Daniel Tammet: the Boy with the Incredible Story
by
Lili Marlene
Published by Smashwords
find it here:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/288635
The old edition of this book had over 45,000 words. The NEW AND IMPROVED edition has over 67,000 words! If you have already bought this book you should be able to download the latest version. Thank you for your support and interest.
PLEASE NOTE: the comments below are about the original post that was published here. I thought I'd leave them in place just for the record.
The old edition of this book had over 45,000 words. The NEW AND IMPROVED edition has over 67,000 words! If you have already bought this book you should be able to download the latest version. Thank you for your support and interest.
PLEASE NOTE: the comments below are about the original post that was published here. I thought I'd leave them in place just for the record.
An interesting quote from www.DanielTämmet.com
"World-class mentathlete, memory sport pioneer, personal empowerment coach, spiritual development teacher and speaker and a leading authority on Mindpower and Human Potential"
- a self-description from a 2001 version of the website www.DanielTämmet.com which was once found at www.danieltammet.com and which can be viewed in past incarnations using Internet Archive Wayback Machine http://www.archive.org/
This crock of crap is surely red flag alerting all to the possibility that the owner of that website is the type of bloke who will try just about anything to make an easy buck. Is this the type of person who should be taken at face value by scientific researchers or documentary-makers? Of course not!!!
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Daniel Tammet's Pi record - is there no end to the controversies associated with this man?
Daniel Tammet (accessed 2011) Pi World Ranking List. http://www.pi-world-ranking-list.com/lists/details/tammet.html
["This was long time claimed as a European Record, as Daniel recited 22,514 decimal places. Unfortunately he made his first mistake at postion 2,965 and did not correct this error immediately and without outside help, but only after he was told that there was a mistake."]
Pi Memory Feat. (2008) University of Oxford.
http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2004/040315_1.html
[This page might seem like a very authoritative source, but one needs to keep in mind that another source has claimed that the event “was monitored by students from the department of mathematical sciences at Oxford Brookes University” (Lyall 2007), and that is a different university to the University of Oxford.]
Pi Record (2011) Optimnem: Daniel Tammet: the official website.
http://www.optimnem.co.uk/pi.php
P.S. December 2011
I have added my annotations to the above links. Here's some more items in
chronological order in which Tammet's Pi recitation is mentioned or discussed:
How you can help: NSE events: Pi in the sky. (2004) National Society for Epilepsy. http://www.epilepsynse.org.uk/pages/involved/fundevents/pi.cfm
This link is now redirects to another address, but a record of its content in June 2004 can still be accessed through the Internet Archive Wayback Machine http://www.archive.org/
[I believe this piece could have been written before the actual event and left unedited, because it does not actually state the number 22,514 which is supposed to be Tammet's actual record: "A Kent man has succeeded in his attempt to set a new British and European record by using his incredible memory to recall the mathematical constant Pi (3.141...) to over 22,500 decimal places." Another quote from the webpage: “Daniel was part of a research study on prodigious mental ability at London's Institute of Neurology. The data appeared in the new year 2003 edition of the prestigious neuro-scientific magazine 'Nature'.” This certainly would have been the “Routes to Remembering” study by Maguire, Valentine, Wilding and Kapur.]
Marsh, Stefanie (2004) Learn these 500 digits of pi by heart. That is about 2% of what this man can remember. Times, The March 13th 2004 Section: Home news, p.5. Accession number 7EH3642629466.
[I accessed this thru the Australian/New Zealand Reference Centre at EBSCOhost. A breathless article promoting Tammet’s Pi recitation to be held the next day. A quite lengthy and detailed article considering it is about an event not yet held. A target figure of 22,500 for the number of decimal places is cited for Tammet’s Pi recitation. The venue is the Museum of the History of Science at Oxford University. March explains that Tamet’s mnemonic ability is “abnormal” and due to him being “one of only a handful of “acquired savants”” as a result of epilepsy at age 3. Tammet claims to be not autistic, but the journalist claims he exhibits some “symptoms”. There is discussion of Tammet’s supposed peculiarities of thought and behaviour. “Epilepsy and schizophrenia both run in the family.” After this quote there is a description of visual experiences which could be interpreted as schizophrenia hallucinations or as synaesthesia, but which I don’t think are typical of either. Tammet does not appear to like being asked to account for how he does his memory feats: “Because I am not autistic, people expect me to be more accountable than I want to be” “I can no more explain what I can do and the limits of my ability than anyone else. I do not need to prove myself.” At the end of this article is a link to the National Society for Epilepsy's page about Tammet's Pi recitation.]
Keene, Ray (2004) Freak of nature? More like hard work. Times, The, March 13th 2004. Section: Home news, p.5. EBSCOHost Accession number 7EH2135809642
[This appears to have been a companion article beside the article by Stefanie Marsh anticipating Tammet's Pi recitation, possibly included to add a necessary balance to the newspaper's coverage of the story. The author Raymond Keene OBE is an English chess Grandmaster, a long-time organizer of the World Memory Championships (which Tammet competed in before his name change), and has been the chess correspondent for The Times since 1985. Although Tammet is not mentioned in this article, Keene does debunk the notion that superior intellectual skills can be the result of injury at a young age, which is a lot like Tammet's explanation for his memorization and calculation skills, and his supposed synaesthesia, as the result of an epileptic fit in his toddler years. Keene recounts past achievements in the memorization of Pi and explains that these achievements are done using ancient memory techniques.]
New Pi record. (2004) Times, The March 15th 2004. Section: Home news, p. 14.
[No writer is cited for this one paragraph article reporting that “Daniel Tammet smashed the European record for Pi recollection, reciting 22,514 decimals from memory...” It seems odd that the promotional article about this event was much longer and detailed, while the article reporting what actually happened is brief and anonymous.]
Big slice of pi sets new record. BBC News. March 15th 2004.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/3513230.stm
[“It literally took me a few weeks to learn the number, and that was backwards as well as forwards, it wasn't a problem for me at all.” “The National Society for Epilepsy (NSE) is now set to submit proof of the feat to the Guinness Book of Records for it to be confirmed as a record.” I have contacted Guinness World Records and have been advised that there is nothing in their database under "Daniel Tammet".]
Pi-man sets record. Age, The. Fairfax Digital. March 16th 2004.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/03/15/1079199167216.html
[Synaesthesia is not mentioned in this article in which Tammet is presented as a non-autistic savant who had epilepsy as a child, and who cannot drive, ride a bike or swim. Some quotes from the article: “...It literally took me a few weeks to learn the number...” “Tammet is listed by United States expert Dr Darold Treffert .... as one of only 25 savants in the world.” “Unlike autistic savants, Tammet is able to lead a normal life and...” “His skills have been featured in the scientific journal Nature and he has appeared at the World Mental Skills Championship in London.”]
Feat more than Pi in the sky. (2004) MX. March 16th 2004. Edition: 1 – Melbourne. Section: News, p.9. Accession number: 200403161009180739.
[Same as the Herald Sun report of March 17th 2004]
A fair slice of Pi. (2004) Herald Sun (Melbourne). March 17th 2004
Edition: 1 – First. Section: News, p.7. Accession number: 200403171007282512.
[Writer not named. This report did not even give the exact number of the record: “A REAL life Rain Man said he was exhausted yesterday after counting his way into the record books by reciting the number pi to more than 22,500 decimal places.”]
The Boy with the Incredible Brain. (2005) Focus Productions (Bristol UK)/Discovery Science Channel for five.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0447877/fullcredits
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4913196365903075662#
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-boy-with-the-incredible-brain/
[A 47 minute “documentary” that is believed to have been screened in the UK as an episode in the Extraordinary People television series. This show is apparently not identical to the 60 minute 2005 “documentary” Brainman, but is generally the same thing. Film of Tammet’s Pi recitation is shown. IMDB lists Karen Ammond from the major PR company KBC Media as an associate producer of Brainman. Ammond was engaged by Tammet way back in 2001 to represent him. According to Tammet’s website Optimnem Brainman/The Boy with the Incredible Brain won a Royal Television Society award in December 2005, a claim which appears to be untrue, but the doco was nominated for this award.]
Holden, Constance (2005) Coloured memory. Science. April 22nd 2005 Vol. 308 Issue 5721, p.492.
[A brief and puzzlingly late report of Tammet’s Pi recitation in 2004, also reporting that Tammet had been tested by V. Ramachandran and team, which “now plans to investigate the multiplication skills of Tammet.” I wonder what happened to that project?]
Conan, Neal (2007) A Look at an Autistic Savant's Brilliant Mind. Talk of the Nation. NPR. January 15th 2007.
Audio:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6860157
Transcript:
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=6860157
[Tammet and US autism researcher Dr Ami Klin interviewed on talk show with callers also asking questions. “Pi is one of my favorite numbers. I devote a chapter in the book to it. I have a peculiar claim to fame with the number pi. I hold the European record for reciting the number pi to 22,514 decimal places at the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford in 2004 on pi day - 3/14 - March 14th. And it took five hours to recite from start to finish. There were mathematicians to check the digits to make sure that I was accurate.”]
Lyall, Sarah (2007) Brainman, at Rest in His Oasis. New York Times. February 15th 2007.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/15/garden/15savant.html
[about Tammet’s Pi recitation: “The recitation took place at the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford, lasted five hours and nine minutes and was monitored by students from the department of mathematical sciences at Oxford Brookes University. Mr. Tammet made no mistakes.” Oxford Brookes Uni is apparently a different uni than the University of Oxford, but located close by. The Museum of the History of Science in Oxford is a department of the University of Oxford, so there were apparently two different unis involved in Tammet’s Pi recitation event.]
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. Ward states that “...Daniel Tammet broke the European record for reciting 22,514 digits of pi without error...” (Ward 2008 p.110).
Sansom, Ian (2009) Another slice of pi. Guardian. February 14th 2009.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/14/embracing-the-wide-sky-review
[A somewhat critical book review of Tammet’s second autobiography which is otherwise typical of media stories about Tammet: no expression of scepticism about any aspect of Tammet’s story, cites 22,514th decimal place as Tammet’s Pi record and no mention of Tammet’s name change or his pre-name change activities.]
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. 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.]
["This was long time claimed as a European Record, as Daniel recited 22,514 decimal places. Unfortunately he made his first mistake at postion 2,965 and did not correct this error immediately and without outside help, but only after he was told that there was a mistake."]
Pi Memory Feat. (2008) University of Oxford.
http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2004/040315_1.html
[This page might seem like a very authoritative source, but one needs to keep in mind that another source has claimed that the event “was monitored by students from the department of mathematical sciences at Oxford Brookes University” (Lyall 2007), and that is a different university to the University of Oxford.]
Pi Record (2011) Optimnem: Daniel Tammet: the official website.
http://www.optimnem.co.uk/pi.php
P.S. December 2011
I have added my annotations to the above links. Here's some more items in
chronological order in which Tammet's Pi recitation is mentioned or discussed:
How you can help: NSE events: Pi in the sky. (2004) National Society for Epilepsy. http://www.epilepsynse.org.uk/pages/involved/fundevents/pi.cfm
This link is now redirects to another address, but a record of its content in June 2004 can still be accessed through the Internet Archive Wayback Machine http://www.archive.org/
[I believe this piece could have been written before the actual event and left unedited, because it does not actually state the number 22,514 which is supposed to be Tammet's actual record: "A Kent man has succeeded in his attempt to set a new British and European record by using his incredible memory to recall the mathematical constant Pi (3.141...) to over 22,500 decimal places." Another quote from the webpage: “Daniel was part of a research study on prodigious mental ability at London's Institute of Neurology. The data appeared in the new year 2003 edition of the prestigious neuro-scientific magazine 'Nature'.” This certainly would have been the “Routes to Remembering” study by Maguire, Valentine, Wilding and Kapur.]
Marsh, Stefanie (2004) Learn these 500 digits of pi by heart. That is about 2% of what this man can remember. Times, The March 13th 2004 Section: Home news, p.5. Accession number 7EH3642629466.
[I accessed this thru the Australian/New Zealand Reference Centre at EBSCOhost. A breathless article promoting Tammet’s Pi recitation to be held the next day. A quite lengthy and detailed article considering it is about an event not yet held. A target figure of 22,500 for the number of decimal places is cited for Tammet’s Pi recitation. The venue is the Museum of the History of Science at Oxford University. March explains that Tamet’s mnemonic ability is “abnormal” and due to him being “one of only a handful of “acquired savants”” as a result of epilepsy at age 3. Tammet claims to be not autistic, but the journalist claims he exhibits some “symptoms”. There is discussion of Tammet’s supposed peculiarities of thought and behaviour. “Epilepsy and schizophrenia both run in the family.” After this quote there is a description of visual experiences which could be interpreted as schizophrenia hallucinations or as synaesthesia, but which I don’t think are typical of either. Tammet does not appear to like being asked to account for how he does his memory feats: “Because I am not autistic, people expect me to be more accountable than I want to be” “I can no more explain what I can do and the limits of my ability than anyone else. I do not need to prove myself.” At the end of this article is a link to the National Society for Epilepsy's page about Tammet's Pi recitation.]
Keene, Ray (2004) Freak of nature? More like hard work. Times, The, March 13th 2004. Section: Home news, p.5. EBSCOHost Accession number 7EH2135809642
[This appears to have been a companion article beside the article by Stefanie Marsh anticipating Tammet's Pi recitation, possibly included to add a necessary balance to the newspaper's coverage of the story. The author Raymond Keene OBE is an English chess Grandmaster, a long-time organizer of the World Memory Championships (which Tammet competed in before his name change), and has been the chess correspondent for The Times since 1985. Although Tammet is not mentioned in this article, Keene does debunk the notion that superior intellectual skills can be the result of injury at a young age, which is a lot like Tammet's explanation for his memorization and calculation skills, and his supposed synaesthesia, as the result of an epileptic fit in his toddler years. Keene recounts past achievements in the memorization of Pi and explains that these achievements are done using ancient memory techniques.]
New Pi record. (2004) Times, The March 15th 2004. Section: Home news, p. 14.
[No writer is cited for this one paragraph article reporting that “Daniel Tammet smashed the European record for Pi recollection, reciting 22,514 decimals from memory...” It seems odd that the promotional article about this event was much longer and detailed, while the article reporting what actually happened is brief and anonymous.]
Big slice of pi sets new record. BBC News. March 15th 2004.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/3513230.stm
[“It literally took me a few weeks to learn the number, and that was backwards as well as forwards, it wasn't a problem for me at all.” “The National Society for Epilepsy (NSE) is now set to submit proof of the feat to the Guinness Book of Records for it to be confirmed as a record.” I have contacted Guinness World Records and have been advised that there is nothing in their database under "Daniel Tammet".]
Pi-man sets record. Age, The. Fairfax Digital. March 16th 2004.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/03/15/1079199167216.html
[Synaesthesia is not mentioned in this article in which Tammet is presented as a non-autistic savant who had epilepsy as a child, and who cannot drive, ride a bike or swim. Some quotes from the article: “...It literally took me a few weeks to learn the number...” “Tammet is listed by United States expert Dr Darold Treffert .... as one of only 25 savants in the world.” “Unlike autistic savants, Tammet is able to lead a normal life and...” “His skills have been featured in the scientific journal Nature and he has appeared at the World Mental Skills Championship in London.”]
Feat more than Pi in the sky. (2004) MX. March 16th 2004. Edition: 1 – Melbourne. Section: News, p.9. Accession number: 200403161009180739.
[Same as the Herald Sun report of March 17th 2004]
A fair slice of Pi. (2004) Herald Sun (Melbourne). March 17th 2004
Edition: 1 – First. Section: News, p.7. Accession number: 200403171007282512.
[Writer not named. This report did not even give the exact number of the record: “A REAL life Rain Man said he was exhausted yesterday after counting his way into the record books by reciting the number pi to more than 22,500 decimal places.”]
The Boy with the Incredible Brain. (2005) Focus Productions (Bristol UK)/Discovery Science Channel for five.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0447877/fullcredits
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4913196365903075662#
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-boy-with-the-incredible-brain/
[A 47 minute “documentary” that is believed to have been screened in the UK as an episode in the Extraordinary People television series. This show is apparently not identical to the 60 minute 2005 “documentary” Brainman, but is generally the same thing. Film of Tammet’s Pi recitation is shown. IMDB lists Karen Ammond from the major PR company KBC Media as an associate producer of Brainman. Ammond was engaged by Tammet way back in 2001 to represent him. According to Tammet’s website Optimnem Brainman/The Boy with the Incredible Brain won a Royal Television Society award in December 2005, a claim which appears to be untrue, but the doco was nominated for this award.]
Holden, Constance (2005) Coloured memory. Science. April 22nd 2005 Vol. 308 Issue 5721, p.492.
[A brief and puzzlingly late report of Tammet’s Pi recitation in 2004, also reporting that Tammet had been tested by V. Ramachandran and team, which “now plans to investigate the multiplication skills of Tammet.” I wonder what happened to that project?]
Conan, Neal (2007) A Look at an Autistic Savant's Brilliant Mind. Talk of the Nation. NPR. January 15th 2007.
Audio:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6860157
Transcript:
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=6860157
[Tammet and US autism researcher Dr Ami Klin interviewed on talk show with callers also asking questions. “Pi is one of my favorite numbers. I devote a chapter in the book to it. I have a peculiar claim to fame with the number pi. I hold the European record for reciting the number pi to 22,514 decimal places at the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford in 2004 on pi day - 3/14 - March 14th. And it took five hours to recite from start to finish. There were mathematicians to check the digits to make sure that I was accurate.”]
Lyall, Sarah (2007) Brainman, at Rest in His Oasis. New York Times. February 15th 2007.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/15/garden/15savant.html
[about Tammet’s Pi recitation: “The recitation took place at the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford, lasted five hours and nine minutes and was monitored by students from the department of mathematical sciences at Oxford Brookes University. Mr. Tammet made no mistakes.” Oxford Brookes Uni is apparently a different uni than the University of Oxford, but located close by. The Museum of the History of Science in Oxford is a department of the University of Oxford, so there were apparently two different unis involved in Tammet’s Pi recitation event.]
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. Ward states that “...Daniel Tammet broke the European record for reciting 22,514 digits of pi without error...” (Ward 2008 p.110).
Sansom, Ian (2009) Another slice of pi. Guardian. February 14th 2009.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/14/embracing-the-wide-sky-review
[A somewhat critical book review of Tammet’s second autobiography which is otherwise typical of media stories about Tammet: no expression of scepticism about any aspect of Tammet’s story, cites 22,514th decimal place as Tammet’s Pi record and no mention of Tammet’s name change or his pre-name change activities.]
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. 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.]
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Andrew Fowler TV report on current situation re Assange and Wikileaks
If you are following the fascinating fate of the Australian international troublemaker extraordinaire and genius Julian Assange, and his brainchild Wikileaks, you will find this report interesting, and possibly depressing. The reporter is Andrew Fowler, an Australian journalist and author of a recent book about Assange.
Assange certainly has an association with wrecked working relationships, but why? Does he have some brain-based flaw, or is it that his extraordinary mission in life as the creator of Wikileaks is inconsistent with normal human teamwork and relationships? Can anyone blame Assange for having an untrusting attitude towards others when his work unavoidably creates so many dangerous and powerful enemies? I've recently been reading a lot about the brilliant, complex and controversial Australian politician "Doc" Evatt, whom I have recently identified as a famous synaesthete, based on information given in the biography of Evatt by Peter Crockett (on page 9 if you are interesed). In a number of ways Assange and Evatt were similar. Both very intelligent, very ambitious, both Australian, both accused of paranoia, both hated by a significant proportion of people they worked with, both control-freaks and obsessed with power, both have/had a reputation for rudeness, both with a vision of international importance of significance to human rights. Evatt was a President of the United Nations General Assembly 1948-1949 and co-drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and I believe that as a politician he was guided by a basically sound sense of what is morally right. Unlike Assange, Evatt had an apparently happy marriage. I guess Assange cannot afford such a relationship because his life is too dangerous, and he is accustomed to a life on the run, ever since his disrupted and fearful childhood with a mother on the run from an ex who was perceived as dangerous. In Fowler's report Assange mentioned that his children have even been threatened by his enemies. Evatt was also a man who lived with fear. He had a huge fear of flying, which was not entirely unjustified in the days in which he travelled, when air travel did have hazards, and he had work, including a period as the Australian Minister of External Affairs, which required lots of air travel. In the lives of Assange and Evatt we can see a mixture of huge intellect, huge ambitions and chronic exposure to fearful situations. It should be no surprise that such men might be a bit short with people.
Perhaps relationships are often simply too fragile to survive a life that is consumed with huge ambitions and associated hazards. Perhaps people who have great minds, and who dare to attempt to live out the full potential of their minds are doomed to live lives that are a hazard to relationships and other ordinary features of normal human lives. The fact that Assange has reportedly identified himself as somewhat autistic, and Evatt saw colours for the days of the week, which is synaesthesia, are possibly not direct clues about the prickly characters of these men. I believe that Evatt's synaesthesia was probably a side-effect of his well-developed brain, and perhaps it is the intellect and the emotions that make up intellectual giftedness that are really the interesting factors. Greatness isolates?
Wiki Whacked
Broadcast: 04/10/2011
Reporter: Andrew Fowler
Foreign Correspondent
ABC
http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2011/s3332165.htm
[transcript and video]
References about "Doc" Evatt
I have written about Evatt in this list:
Famous synaesthetes or possible synesthetes: a list of amazing people with references.
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2009/01/famous-synaesthetes-or-possible.html
Bolton, G. C., (1996) Evatt, Herbert Vere (Bert) (1894–1965). Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University.
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/evatt-herbert-vere-bert-10131/text17885
[This authoritative article was first published in hardcopy in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 14, Melbourne University Press, 1996.]
Crockett, Peter (1993) Evatt: a life. Oxford University Press, 1993.
[See Google Books. The biography with the most focus on Evatt’s personality. Annoying in the parts in which fanciful Freudian psychoanalytic theory is applied, but still a good read. Reference to Evatt’s synaesthesia on page 9. Sadly, this book appears to be out of print and expensive to buy second-hand.]
“Doc”: a portrait of Herbert Vere Evatt 1894-1965. (director; Pat Fiske, producer; Denise Haslem, research, script and interviewer; Pat Fiske, David McKnight), Film Australia, 1995.
[A most interesting documentary. Includes many interviews with people who knew the man. Covers Evatt’s international and Australian achievements, what he was like as a person, and his successful marriage. Available as a 57 minute VHS video or 57 minute DVD. More Australian public libraries should stock this doco in DVD format.]
The Evatt Foundation (accessed 2011) Doc Evatt: a brilliant and controversial character. The Evatt Foundation.
http://evatt.labor.net.au/about_evatt/
Assange certainly has an association with wrecked working relationships, but why? Does he have some brain-based flaw, or is it that his extraordinary mission in life as the creator of Wikileaks is inconsistent with normal human teamwork and relationships? Can anyone blame Assange for having an untrusting attitude towards others when his work unavoidably creates so many dangerous and powerful enemies? I've recently been reading a lot about the brilliant, complex and controversial Australian politician "Doc" Evatt, whom I have recently identified as a famous synaesthete, based on information given in the biography of Evatt by Peter Crockett (on page 9 if you are interesed). In a number of ways Assange and Evatt were similar. Both very intelligent, very ambitious, both Australian, both accused of paranoia, both hated by a significant proportion of people they worked with, both control-freaks and obsessed with power, both have/had a reputation for rudeness, both with a vision of international importance of significance to human rights. Evatt was a President of the United Nations General Assembly 1948-1949 and co-drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and I believe that as a politician he was guided by a basically sound sense of what is morally right. Unlike Assange, Evatt had an apparently happy marriage. I guess Assange cannot afford such a relationship because his life is too dangerous, and he is accustomed to a life on the run, ever since his disrupted and fearful childhood with a mother on the run from an ex who was perceived as dangerous. In Fowler's report Assange mentioned that his children have even been threatened by his enemies. Evatt was also a man who lived with fear. He had a huge fear of flying, which was not entirely unjustified in the days in which he travelled, when air travel did have hazards, and he had work, including a period as the Australian Minister of External Affairs, which required lots of air travel. In the lives of Assange and Evatt we can see a mixture of huge intellect, huge ambitions and chronic exposure to fearful situations. It should be no surprise that such men might be a bit short with people.
Perhaps relationships are often simply too fragile to survive a life that is consumed with huge ambitions and associated hazards. Perhaps people who have great minds, and who dare to attempt to live out the full potential of their minds are doomed to live lives that are a hazard to relationships and other ordinary features of normal human lives. The fact that Assange has reportedly identified himself as somewhat autistic, and Evatt saw colours for the days of the week, which is synaesthesia, are possibly not direct clues about the prickly characters of these men. I believe that Evatt's synaesthesia was probably a side-effect of his well-developed brain, and perhaps it is the intellect and the emotions that make up intellectual giftedness that are really the interesting factors. Greatness isolates?
Wiki Whacked
Broadcast: 04/10/2011
Reporter: Andrew Fowler
Foreign Correspondent
ABC
http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2011/s3332165.htm
[transcript and video]
References about "Doc" Evatt
I have written about Evatt in this list:
Famous synaesthetes or possible synesthetes: a list of amazing people with references.
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2009/01/famous-synaesthetes-or-possible.html
Bolton, G. C., (1996) Evatt, Herbert Vere (Bert) (1894–1965). Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University.
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/evatt-herbert-vere-bert-10131/text17885
[This authoritative article was first published in hardcopy in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 14, Melbourne University Press, 1996.]
Crockett, Peter (1993) Evatt: a life. Oxford University Press, 1993.
[See Google Books. The biography with the most focus on Evatt’s personality. Annoying in the parts in which fanciful Freudian psychoanalytic theory is applied, but still a good read. Reference to Evatt’s synaesthesia on page 9. Sadly, this book appears to be out of print and expensive to buy second-hand.]
“Doc”: a portrait of Herbert Vere Evatt 1894-1965. (director; Pat Fiske, producer; Denise Haslem, research, script and interviewer; Pat Fiske, David McKnight), Film Australia, 1995.
[A most interesting documentary. Includes many interviews with people who knew the man. Covers Evatt’s international and Australian achievements, what he was like as a person, and his successful marriage. Available as a 57 minute VHS video or 57 minute DVD. More Australian public libraries should stock this doco in DVD format.]
The Evatt Foundation (accessed 2011) Doc Evatt: a brilliant and controversial character. The Evatt Foundation.
http://evatt.labor.net.au/about_evatt/
Rudd's daughter Jessica to release chick-lit sequel
Jessica Rudd's next chick-lit novel, a sequel to her hit Campaign Ruby titled Ruby Blues is due for release at the end of this month. The sequel will include more politics and who knows if it will also include a borderline autistic politician character? Not sure if I care, really.
Penguin Books Australia
http://www.penguin.com.au/products/9781921758560/ruby-blues
Text Publishing
http://textpublishing.com.au/books-and-authors/book/ruby-blues/
Penguin Books Australia
http://www.penguin.com.au/products/9781921758560/ruby-blues
Text Publishing
http://textpublishing.com.au/books-and-authors/book/ruby-blues/
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Government-funded death and torture of disabled people in the United States of America, believe it
"It smelled like cooking flesh in there - they shock the heck out of the kids, it's torture," said the teacher, who asked to remain anonymous."
This isn't a school. This isn't an education. This is a human rights disaster, and it has been going on for a very long time.
I've noticed a chilling similarity between a horrible fatality described in this article and the sickening and tragic death of Mr Ward, which happened in Western Australia.
"Advocates say Woods is no place to send city children after a student's death there last summer. The student, trapped in a stifling locked van, died from heat exposure while a supervising aide talked on her cell phone. The aide is in prison on felony neglect charges."
Mr Ward was an Aboriginal elder who died in police custody after being charged over a relatively minor matter. He was transported across Australian desert country in the back of a faulty prison van in which the airconditioning was not functioning, for four hours on a 42 degree summer day (for US readers, that's over 107 degrees Fahrenheit). The custodial staff never checked on Mr Ward, and he was cooked to death. Inevitable questions about discrimination and racism were asked. Many Australians still feel haunted by this real-life horror story, and I hope that there are also many Americans who feel haunted by the horrors that have been and are still inflicted on autistic and disabled people in the United States, and for heaven's sake, please do something to stop what is happening!
State pays $13M to send disabled kids to controversial clinics slapped with accusations of abuse.
by Ben Chapman
Daily News.
September 18th 2011.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/09/18/2011-09-18_state_pays_13m_to_shock_kids.html#ixzz1aXxw8Puc
This isn't a school. This isn't an education. This is a human rights disaster, and it has been going on for a very long time.
I've noticed a chilling similarity between a horrible fatality described in this article and the sickening and tragic death of Mr Ward, which happened in Western Australia.
"Advocates say Woods is no place to send city children after a student's death there last summer. The student, trapped in a stifling locked van, died from heat exposure while a supervising aide talked on her cell phone. The aide is in prison on felony neglect charges."
Mr Ward was an Aboriginal elder who died in police custody after being charged over a relatively minor matter. He was transported across Australian desert country in the back of a faulty prison van in which the airconditioning was not functioning, for four hours on a 42 degree summer day (for US readers, that's over 107 degrees Fahrenheit). The custodial staff never checked on Mr Ward, and he was cooked to death. Inevitable questions about discrimination and racism were asked. Many Australians still feel haunted by this real-life horror story, and I hope that there are also many Americans who feel haunted by the horrors that have been and are still inflicted on autistic and disabled people in the United States, and for heaven's sake, please do something to stop what is happening!
State pays $13M to send disabled kids to controversial clinics slapped with accusations of abuse.
by Ben Chapman
Daily News.
September 18th 2011.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/09/18/2011-09-18_state_pays_13m_to_shock_kids.html#ixzz1aXxw8Puc
Scientific evidence for positive effects of single-sex schooling just aint there
Quote from the summary of a paper recently published in the prestigious journal Science:
"There is no well-designed research showing that single-sex (SS) education improves students' academic performance, but there is evidence that sex segregation increases gender stereotyping and legitimizes institutional sexism."
The Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Schooling.
Diane F. Halpern, Lise Eliot, Rebecca S. Bigler, Richard A. Fabes, Laura D. Hanish, Janet Hyde, Lynn S. Liben, and Carol Lynn Martin
Science. 23 September 2011: 333 (6050), 1706-1707. [DOI:10.1126/science.1205031]
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6050/1706.summary
Quotes from the related press release:
".... there is little concrete evidence to support claims that single-sex schools are a better learning environment."
"Some supporters of single-sex schools claim that brain differences between boys and girls require different teaching styles. But neuroscientists have found few differences between male and female brains, and none has been linked to different learning styles."
Indivero, Victoria M. (2011) Sex segregation in schools detrimental to equality. (press release) EurekAlert. September 22nd 2011.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-09/ps-ssi092111.php
"There is no well-designed research showing that single-sex (SS) education improves students' academic performance, but there is evidence that sex segregation increases gender stereotyping and legitimizes institutional sexism."
The Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Schooling.
Diane F. Halpern, Lise Eliot, Rebecca S. Bigler, Richard A. Fabes, Laura D. Hanish, Janet Hyde, Lynn S. Liben, and Carol Lynn Martin
Science. 23 September 2011: 333 (6050), 1706-1707. [DOI:10.1126/science.1205031]
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6050/1706.summary
Quotes from the related press release:
".... there is little concrete evidence to support claims that single-sex schools are a better learning environment."
"Some supporters of single-sex schools claim that brain differences between boys and girls require different teaching styles. But neuroscientists have found few differences between male and female brains, and none has been linked to different learning styles."
Indivero, Victoria M. (2011) Sex segregation in schools detrimental to equality. (press release) EurekAlert. September 22nd 2011.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-09/ps-ssi092111.php
Lili's cynical thought for the day
It appears that none of the people who are currently publicly questioning and examining old and new scientific and media descriptions of serial science study subject Daniel Tammet / Daniel Corney are scientists. What does this tell you about the supposedly self-correcting nature of science?
Lili's questioning thought for the day
Is Michael Grose a qualified child psychologist? No? Then maybe he should stay the f*** out of the business of giving advice to the Australian public in the area of child psychology.
Lili's next thought for the day
As you walk past the wishing well, make a wish that you don't get bitten by a mosquito.
Sunday, October 09, 2011
Journalists as publicity assistants
I've just been re-reading some old media articles about Daniel Tammet which I have kept on file, which I had collected in the process of compiling my lists of famous autistics and famous synaesthetes. Both interview articles are from the year 2009 and both were a part of a publicity drive to promote the second autobiography by Tammet which was released that year. Neither article mentioned anything about Tammet's 2001 name change or his impressive memory competition achievements from before his name change, or his participation among a group of memory championship participants in the "Routes to Remembering" study which was published in 2002-2003. In fact one of the articles, the one that was published in The Australian, puts a positively deceptive spin on Tammet's personal history. Journalist Peter Wilson characterised Tammet's highly publicised Pi recitation record as a kind of coming out following "a confused, restricted adult life" in the grip of autistic disability. We now know that Tammet's life was not previously so restricted that it precluded competing twice in the world memory championships, winning in gold medal and being the subject of an fMRI study.
I guess the lesson to be learnt is that there are two kinds of journalism. There is journalism which cooperates with the body or the individual who is the subject of the story. This type of journalism can include personal interviews, and the journalist can gain privileged access to the subject in this type of journalism, but one cannot expect much in the way of independent investigation or information that does not reflect well on the subject. One could call this "media release journalism", but I can think of less polite terms that could be used. Then there is the other type of journalism, real journalism which might have to contend with an uncooperative subject, but which is free to dig up dirt and ask uncomfortable questions. This is the type of thing that Joshua Foer did in his book Moonwalking with Einstein, and he managed to gain access to Tammet for interviews regardless. All the credit goes to Foer, and Celeste Biever from New Scientist magazine and journalist Peter Wilson both look rather foolish in hindsight.
References
Biever, Celeste (2009) Peek inside a singular mind. New Scientist. January 3rd 2009, number 2689, p. 40-41.
Online version:
Biever, Celeste (2009) Inside the mind of an autistic savant. New Scientist. January 7th 2009. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126881.800-inside-the-mind-of-an-autistic-savant.html
Foer, Joshua (2011) Moonwalking with Einstein: the art and science of remembering everything. Allen Lane/Penguin, 2011.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/56318708/Joshua-Foer-Moon-Walking-With-Einstein
[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 is questioned and the author considers whether Tammet’s remarkable talents are best explained as the result of training]
Wilson, Peter (2009) A savvy savant finds his voice. Weekend Australian. January 31-February 1 2009, Inquirer p. 19.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,24986084-26040,00.html
I guess the lesson to be learnt is that there are two kinds of journalism. There is journalism which cooperates with the body or the individual who is the subject of the story. This type of journalism can include personal interviews, and the journalist can gain privileged access to the subject in this type of journalism, but one cannot expect much in the way of independent investigation or information that does not reflect well on the subject. One could call this "media release journalism", but I can think of less polite terms that could be used. Then there is the other type of journalism, real journalism which might have to contend with an uncooperative subject, but which is free to dig up dirt and ask uncomfortable questions. This is the type of thing that Joshua Foer did in his book Moonwalking with Einstein, and he managed to gain access to Tammet for interviews regardless. All the credit goes to Foer, and Celeste Biever from New Scientist magazine and journalist Peter Wilson both look rather foolish in hindsight.
References
Biever, Celeste (2009) Peek inside a singular mind. New Scientist. January 3rd 2009, number 2689, p. 40-41.
Online version:
Biever, Celeste (2009) Inside the mind of an autistic savant. New Scientist. January 7th 2009. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126881.800-inside-the-mind-of-an-autistic-savant.html
Foer, Joshua (2011) Moonwalking with Einstein: the art and science of remembering everything. Allen Lane/Penguin, 2011.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/56318708/Joshua-Foer-Moon-Walking-With-Einstein
[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 is questioned and the author considers whether Tammet’s remarkable talents are best explained as the result of training]
Wilson, Peter (2009) A savvy savant finds his voice. Weekend Australian. January 31-February 1 2009, Inquirer p. 19.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,24986084-26040,00.html
Thursday, October 06, 2011
A list of researchers who have apparently studied Daniel Tammet (formerly known as Daniel Corney)
Julian Asher
Chris Ashwin
Shai Azoulai
Simon Baron-Cohen
Jac / Jaclyn Billington
Daniel Bor
Edward Hubbard
Narinder Kapur
Eleanor Maguire
Gary Morgan
V.S. Ramachandran (A 2005 article in Science reported that Tammet had been tested by V. Ramachandran and team, which “now plans to investigate the multiplication skills of Tammet.” I wonder what happened to that project?)
Neil Smith
Darold Treffert
Ianthi Tsimpli
Elizabeth Valentine
Sally Wheelwright
John M. Wilding
Bencie Woll
(Dr Jamie Ward the UK synasthesia researcher wrote about Tammet in his book The Frog Who Croaked Blue and evidently had a discussion with Tammet, but I've found no evidence that Ward studied Tammet formally.)
(Prof. Allan Snyder in Australia has commented on Tammet as a case of savantism but I don't think he has studied Tammet first-hand)
(a quote from page 230 of the book Moonwalking With Einstein by Joshua Foer: "When Anders Ericsson invited Daniel to visit FSU to be tested according to his own exacting standards, Daniel said he was too busy to make the trip.")
(a quote from a review of one of Tammet's books in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders: "He also contributes to our knowledge base by volunteering to participate in dozens of brain studies." Where have these "dozens" of brain studies been published?)
References
Maguire, Eleanor A., Valentine, Elizabeth R., Wilding, John M. & Kapur, Narinder (2002-3) Routes to remembering: the brains behind superior memory. Nature Neuroscience. Volume 6 Number 1 January 2003 p.90-95.
Published online: 16 December 2002 doi:10.1038/nn988http://www.uni.edu/gabriele/page4/files/maguire002820020029brains-behind-superior-memorizers.pdf
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v6/n1/pdf/nn988.pdf
Holden, Constance (2005) Coloured memory. Science. April 22nd 2005 Vol. 308 Issue 5721, p.492.
Azoulai, Shai, Hubbard, Ed, & Ramachandran, V. S. (accessed 2011) Does synesthesia contribute to mathematical savant skills?http://postcog.ucd.ie/files/Azoulai_CNS05.pdf
http://scholar.googleusercontent.com/scholar?q=cache:ZDplXtmWJIMJ:scholar.google.com/+Azoulai+ramachandran+synesthesia&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_vis=1 [Publication date unknown, possibly a conference talk summary. A 2010 paper by A. Louise Murray gives this citation for this paper: “J Cog Neurosci Supt 69 (2005), p.1.” which appears to be incorrect.]
Baron-Cohen S, Bor D, Billington J, Asher JE, Wheelwright S and Ashwin C. (2007) Savant Memory in a Man with Colour Form-Number Synaesthesia and Asperger Syndrome. Journal of Consciousness Studies. volume 14, number 9-10, September-October 2007, p. 237-251.http://www.imprint.co.uk/jcs_14_9-10.html
http://www.autismresearchcentre.com/docs/papers/2007_BC_Savant_J%20Consc%20St.pdf
["DT", the subject of this study, is explicitly identified in the paper as Daniel Tammet]
Bor, D, Billington, J, Baron-Cohen, S. (2007) Savant memory for digits in a case of synaesthesia and Asperger syndrome is related to hyperactivity in the lateral prefrontal cortex. Neurocase. 2007 Oct;13(5):311-9.http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/psych/nncs
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a791809555
[Unfortunately this revealing paper remains behind a paywall. Daniel Tammet is definitely the subject of this study, named “DT” in this paper.]
Ward, Jamie (2008) The frog who croaked blue: synesthesia and the mixing of the senses. Routledge, 2008.
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]
Treffert, Darold (accessed 2011) Daniel Tammet - Brainman: "Numbers are my friends". Wisconsin Medical Society.
http://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant_syndrome/savant_profiles/daniel_tammet
[This is a page about Tammet, whom the “savant syndrome” expert Dr Treffert has met. Treffert describes results from him testing Tammet, but I a not aware of any pulbished formal study of Tammet by Treffert.]
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]
Chris Ashwin
Shai Azoulai
Simon Baron-Cohen
Jac / Jaclyn Billington
Daniel Bor
Edward Hubbard
Narinder Kapur
Eleanor Maguire
Gary Morgan
V.S. Ramachandran (A 2005 article in Science reported that Tammet had been tested by V. Ramachandran and team, which “now plans to investigate the multiplication skills of Tammet.” I wonder what happened to that project?)
Neil Smith
Darold Treffert
Ianthi Tsimpli
Elizabeth Valentine
Sally Wheelwright
John M. Wilding
Bencie Woll
(Dr Jamie Ward the UK synasthesia researcher wrote about Tammet in his book The Frog Who Croaked Blue and evidently had a discussion with Tammet, but I've found no evidence that Ward studied Tammet formally.)
(Prof. Allan Snyder in Australia has commented on Tammet as a case of savantism but I don't think he has studied Tammet first-hand)
(a quote from page 230 of the book Moonwalking With Einstein by Joshua Foer: "When Anders Ericsson invited Daniel to visit FSU to be tested according to his own exacting standards, Daniel said he was too busy to make the trip.")
(a quote from a review of one of Tammet's books in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders: "He also contributes to our knowledge base by volunteering to participate in dozens of brain studies." Where have these "dozens" of brain studies been published?)
References
Maguire, Eleanor A., Valentine, Elizabeth R., Wilding, John M. & Kapur, Narinder (2002-3) Routes to remembering: the brains behind superior memory. Nature Neuroscience. Volume 6 Number 1 January 2003 p.90-95.
Published online: 16 December 2002 doi:10.1038/nn988http://www.uni.edu/gabriele/page4/files/maguire002820020029brains-behind-superior-memorizers.pdf
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v6/n1/pdf/nn988.pdf
Holden, Constance (2005) Coloured memory. Science. April 22nd 2005 Vol. 308 Issue 5721, p.492.
Azoulai, Shai, Hubbard, Ed, & Ramachandran, V. S. (accessed 2011) Does synesthesia contribute to mathematical savant skills?http://postcog.ucd.ie/files/Azoulai_CNS05.pdf
http://scholar.googleusercontent.com/scholar?q=cache:ZDplXtmWJIMJ:scholar.google.com/+Azoulai+ramachandran+synesthesia&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_vis=1 [Publication date unknown, possibly a conference talk summary. A 2010 paper by A. Louise Murray gives this citation for this paper: “J Cog Neurosci Supt 69 (2005), p.1.” which appears to be incorrect.]
Baron-Cohen S, Bor D, Billington J, Asher JE, Wheelwright S and Ashwin C. (2007) Savant Memory in a Man with Colour Form-Number Synaesthesia and Asperger Syndrome. Journal of Consciousness Studies. volume 14, number 9-10, September-October 2007, p. 237-251.http://www.imprint.co.uk/jcs_14_9-10.html
http://www.autismresearchcentre.com/docs/papers/2007_BC_Savant_J%20Consc%20St.pdf
["DT", the subject of this study, is explicitly identified in the paper as Daniel Tammet]
Bor, D, Billington, J, Baron-Cohen, S. (2007) Savant memory for digits in a case of synaesthesia and Asperger syndrome is related to hyperactivity in the lateral prefrontal cortex. Neurocase. 2007 Oct;13(5):311-9.http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/psych/nncs
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a791809555
[Unfortunately this revealing paper remains behind a paywall. Daniel Tammet is definitely the subject of this study, named “DT” in this paper.]
Ward, Jamie (2008) The frog who croaked blue: synesthesia and the mixing of the senses. Routledge, 2008.
VanBergeijk, Ernst (2009-2010) Daniel Tammet: Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. Published online: 3 September 2009. October 2010 Volume 40 Issue 10 p.1293. DOI 10.1007/s10803-009-0868-3
[This is a brief and sychophantic book review which includes some highly unlikely claims; that synaesthesia is a rare condition; that Tammet learned Icelandic in only four days and that Tammet was at the time of publication “volunteering to participate in dozens of brain studies.” I can only assume that the vast majority of those brain studies must be still unpublished, because I have only been able to find records of a few.]
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]
Treffert, Darold (accessed 2011) Daniel Tammet - Brainman: "Numbers are my friends". Wisconsin Medical Society.
http://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant_syndrome/savant_profiles/daniel_tammet
[This is a page about Tammet, whom the “savant syndrome” expert Dr Treffert has met. Treffert describes results from him testing Tammet, but I a not aware of any pulbished formal study of Tammet by Treffert.]
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]
A quote from savantism expert Dr Darold Treffert about Daniel Tammet/Corney
"His digit span memory exceeded that of any one I had ever tested before and other tests of recall were, of course, entirely accurate."
I wonder whether the "other tests of recall" included any test of face memory?
http://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant_syndrome/savant_profiles/daniel_tammet
I wonder whether the "other tests of recall" included any test of face memory?
http://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant_syndrome/savant_profiles/daniel_tammet
No end to the inconsistencies in info regarding the mysterious Mr Tammet
At The Free Library by Farlex one can find a 2005 press article by Rachael Bletchley about Daniel Tammet which includes some assertions about Tammet which are interestingly at odds with more recent writings about Tammet, such as a claim that Tammet can recall the face of every person he has ever met (although in later years Tammet has claimed more than once to have a severe impairment in face memory), and a description of Tammet as having been left with "virtually no disability" following epilepsy that he had in early childhood, even though Tammet was reportedly diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, a type of autism, around 2004 by Prof Simon Baron-Cohen, who is regarded as an expert on Asperger syndrome, which is considered to be a definite disability by many people.
I find it amusing that I can click through from this article which asserts that Tammet is virtually free from disability, on a hyperlink at Tammet's name, to get to The Free Dictionary by Farlex, which has a fairly detailed article all about Tammet, which describes him as "a writer with high-functioning autism". I guess we get back to the debate about whether or not AS is a disability or a difference. To most people I think the two articles will look inconsistent, but this is not the fault of the people at Farlex, who archive and make available articles first published by other media outlets, and for that I'm most grateful.
One odd thing that I have noticed about the article about Tammet at The Free Dictionary is the assertion that despite Tammet's often-described number-related visual synaesthesia "The number 6 apparently has no distinct image". If this were true I'd regard this as interesting in regard to synaesthesia, but oddly, one of the links given in the article to support this assertion doesn't appear to say anything about this number, and the other, Tammet's first autobiography, twice mentions synaesthesia visual images associated with the number six. It appears that just about every bit of information written about Tammet is to be taken with a pinch of salt.
Reference
I find it amusing that I can click through from this article which asserts that Tammet is virtually free from disability, on a hyperlink at Tammet's name, to get to The Free Dictionary by Farlex, which has a fairly detailed article all about Tammet, which describes him as "a writer with high-functioning autism". I guess we get back to the debate about whether or not AS is a disability or a difference. To most people I think the two articles will look inconsistent, but this is not the fault of the people at Farlex, who archive and make available articles first published by other media outlets, and for that I'm most grateful.
One odd thing that I have noticed about the article about Tammet at The Free Dictionary is the assertion that despite Tammet's often-described number-related visual synaesthesia "The number 6 apparently has no distinct image". If this were true I'd regard this as interesting in regard to synaesthesia, but oddly, one of the links given in the article to support this assertion doesn't appear to say anything about this number, and the other, Tammet's first autobiography, twice mentions synaesthesia visual images associated with the number six. It appears that just about every bit of information written about Tammet is to be taken with a pinch of salt.
Reference
Beltchley, Rachael (2005) Brain Man!: Fit at age3 turns Dan into whiz who can add like a calculator and learn a language in 15hrs just like film hero; MIND-BOGGLING SKILLS OF MODEST TEACHER. People, The (London, England) January 30th 2005. republished by The Free Library by Farlex.
Lili's thought for the day
"The Free Library by Farlex"; isn't that a cereal that you feed to babies?
Wednesday, October 05, 2011
Eight quotes about the famous Daniel Tammet (born Daniel Corney) and face memory
THIS ARTICLE IS NOW PART OF A BOOK!!!!
Daniel Tammet: the Boy with the Incredible Story
Published by Smashwords
by
Lili Marlene
Published by Smashwords
find it here:
Lili's thought for the day
FISHING SWIMMING AND DIVING PROHIBITED IN THE MARINA. The only way in which you are permitted to interact with the sea is by purchasing one of the huge, expensive, noisy, polluting, high-maintenance power boats which are on sale. If you buy one, you get to name it. (I never understood why they call it pleasure boating.)
Lili's uncharitable thought for the day
If I see one more obese lady wearing a black skin-tight knit fabric outfit I think I might scream. Maybe the colour black is slimming, but you're asking waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much, lady.
Lili's second thought for the day
There are now two brands of eggs at the supermarket in pink packaging. October is pink packaging month, apparently. My colour is jade.
Monday, October 03, 2011
"Misrepresentation" is the polite word for it
In the last few months I've done quite a lot of writing about the work and public statements that have been made by two professors whose activities I've become concerned about. One of those professors is the former Australian of the Year and psychiatrist Prof. Patrick McGorry, who has already exercised a lot of influence on federal government policy in the area of mental health service funding, and has recently turned his attention to state governments. McGorry has his critics, and there are a number of points at which the professor and his critics differ. Many objections have been raised to a proposed mental disorder being accepted and diagnosed by the medical-scientific community, the "At risk mental state" also known as "schizophrenia prodrome", "Attenuated Psychotic Symptoms syndrome", "psychosis risk syndrome", "ultra-high risk" and "APS syndrome". Don't you think it's true that suspect things are often renamed? It's a rule that seems to apply to government departments, over-rated 80s pop stars, con artists and psychiatric labels. Geschwind's proposed temporal lobe epilepsy-related personality disorder must have had at least a dozen different names before science gave up on the concept. While McGorry's team of psychiatrists apparently do not advocate the inclusion of the frequently-named psychosis risk state as a category for the next revision of the DSM, McGorry's advocacy of the concept is clear in the way that it has already been incorporated into educational material aimed at the general public which has been freely available from a website of one of the mental health services which McGorry leads. McGorry doesn't seem to be the kind of bloke who sits around waiting for the whole world to sign-off on an idea before he puts it into practice. Some of McGorry's critics have argued that if this new concept of a pre-psychotic state is applied in general clinical practice, the result will be many false-positive cases in which the full set of serious problems associated with psychiatric labelling and medication might be imposed on young people who would never have developed a mental disorder anyway. Allen Frances M.D. is a prominent professional who has written critically about this proposed new label.
A point of criticism of McGorry that I have highlighted in my writing has been what I believe is a failure to declare conflicting interests in many published medical journal papers written or co-authored by McGorry. In contrast I have been able to find a few published papers in which McGorry has disclosed a collection of conflicting interests. Why the inconsistency?
An important criticism of McGorry's work is that he has made important misrepresentations in his advocacy about mental health policy, to governments and to the public in general in media appearances. "Misrepresentation" is the polite word for what McGorry has been doing for quite some time. Melissa Raven, an Australian psychiatric epidemiologist, policy analyst and academic and Jon Jureidini, an Australian psychiatrist, head of a department in an Australian hospital and academic have written about misrepresentations that have been made by McGorry and Adjunct Professor John Mendoza. Jureidini and Raven are polite people, so they use polite language, but their arguments are made with clarity. I believe Raven and Jureidini are both members of Healthy Skepticism, an Australia-based organization which has the aim of "improving health by reducing harm from misleading health information".
A recent addition to the debate and controversy which surrounds Prof. McGorry is a review by Melissa Raven of the published research about EPPIC (Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centre), which is a network of centres devoted to the medical treatment of early psychosis in young people. I believe McGorry is a director of EPPIC. The longitudinal study was conducted primarily in the 1990s and has been used successfully in arguments for greatly increased funding for EPPIC centres from the federal government. A number of the points highlighted in Raven's review have left me feeling alarmed and disappointed about the current state of science, psychiatry and politics in Australia.
A major point made by Raven in her article/paper published at the website of the Alliance For Better Access is that the study of EPPIC did not demonstrate that the EPPIC program of early intervention in psychotic illness is superior to standard (late) intervention in the Australian public mental health system, because the standard type and level of intervention was not represented at all in the study, not in the treatment group nor in the control group, because the control group in the study were patients in the precursor of the EPPIC program which offered a specialised early intervention program. The aspect of this matter which I find disturbing is that Professor McGorry has misrepresented the EPPIC study as evidence showing superiority of his early intervention model for psychosis treatment over "...generic late intervention in the standard system". I'm quoting McGorry being interviewed by Tony Jones on the ABC's Lateline last year. Where, I ask, has the EPPIC model ever been trialed against "...generic late intervention in the standard system"? I'd really like to know where I might read of such a study in a peer-reviewed medical journal, and I think Ms Raven would also be interested.
Another aspect of McGorry's representations about the EPPIC study which concerns me is the way he has described the strength of the evidence from the EPPIC study: "The evidence is very, very strong now....". Strong evidence? The EPPIC study was so methodologically weak that it was simply excluded from the 2011 systematic review of early psychosis interventions which was done by the world-famous and highly respected Cochrane Collaboration. I'm not a doctor, but I know a thing or two about the Cochrane Collaboration, and I would have thought that any study that was formally considered and then rejected by that organization in the process of research for one of their reviews should be considered not evidence at all, let alone strong evidence.
My regular readers should know that I'm a jaded old dame who casts a cynical eye over the way that science is conducted, but even I am disappointed that McGorry and co-authors have done that shabby old trick of writing one thing in the abstract of a journal paper, while writing contradictory content in the body of the paper. It seems no accident that the case that is being pushed is found in the paper's abstract, and abstracts which are supposed to faithfully summarize the overall content of scientific papers have a wider readership than the whole papers. McGorry apparently isn't the only highly influential Australian psychiatrist mental health advocate to pull this trick. Melissa Raven has written about a similar meaningful discrepancy between the content of a journal paper's abstract and its main body of text in a comment that she made at the website of The Conversation about a paper published in The Lancet which was co-authored by Professor Ian Hickie of Beyondblue fame. Regardless of how complacent or disappointed you or I might feel about the practice of writing journal paper abstracts that differ in content from the paper, it's wrong, it's misleading and it also isn't the way that science is supposed to be done.
Melissa Raven has found that "Misrepresentations of EPPIC have been a feature of submissions to governments, and in some cases have been incorporated into government policy documents." and she gives examples in her article, which I highly recommend and link to below. Professors McGorry and Hickie have both already had a major influence on federal government mental health policy, and the federal government is reportedly going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in the next few years on services such as McGorry's EPPIC and Headspace networks. How do you feel about that? If you are one of my Australian readers, you're paying the tab. Feeling depressed? I thought psychiatrists were supposed to make people feel less depressed.
Review of EPPIC research.
by Melissa Raven
Alliance For Better Access.
August 29th 2011.
http://www.betteraccess.net/index.php/information/iseppicevidencebased
Tackling depression and poor sleep with one drug.
by Sunanda Creagh
18 May 2011
The Conversation.
http://theconversation.edu.au/tackling-depression-and-poor-sleep-with-one-drug-1332
[see the full comments]
Misleading claims in the mental health reform debate.
by Melissa Raven and Jon Jureidini
On Line Opinion.
August 9th 2010.
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=10793
Healthy Skepticism
http://www.healthyskepticism.org/global
A point of criticism of McGorry that I have highlighted in my writing has been what I believe is a failure to declare conflicting interests in many published medical journal papers written or co-authored by McGorry. In contrast I have been able to find a few published papers in which McGorry has disclosed a collection of conflicting interests. Why the inconsistency?
An important criticism of McGorry's work is that he has made important misrepresentations in his advocacy about mental health policy, to governments and to the public in general in media appearances. "Misrepresentation" is the polite word for what McGorry has been doing for quite some time. Melissa Raven, an Australian psychiatric epidemiologist, policy analyst and academic and Jon Jureidini, an Australian psychiatrist, head of a department in an Australian hospital and academic have written about misrepresentations that have been made by McGorry and Adjunct Professor John Mendoza. Jureidini and Raven are polite people, so they use polite language, but their arguments are made with clarity. I believe Raven and Jureidini are both members of Healthy Skepticism, an Australia-based organization which has the aim of "improving health by reducing harm from misleading health information".
A recent addition to the debate and controversy which surrounds Prof. McGorry is a review by Melissa Raven of the published research about EPPIC (Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centre), which is a network of centres devoted to the medical treatment of early psychosis in young people. I believe McGorry is a director of EPPIC. The longitudinal study was conducted primarily in the 1990s and has been used successfully in arguments for greatly increased funding for EPPIC centres from the federal government. A number of the points highlighted in Raven's review have left me feeling alarmed and disappointed about the current state of science, psychiatry and politics in Australia.
A major point made by Raven in her article/paper published at the website of the Alliance For Better Access is that the study of EPPIC did not demonstrate that the EPPIC program of early intervention in psychotic illness is superior to standard (late) intervention in the Australian public mental health system, because the standard type and level of intervention was not represented at all in the study, not in the treatment group nor in the control group, because the control group in the study were patients in the precursor of the EPPIC program which offered a specialised early intervention program. The aspect of this matter which I find disturbing is that Professor McGorry has misrepresented the EPPIC study as evidence showing superiority of his early intervention model for psychosis treatment over "...generic late intervention in the standard system". I'm quoting McGorry being interviewed by Tony Jones on the ABC's Lateline last year. Where, I ask, has the EPPIC model ever been trialed against "...generic late intervention in the standard system"? I'd really like to know where I might read of such a study in a peer-reviewed medical journal, and I think Ms Raven would also be interested.
Another aspect of McGorry's representations about the EPPIC study which concerns me is the way he has described the strength of the evidence from the EPPIC study: "The evidence is very, very strong now....". Strong evidence? The EPPIC study was so methodologically weak that it was simply excluded from the 2011 systematic review of early psychosis interventions which was done by the world-famous and highly respected Cochrane Collaboration. I'm not a doctor, but I know a thing or two about the Cochrane Collaboration, and I would have thought that any study that was formally considered and then rejected by that organization in the process of research for one of their reviews should be considered not evidence at all, let alone strong evidence.
My regular readers should know that I'm a jaded old dame who casts a cynical eye over the way that science is conducted, but even I am disappointed that McGorry and co-authors have done that shabby old trick of writing one thing in the abstract of a journal paper, while writing contradictory content in the body of the paper. It seems no accident that the case that is being pushed is found in the paper's abstract, and abstracts which are supposed to faithfully summarize the overall content of scientific papers have a wider readership than the whole papers. McGorry apparently isn't the only highly influential Australian psychiatrist mental health advocate to pull this trick. Melissa Raven has written about a similar meaningful discrepancy between the content of a journal paper's abstract and its main body of text in a comment that she made at the website of The Conversation about a paper published in The Lancet which was co-authored by Professor Ian Hickie of Beyondblue fame. Regardless of how complacent or disappointed you or I might feel about the practice of writing journal paper abstracts that differ in content from the paper, it's wrong, it's misleading and it also isn't the way that science is supposed to be done.
Melissa Raven has found that "Misrepresentations of EPPIC have been a feature of submissions to governments, and in some cases have been incorporated into government policy documents." and she gives examples in her article, which I highly recommend and link to below. Professors McGorry and Hickie have both already had a major influence on federal government mental health policy, and the federal government is reportedly going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in the next few years on services such as McGorry's EPPIC and Headspace networks. How do you feel about that? If you are one of my Australian readers, you're paying the tab. Feeling depressed? I thought psychiatrists were supposed to make people feel less depressed.
Review of EPPIC research.
by Melissa Raven
Alliance For Better Access.
August 29th 2011.
http://www.betteraccess.net/index.php/information/iseppicevidencebased
Tackling depression and poor sleep with one drug.
by Sunanda Creagh
18 May 2011
The Conversation.
http://theconversation.edu.au/tackling-depression-and-poor-sleep-with-one-drug-1332
[see the full comments]
Misleading claims in the mental health reform debate.
by Melissa Raven and Jon Jureidini
On Line Opinion.
August 9th 2010.
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=10793
Healthy Skepticism
http://www.healthyskepticism.org/global
Sunday, October 02, 2011
Lili's moral dilemma for the day
I'm watching a show on TV about some truly horrible murders, and it appears that they are all the work of one man. How he is treated by the legal system hinges on the question of sanity - if judged insane he will be kept in a mental institution, but with the possibility of release at a later date, which no one wants, as no one, besides some deluded prison shrink, believes that anyone who did such crimes could ever become safe to have free in society. If he's judged to be sane and not too mentally impaired to be tried he could be tried, found guilty and jailed. One would hope he's be given a very long sentence (one would hope).
The problem is that there's a large tricky territory in between insane or intellectually disabled and normal enough to stand trial. No one believes that this man is "normal". Clearly there is something horribly wrong with this man. The chattering classes love to debate about nature versus nurture, but I've seen with my own eyes, just from watching the TV show, clear and untamperable physical evidence that this man has an inborn physical abnormality, possibly a genetic syndrome and could well have been born with physical abnormalities throughout his body. Physical or mental abnormalities were not mentioned in the news report that I watched, but I know that such things aren't always obvious. A baby born with a chunk missing from the heart as the result of a genetic syndrome will have a clear medical problem that will most likely be detected early and fixed surgically, but what about the babies with genetic syndromes whose missing pieces are missing from their brains? The intellectually impaired psychopathic spree killer Martin Bryant was never given a clear diagnosis, even though I believe there is a major birth defect associated with learning disability in his family history, a red flag for a genetic syndrome in the family tree if ever there was one. Consider another infamous Australian serial killer, Eric Cooke, who has born with parts missing (hare lip and cleft palate). I don't think this is just a coincidence. I believe Cooke had an alcoholic and also a disabled person in his immediate family.
So, what is the right thing to do? Shut up and join in with the mass pretence that all criminals are normal people just like everyone else, the only differences between them and us being moral choices? Should we dare to look at the link between inborn disability and criminality, at the risk of stigmatizing law-abiding disabled people, and at the risk of inciting unwarranted reactions that involve negative eugenics? Is it right to punish a person for being born with important bits missing from their genone? That hardly seems fair, as it wasn't their choice. Who should be held responsible for such situations? The mother? The mother's doctor? Until our society develops a secure and appropriate way of dealing with people like Bryant and other fundamentally impaired dangerous criminals, what are we do do with such people?
The problem is that there's a large tricky territory in between insane or intellectually disabled and normal enough to stand trial. No one believes that this man is "normal". Clearly there is something horribly wrong with this man. The chattering classes love to debate about nature versus nurture, but I've seen with my own eyes, just from watching the TV show, clear and untamperable physical evidence that this man has an inborn physical abnormality, possibly a genetic syndrome and could well have been born with physical abnormalities throughout his body. Physical or mental abnormalities were not mentioned in the news report that I watched, but I know that such things aren't always obvious. A baby born with a chunk missing from the heart as the result of a genetic syndrome will have a clear medical problem that will most likely be detected early and fixed surgically, but what about the babies with genetic syndromes whose missing pieces are missing from their brains? The intellectually impaired psychopathic spree killer Martin Bryant was never given a clear diagnosis, even though I believe there is a major birth defect associated with learning disability in his family history, a red flag for a genetic syndrome in the family tree if ever there was one. Consider another infamous Australian serial killer, Eric Cooke, who has born with parts missing (hare lip and cleft palate). I don't think this is just a coincidence. I believe Cooke had an alcoholic and also a disabled person in his immediate family.
So, what is the right thing to do? Shut up and join in with the mass pretence that all criminals are normal people just like everyone else, the only differences between them and us being moral choices? Should we dare to look at the link between inborn disability and criminality, at the risk of stigmatizing law-abiding disabled people, and at the risk of inciting unwarranted reactions that involve negative eugenics? Is it right to punish a person for being born with important bits missing from their genone? That hardly seems fair, as it wasn't their choice. Who should be held responsible for such situations? The mother? The mother's doctor? Until our society develops a secure and appropriate way of dealing with people like Bryant and other fundamentally impaired dangerous criminals, what are we do do with such people?
Saturday, October 01, 2011
Lili's additinal thought for the day
There's something a bit unsettling but also nice about sidekicks who don't speak. What's the deal with Dr Phibes' Vulnavia, and what's the deal with Penn's Teller?
Lili's next thought for the day
Sweet serendipity! More fascinating facts about Daniel Tammet discovered!
Lili's thought for the day
The problem of lesbians and formal wear needs to be resolved. Lesbians in high-power jobs always look underdressed, but on the other hand, I don't even like the look of men wearing suits and ties. Maybe the real problem is that the "suits" need to dress down a bit.