The Bluestocking, vol IX: Understanding animals, recognising faces and painting like Picasso
Afternoon,
Yesterday I saw a preview screening of Suffragette, the film by Abi Morgan about an alien invasion that is thwarted by sexy bikini-clad robots dressed as Emmeline Pankhurst. Got to say, I was surprised that was the direction she took it in, but once the car chase across Neptune started, I was hooked. (Read an interview with the director here.)
Helen
An Anthropologist On Mars
Finally, without diffidence or embarrassment (emotions unknown to her), Temple showed me her bedroom, an austere room with whitewashed walls and a single bed, and, next to the bed, a very large, strange-looking object. “What is that?” I asked.
“That’s my squeeze machine,” Temple replied. “Some people call it my hug machine.”
Oliver Sacks's extraordinary 1993 portrait of Temple Grandin, a high-functioning autistic woman who devoted her life to making animal slaughter more humane. (More New Yorker highlights from Sacks here.)
Are You A Super-Recogniser?
You might share this superpower, too, and not even know it. The ability to recognize faces, it turns out, falls along a spectrum, says David White of the University of New South Wales’ forensic psychology laboratory. At the lowest end are people who are “face-blind,” a condition called prosopagnosia. (Oliver Sacks, the famous neurologist who recently died, had this condition. He said he recognized his best friend Eric by his “heavy eyebrows and thick spectacles.”) On the other end are super-recognizers.
I'm mostly sharing this to show off that I am a super-recogniser, at least according to the test that's linked to in here. I had hoped I was, because I can spot Someone Off The Telly at 100 paces in a crowded theatre. I am willing to concede it might be harder to recognise people who haven't been in Casualty, though.
PLUG: My former minion Alex Hern now has a podcast about t'internet, Updog. This week, he introduced us to the Duck Army vs Adele mash-up, which I have watched approximately 48 times.
Quick links: The best worst celebrity tweets. The Traffic King of Reddit (plus the fact that the Awl's tags are my new favourite thing on the internet). A fantastically awkward audience with the editor (and owner) of the LRB. Should I read Elena Ferrante's books? They sound interesting, but I'm still only 300 pages into A Place of Greater Safety and it's taken me about six months to get there. Google's Deep Dream learns to paint like Picasso. Great Tarantino interview with A* shade at the Wachowskis for Matrix: Reloaded. I made lots of people cry with this goodbye to Terry Pratchett. (I made an equal number complain that I hadn't issued a spoiler alert for The Shepherd's Crown.) Ken Loach's Star Wars.
Guest gif:
More of these here. Complaints, corrections, vague musings about social democracy to helenlewisbook@gmail.com