Your unusual dish of everything.
The intriguing and the fascinating.
Extraordinary Human Abilities – Part 3: Absolute pitch
Jun 26th
Absolute Pitch, or Perfect Pitch, is the ability to name or reproduce a tone with nothing but your mind.
People with absolute pitch are capable of identifying and reproducing a tone without needing a known reference.
It is not simply a better ability to hear but the ability to mentally class sounds into remembered categories. Examples of this include identifying the pitch of everyday noises (e.g. horns, sirens, and engines), being able to sing a named note without hearing a reference, naming the tones of a chord, or naming the key signature of a song.
Doing any of these is a cognitive act – it requires one to remember the frequency of each tone, be able to label it (e.g. ‘A’, ‘C#’, or ‘F-flat’), and sufficient exposure to the range of sound within each label. Opinions vary as to whether absolute pitch is genetic or a learned ability that is strongly influenced to one’s exposure to music at crucial developmental stages – much like how a child’s ability to identify colors by their frequency depends on the type and level of their exposure to it. More >
Extraordinary Human Abilities – Part 2: Echolocation
Jun 25th
Echolocation is how bats fly around in dark forests – they emit a sound, wait for the echo to return, and use that sound of the echo in each ear plus the return time to work out where an object is and how far away. Surprisingly (well, maybe not on this list!), humans are also capable of using echolocation. Use of echolocation is probably restricted to blind people because it takes a long time to master and heightened sensitivity to reflected sound.
To navigate via echolocation a person actively creates a noise (e.g. tapping a cane or clicking the tongue) and determines from the echoes where objects are located around them. People skilled at this can often tell where an object is, what size it is, and its density. Because humans cannot make or hear the higher pitched frequencies that bats and dolphins use they can only picture objects that are comparatively larger than those ‘seen’ by echolocating animals.
People with the ability to echolocate include James Holman, Daniel Kish, and Ben Underwood. Perhaps the most remarkable and well-documented of cases is the story of Ben Underwood, who lost both his eyes to retinal cancer at the age of three. He is shown in the video below (warning: the scene where he puts in his prosthetic eyeballs maybe a bit disturbing for some).
Still, it is worth checking it out!
Extraordinary Human Abilities – Part 1: Eidetic memory
Jun 24th
When a person has photographic memory or total recall this is called eidetic memory.
It is the ability to recall sounds, images, or objects from one’s memory with extreme accuracy. Examples of eidetic memory include the effort of Akira Haraguchi who recited from memory the first 100,000 decimal places of pi and the drawings of Stephen Wiltshire (who is an autistic savant) – his recreation of Rome is shown in the video below.
Stephen Wiltshire
Kim Peek, the inspiration for the autistic (Peek is not actually autistic though) character of Raymond Babbit in the movie Rainman, also possesses eidetic memory – among other things he can recall some 12,000 books from memory.
Whether true photographic memory exists in adults is still a controversial issue, but it is accepted that eidetic abilities are distributed evenly between men and women. One also cannot become an eidetiker through practice.
Stephen Wiltshire has been called the “Human Camera”. More >
Unknown creature found by Russian soldiers
Jun 24th
A creature was found by Russian soldiers on Sakhalin shoreline. Sakhalin area is situated near to Japan, it’s the most eastern part of Russia, almost 5000 miles to East from Moscow (Russia is huge). People don’t know what is it. According to the bones and teeth – it is not a fish. According to its skeleton – it’s not a crocodile or alligator. It has a skin with hair or fur. It has been said that it was taken by Russian special services for in-depth studies, and we are lucky that people who encountered it first made those photos before it was brought away.
Here are the pictures: More >
Insula păpușilor – ultima atracție a turismului negru
Jun 22nd
Faptul că turismul negru a devenit una dintre atracțiile noului secol – nu mai încape îndoială. Statisticile arată că oamenii sunt din ce în ce mai interesați și gata să dea bani frumoși pe o experiență care să le bântuie visele pentru multă vreme.
Este și cazul Insulei Păpușilor din Mexic, La Isla de las Munecas, o locație pe cât de atractivă după nume, pe atât de înfiorătoare la o privire mai atentă. (The Canals of Xochimilico)
Mexicanii susțin că un anume Don Julian Santana, un ascet care a ținut morțis să se retragă pe această insulă pustie, și-a petrecut ultimii 50 de ani din viață pentru a mulțumi spiritul unei fetițe înecate în canalul colector din spatele casei sale. More >
How Mad Are You? – The Rosenhan experiment.
Jun 20th
The Rosenhan experiment was a famous experiment into the validity of psychiatric diagnosis conducted by psychologist David Rosenhan in 1973. It was published in the journal Science under the title “On being sane in insane places.”
The study is considered an important and influential criticism of psychiatric diagnosis.
Rosenhan’s study was done in two parts. The first part involved the use of healthy associates or “pseudopatients” who briefly simulated auditory hallucinations in an attempt to gain admission to 12 different psychiatric hospitals in five different states in various locations in the United States. There were three women and five men. More >
