My daughter has this ability, but we thought it was ‘Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory’ which is actually a thing (HSAM). Perhaps she has both? In 2015 we were in one of those snaky lines for an amusement park ride at Cedar Point when she was 14 years old. She casually said “Hey, there’s Tara!.” “Who’s Tara?” I asked, thinking it must be a classmate. “She waited on us at the Bob Evans in Wadsworth on April 17 in 2008.” As the line progressed we got closer to Tara and her group of friends, who were in the parallel line moving beside us. “Excuse me, I know this sounds weird but my daughter thinks she recognizes you.” Is there any chance that you used to work at a Bob Evans restaurant in Wadsworth, Ohio several years ago?” Tara replied that she had indeed worked at the BE restaurant in Wadsworth the summer she got out of high school in 2008. She had since graduated from college, got married, was working in Columbus, and was visiting Cedar Point with friends. Seven years apart and 1 hour and 30 minutes between Sandusky, Ohio and Wadsworth, Ohio my daughter made the connection with a young lady who she interacted with for maybe five minutes in a waitress/customer situation. Tara and her friends were amazed and likely slightly freaked out by their encounter with us, but they were very nice about the situation. I told my daughter I was amazed with her ability to remember people, and then she told me what I, my wife, and she had ordered that morning on our way to Akron for a medical appointment. She also rattled off the name of the doctor she saw, the nurse who took her weight and height measurements, and the receptionist who checked us out after the appointment seven year earlier on a Thursday, April 17. She is a calendar savant, too. That is the HSAM because if she experiences something she never forgets it. It’s an incredible talent with insidious effects, since she simply cannot forget anything that has occurred in her life. Thanks for this article!
The Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed today about an autistic child's "shrieks and coos" throughout a concert at the Hollywood Bowl during Joshua Bell's violin playing. A nearby patron, annoyed, alerted an usher, and the family left.
The writer ended by saying,
"What saddens me is that the evening could have ended so differently. A few years ago, just as a Boston orchestra finished a Mozart piece, a different little boy reacted with a 'Wow!' so loud that the audience laughed and then broke into applause.
"It turned out he was autistic and rarely spoke at all. An audio recording of his utterance went viral, attracting headlines and even inspiring a children’s picture book, 'The Boy Who Said Wow.' 'It was one of the most wonderful moments I’ve experienced in the concert hall,' the orchestra’s president said at the time."
This is disingenuous. The difference is, of course, that one child exclaimed only at the end of the concert, as anyone might ("Bravo!"), while the other exclaimed throughout, including during softer violin passages.
Over the years, I've sat next to those whose disabilities made attending to the concert stage difficult; for them and for me. (Also next to perfectly normal young people with egregious manners.) Recognizing that these families have difficulties enough, I've held my tongue but always feel a mixture of sadness and relief when they leave early. This was true particularly when a young woman, in her early twenties perhaps, dressed up beautifully to see "Nutcracker," was finally taken away by her clearly disappointed mother and grandmother. They had been hopeful for a better experience.
So had I been, for them, for their night out seeing one of the last best things our city has to offer.
The article is interesting but feels off track as a lead story in a national news publication during the end stages of a neck-and-neck presidential election and the Middle East in the grip of conflicts that could lead to a World War. Maybe a relevant take away is how people can look at the same thing and come away with different impressions. Not a perfect analogy, but similar to how our country is so thoroughly and bitterly divided: people view the same data and events, and come to opposing conclusions. The article is nice, but just not national news. I love science, so perhaps add a Science Section? Feels like TFP is still trying to figure out what it is.
I don't have to be told that the world is burning up, some things I can see for myself. But I learned new things from these two articles and that is what made them worth reading and TFP subscription worth having.
We have a presidential candidate who's looked death from an assassin in the eye twice in 6 weeks; another who kackles her way through a Hollywood elitist love fest of nothing burgers; an acting president who's MIA (check the beach), the world on fire, and you offer this tabloid gibberish?
Yes, I agree, let’s obsessively only consume news related to elections and also refuse to discuss ANYTHING else until the elections are over. That will be a real treat for everyone.
If I've briefly met someone at a conference or committee, or, socially, has been introduced by a friend, I tend not to remember them. The only time it gets problematic is when I receive phone calls from people announcing themselves and I draw a blank. Then they'll say, remember meeting me at x? This has been a lifelong thing. It's not with everyone, but some people seem to recede into the background, and others don't.
So I suppose someone was wondering: is there any way to make this political? As it happens, YES!!!
There are two sorts of people: those who read history and RECOGNIZE common patterns; and those who think that everything that happens is new, and that even if everything is pointing in the same direction it has many times before, that THIS TIME things will be different, because THIS TIME is not AT ALL like that time.
But of course there is nothing new under the sun. Our nation is decadent and on the precipice of a steep decline. Our national debt is astronomical and growing by something like millions a minute. We just brought in 10-30 milllion people we are now paying to sit around and watch TV's we provided in apartments or hotel rooms we are paying for. We are actively soliticiting war from Russia, which thus far has not been as enthusiastic about war as elements of our government are.
There are two quotes on this I like:
First, Alduous Huxley said, approximately, that "The main lesson of those who study history is how little people learn from history."
Second, a meme of unknown origin: "Santayana said that those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it; those who DO study history are frequently doomed to watch in helpless horror as OTHERS repeat it."
I could politicize a toothbrush. And I will at least until Election Day. These are not trivial times, and this is not a trivial election. Our nations government is corrupt, freedom of dissent is under concentrated and illegal attack, and our nations media is uniformly under the control of men and women who do not mean ordinary Americans well.
Oh jeez, back to reality. I think I've finally understood some of I Kant. Human's reality is never going to be God's reality, so quit trying. And Rousseau the Atheist believed Faith the most important value for achieving a comfortable life.
Rightly or wrongly, I feel a sense of duty. And if you want to reference Kant, I very much would will that everyone approach Life roughly the way I do. The specific content, of course, would vary by experience, but I would at least not be looking at grocery aisles of manufactured homogeneity.
Our problem is we have forgotten how to live. I speak politically, because the looming disasters are both obvious and unacknowledged by those who should be sounding the warning, but I never forget the Larger Problem.
Faith is fine, but I still think we should all do what we can, where and when we can.
Un -- I didn't feel like saying more. I see Faith the same as Woody Allen -- "On Life," You Tube, 2 min. -- as did Rousseau, Faith is a necessary delusion for a comfortable life. Our founders, the principles, "used it," the same way I support it. I'm done with doing my part, I support you all to continue.
I’m fine with that. I think you are much older than me, and there is a point where watching the world spin is a suitable reward for having made it that far in this seemingly absurd world.
I did just watch the Woody Allen video. I dont agree—ones metaphysics of course makes a large difference, and my views differ from his and presumably yours—but I GET why he would say that. My own first intellectual hero was Albert Camus, whose work is inseparable from the word absurdity. I of course use that word often to this very day.
I do think we survive death, and that science supports this idea. But I dont know.
I remember reading an interview with Neil Gaiman, who said that he was about 50/50 on survival, but that he was OK with both possibilities. That is a very interesting perspective, in its overt and honest agnosticism and acceptance.
Fascinating story. At first I thought,”wait, this isn’t serious news,” but then it drew me in and I realized that I learned something new that could potentially impact my daily life so it WAS news. To reinforce so concretely the fact that people do actually have different realities seems especially relevant right now. For years I’ve wondered why war and strife and politics are more automatically considered news, and science and the arts are put in a “section.” Thanks for leading with science.
Not my cup of tea but that is OK. I appreciate TFP for it's variety of subjects and viewpoints. Would not want a steady diet of this but interesting for a few paragraphs.
My daughter has this ability, but we thought it was ‘Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory’ which is actually a thing (HSAM). Perhaps she has both? In 2015 we were in one of those snaky lines for an amusement park ride at Cedar Point when she was 14 years old. She casually said “Hey, there’s Tara!.” “Who’s Tara?” I asked, thinking it must be a classmate. “She waited on us at the Bob Evans in Wadsworth on April 17 in 2008.” As the line progressed we got closer to Tara and her group of friends, who were in the parallel line moving beside us. “Excuse me, I know this sounds weird but my daughter thinks she recognizes you.” Is there any chance that you used to work at a Bob Evans restaurant in Wadsworth, Ohio several years ago?” Tara replied that she had indeed worked at the BE restaurant in Wadsworth the summer she got out of high school in 2008. She had since graduated from college, got married, was working in Columbus, and was visiting Cedar Point with friends. Seven years apart and 1 hour and 30 minutes between Sandusky, Ohio and Wadsworth, Ohio my daughter made the connection with a young lady who she interacted with for maybe five minutes in a waitress/customer situation. Tara and her friends were amazed and likely slightly freaked out by their encounter with us, but they were very nice about the situation. I told my daughter I was amazed with her ability to remember people, and then she told me what I, my wife, and she had ordered that morning on our way to Akron for a medical appointment. She also rattled off the name of the doctor she saw, the nurse who took her weight and height measurements, and the receptionist who checked us out after the appointment seven year earlier on a Thursday, April 17. She is a calendar savant, too. That is the HSAM because if she experiences something she never forgets it. It’s an incredible talent with insidious effects, since she simply cannot forget anything that has occurred in her life. Thanks for this article!
The saddest thing about this article, that is really irrelevant, is that at the bottom they are begging for letters.
Why not read the comments? Many are very instructive.
I think TFP is something of an adolescent. It’s trying to figure out what it wants to be when it grows up.
It seldom actually gathers “news”, it reports from second-hand sources. Most of what it generates are left-slanted opinion pieces.
TFP comes across as more of a localized / regional magazine, sort of like ‘Garden & Gun”, or “New Yorker”.
They are extremely lucky to have Nellie, who transcends the NYC / NYT bubble.
Re neuro-divergence:
The Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed today about an autistic child's "shrieks and coos" throughout a concert at the Hollywood Bowl during Joshua Bell's violin playing. A nearby patron, annoyed, alerted an usher, and the family left.
The writer ended by saying,
"What saddens me is that the evening could have ended so differently. A few years ago, just as a Boston orchestra finished a Mozart piece, a different little boy reacted with a 'Wow!' so loud that the audience laughed and then broke into applause.
"It turned out he was autistic and rarely spoke at all. An audio recording of his utterance went viral, attracting headlines and even inspiring a children’s picture book, 'The Boy Who Said Wow.' 'It was one of the most wonderful moments I’ve experienced in the concert hall,' the orchestra’s president said at the time."
This is disingenuous. The difference is, of course, that one child exclaimed only at the end of the concert, as anyone might ("Bravo!"), while the other exclaimed throughout, including during softer violin passages.
Over the years, I've sat next to those whose disabilities made attending to the concert stage difficult; for them and for me. (Also next to perfectly normal young people with egregious manners.) Recognizing that these families have difficulties enough, I've held my tongue but always feel a mixture of sadness and relief when they leave early. This was true particularly when a young woman, in her early twenties perhaps, dressed up beautifully to see "Nutcracker," was finally taken away by her clearly disappointed mother and grandmother. They had been hopeful for a better experience.
So had I been, for them, for their night out seeing one of the last best things our city has to offer.
Life is hard.
Oh, wow. I'd never heard of either of these. Very interesting
I wonder if super-recognizers could help conclusively solve the DB Cooper case?
The article was good enough to skim through, but I agree that many of us subscribed for balanced NEWS stories.
The article is interesting but feels off track as a lead story in a national news publication during the end stages of a neck-and-neck presidential election and the Middle East in the grip of conflicts that could lead to a World War. Maybe a relevant take away is how people can look at the same thing and come away with different impressions. Not a perfect analogy, but similar to how our country is so thoroughly and bitterly divided: people view the same data and events, and come to opposing conclusions. The article is nice, but just not national news. I love science, so perhaps add a Science Section? Feels like TFP is still trying to figure out what it is.
I don't have to be told that the world is burning up, some things I can see for myself. But I learned new things from these two articles and that is what made them worth reading and TFP subscription worth having.
We have a presidential candidate who's looked death from an assassin in the eye twice in 6 weeks; another who kackles her way through a Hollywood elitist love fest of nothing burgers; an acting president who's MIA (check the beach), the world on fire, and you offer this tabloid gibberish?
You couldn't wait till November 6th?
Yes, I agree, let’s obsessively only consume news related to elections and also refuse to discuss ANYTHING else until the elections are over. That will be a real treat for everyone.
YeahButt, 234, lookit the comments we'll get, starting with yours. Commenters is about the only reason I've stayed on TFP.
If I've briefly met someone at a conference or committee, or, socially, has been introduced by a friend, I tend not to remember them. The only time it gets problematic is when I receive phone calls from people announcing themselves and I draw a blank. Then they'll say, remember meeting me at x? This has been a lifelong thing. It's not with everyone, but some people seem to recede into the background, and others don't.
So I suppose someone was wondering: is there any way to make this political? As it happens, YES!!!
There are two sorts of people: those who read history and RECOGNIZE common patterns; and those who think that everything that happens is new, and that even if everything is pointing in the same direction it has many times before, that THIS TIME things will be different, because THIS TIME is not AT ALL like that time.
But of course there is nothing new under the sun. Our nation is decadent and on the precipice of a steep decline. Our national debt is astronomical and growing by something like millions a minute. We just brought in 10-30 milllion people we are now paying to sit around and watch TV's we provided in apartments or hotel rooms we are paying for. We are actively soliticiting war from Russia, which thus far has not been as enthusiastic about war as elements of our government are.
There are two quotes on this I like:
First, Alduous Huxley said, approximately, that "The main lesson of those who study history is how little people learn from history."
Second, a meme of unknown origin: "Santayana said that those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it; those who DO study history are frequently doomed to watch in helpless horror as OTHERS repeat it."
I could politicize a toothbrush. And I will at least until Election Day. These are not trivial times, and this is not a trivial election. Our nations government is corrupt, freedom of dissent is under concentrated and illegal attack, and our nations media is uniformly under the control of men and women who do not mean ordinary Americans well.
Oh jeez, back to reality. I think I've finally understood some of I Kant. Human's reality is never going to be God's reality, so quit trying. And Rousseau the Atheist believed Faith the most important value for achieving a comfortable life.
Rightly or wrongly, I feel a sense of duty. And if you want to reference Kant, I very much would will that everyone approach Life roughly the way I do. The specific content, of course, would vary by experience, but I would at least not be looking at grocery aisles of manufactured homogeneity.
Our problem is we have forgotten how to live. I speak politically, because the looming disasters are both obvious and unacknowledged by those who should be sounding the warning, but I never forget the Larger Problem.
Faith is fine, but I still think we should all do what we can, where and when we can.
Un -- I didn't feel like saying more. I see Faith the same as Woody Allen -- "On Life," You Tube, 2 min. -- as did Rousseau, Faith is a necessary delusion for a comfortable life. Our founders, the principles, "used it," the same way I support it. I'm done with doing my part, I support you all to continue.
I’m fine with that. I think you are much older than me, and there is a point where watching the world spin is a suitable reward for having made it that far in this seemingly absurd world.
I did just watch the Woody Allen video. I dont agree—ones metaphysics of course makes a large difference, and my views differ from his and presumably yours—but I GET why he would say that. My own first intellectual hero was Albert Camus, whose work is inseparable from the word absurdity. I of course use that word often to this very day.
I do think we survive death, and that science supports this idea. But I dont know.
I remember reading an interview with Neil Gaiman, who said that he was about 50/50 on survival, but that he was OK with both possibilities. That is a very interesting perspective, in its overt and honest agnosticism and acceptance.
What a fascinating story!
Fascinating story. At first I thought,”wait, this isn’t serious news,” but then it drew me in and I realized that I learned something new that could potentially impact my daily life so it WAS news. To reinforce so concretely the fact that people do actually have different realities seems especially relevant right now. For years I’ve wondered why war and strife and politics are more automatically considered news, and science and the arts are put in a “section.” Thanks for leading with science.
So what WAS the news from this. And how are anecdotal stories science. I’m not being stroppy, I’d really like to know.
Seriously? Our country is falling apart and TFP chooses to publish supermarket tabloid articles like these?
Not as good as any supermarket tabloid I ever saw.
Aliens
Area 51
Bigfoot
Kardashian
Foreign leader love child sex change
Not my cup of tea but that is OK. I appreciate TFP for it's variety of subjects and viewpoints. Would not want a steady diet of this but interesting for a few paragraphs.
Besides, we've got "Jotting In Purple" to get us through it.