Archive for November, 2008
Anton’s Blindness
November 23rd, 2008
While reading through Dan Dennett’s wonderful Consciousness Explained, I stumbled across a reference to “anosognosia,” which eventually led me to a fantastic disorder called Anton-Babinski syndrome. A person suffering from Anton’s blindness is blind, but insists that they can see. The patient is not only blind, but is unaware that they are blind, and often go to elaborate lengths to convince other people of their sightedness.
The sudden development of bilateral occipital dysfunction is likely to produce transient physical and psychical effects in which mental confusion may be prominent. It may be some days before the relatives, or the nursing staff, tumble to the fact that the patient has actually become sightless. This is not only because the patient ordinarily does not volunteer the information that he has become blind, but he furthermore misleads his entourage by behaving and talking as though he were sighted. Attention is aroused however when the patient is found to collide with pieces of furniture, to fall over objects, and to experience difficulty in finding his way around. He may try to walk through a wall or through a closed door on his way from one room to another. Suspicion is still further alerted when he begins to describe people and objects around him which, as a matter of fact, are not there at all. Thus we have the twin symptoms of anosognosia (or lack of awareness of defect) and confabulation, the latter affecting both speech and behaviour.
- The Divine Banquet of the Brain
Anton’s blindness is a result of brain damage, usually either caused by a head injury or as the result of a stroke.
The Buffalo Bills
November 16th, 2008
In the late 1950s, Leopoldville (now Kinshasa, in the DR Congo*) got its first movie theaters. The rate of unemployment was very high at the time, so the mostly-uneducated youth of the city spent a lot of their time watching Westerns. This grew into a sort of obsession, and eventually gangs were formed based on the culture in the films. These kids were collectively called The Bills. They wore cowboy outfits, developed their own dialect - Hindubill – and named their territories based on locations in America and movies they’d seen (like “Texas” and “Godzilla”).
The Wikipedia article has a little more information.
* That’s the Democratic Republic of the Congo, not to be confused with Dr. Congo, the shadowy antihero of a short film I’m going to produce some day.
The Incontinent Duck
November 14th, 2008
The eighteenth century was a golden age for clockwork contraptions (see The Turk (sort of)). One of the more renowned creators of these devices was Jacques de Vaucanson (1709-1782), a French inventor and bureaucrat most famous for his Digesting Duck.
This remarkable duck ate food from an exhibitor, swallowed it, digested it, and, yes, produced excreta. Voltaire thought that this contribution echoed the glory of France. It was similar in size to a duck, drank water with its beak, quacked, could rise up and settle back on its legs, and, most amazingly, it swallowed food with a realistic gulping action of its flexible neck.
- Cognitive Science, Jay Friedenberg and Gordon Silverman
Joseph Palmer
November 6th, 2008
Joseph Palmer (1791-1874) was a Transcendentalist and veteran of the War of 1812. He was also a member of the Fruitlands commune established by Amos Bronson Alcott (the father of Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women). More interestingly, he spent a year in jail for the crime of wearing a full beard.
Read this better blog’s post for an excellent telling of this wonderful story. Note in particular that his tombstone reads, “Persecuted for wearing the beard.”
While we’re on the subject of Fruitlands, though, let’s examine a few other members of this commune:
All members of Fruitlands were essentially radical in their means of establishing separate identities away from society. Each experienced deep conflicts between their work and their religion, and they all underwent an awakening before joining Fruitlands. One man, Abraham Everett, reversed his name and called himself “Wood Abram.” Another man, Joseph Palmer, insisted on wearing a long beard despite its being totally out of fashion at a time when all men were clean-shaven. Before coming to Fruitlands, in fact, he had been persecuted for his choice: once four men had attempted to forcibly cut off his beard; he beat them off, was arrested and jailed, and refused to pay a fine to be released from prison. Samuel Bower, another member, experimented with nudism after realizing that clothing was spiritually stifling. Samuel Larned came from a circle of intellectuals in Providence, Rhode Island, who admired the transcendentalists. Ann Page (the only woman other than Mrs. Alcott) joined but was expelled for eating a piece of fish. There are also reports of a man who lived one year only on apples and the next only on crackers.
Senorita Burrita
November 4th, 2008
If while in Lancaster county you find yourself pining for delicious burritos, you might consider visiting Senorita Burrita, the most excellent Mexican restaurant-cum-coffee shop in Lancaster city. Aside from giant burritos and delicious espresso, they occasionally have wonderful live music.
This post is dedicated to Dr. Liston, who asked me to post a picture of a burrito for reasons I can no longer rightly recall.