On the Science Show last week

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/increasing-the-accuracy-of-face-matching/5246238

Want to know where it’s all happening at this blog?

See the tail end of this post:

https://superrecognizer.wordpress.com/2014/01/09/some-ideas-that-id-like-to-explicitly-lay-claim-to-right-now-in-2014/

I’m spending time making explicit the publication of my own ideas and observations on scientific matters such as synaesthesia, face perception, face recognition, visual memory, dementia, the immune system, movement-evoked synaesthesia and embodied cognition in response to discovering that ideas of mine, from this blog and also dating back years before the establishment of this blog, have been plagiarized or under-acknowledged by some “real scientists” who have jobs or affiliations with universities. I might not be a “real scientist”, just a citizen scientist/housewife, but I still have the right to be acknowledged for my ideas. This blog is archived by a third party, and thus I can show what and when I published ideas and observations.

I’d also like to point out that my number 1 red-hot idea about face perception and synaesthesia, linking my ideas with those of the long-forgotten work of a dead famous person, has never been mentioned or explained at this blog or in published writing anywhere by me. My only writing on that topic is on a chit of paper filed away with scores of other bits and pieces. I’d rather never share that idea with my readers or researchers or science in general than see it purloined by some a-hole.

I had no idea

I guess I should have suspected that the term “indigo child” comes from synaesthesia. The truth is that mystical new age stuff is one of those areas of life, like sport, religion and Hollywood gossip, which I do my very best to ignore, and that’s probably why I’d never given it a single thought.

Are the indigo children really so fascinating or are they just spoiled brats? It’s those beige adults that I wonder about, people like Jean and John. What makes them so special and successful, and why are they so beige in colour and also in behaviour? Does society reward beigeness, or are they exceptional or radical in disguise? Are they as happy with being beige as the seem to be, or do they secretly long to be scarlet or even indigo? Were they indigo when they were kids and changed colour, like birds who drop their old feathers and old colouration?

Wikipedia contributors, ‘Indigo children’, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 6 February 2014, 10:58 UTC, [accessed 18 February 2014]

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Indigo_children&oldid=594190630

More botanical pareidola

http://bogleech.tumblr.com/post/55464120276/aristolochia-salvador-platensis

I’m still publishing and explaining ideas that I have thought of at his blog

https://superrecognizer.wordpress.com/2014/01/09/some-ideas-that-id-like-to-explicitly-lay-claim-to-right-now-in-2014/

Grapheme-colour synaesthetes show enhanced visual recognition memory for a variety of things

I wonder where they got the idea for these studies:

Jamie Ward, Peter Hovard, Alicia Jones, and Nicolas Rothen Enhanced recognition memory in grapheme-color synaesthesia for different categories of visual stimuli. Frontiers in Psychology. 2013 Oct 24;4:762. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00762. eCollection 2013.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3807560/

http://www.frontiersin.org/journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00762/abstract

I guess it’s nice to see ideas that I have been exploring for years at this blog supported by research. Did you notice that this paper has the same publisher and the same month of publication as that paper, and one of the authors of this paper was an editor of that paper? I think I recognize a pattern.

Another lexical-gustatory experience

Ayn Rand = bacon rind

Know this face?

You think you’re good at recognizing faces? Then tell me please, what is the most famous acting role of the actor who plays the grandmother in the TV show episode linked to below? I’ll give you a hint – in her most famous role her facial features were modified and she wore some pretty noticeable makeup. And here’s another hint – her real name is a red-coloured first name with a surname that tastes of caramel ricecream (which you can’t buy in the shops any more).

http://youtu.be/8cigDwSoTx0

Up then down, up then down……………

Oh, I get it! This cute tune by Calvin Harris is called “Bounce” because it goes up and down and up and down. Makes me want to move too. http://youtu.be/ooZwmeUfuXg

They’re teaching synaesthesia in the schools!

No wonder the youth of today have mixed-up minds!

This is text from a sheet explaining the correct way to write letters which was given to primary school students in Western Australian government school:

“With a straight neck and a round tummy, put his hat on, five sure looks funny.”

Actually, the number five doesn’t have a round tummy, the curve at the lower half of the number is legs. He is running so fast that his legs look like a round blurry wheel, just like in old cartoons which I used to watch on TV when I was a kid, a very long time ago. When people think about letters of the alphabet as though they are people, that is called ordinal-linguistic personification and it is thought to be a variety of synaesthesia. A lot of folks must have it I think.

I’ve also seen a classroom activity in which the students have been asked to sort and paste pieces of coloured paper into the two categories of “warm” and “cool” colours, a cross sensory activity for sure, bordering on synaesthesia. At this rate, we will have a 100% prevalence of synaesthesia in the upcoming generations.