Quickies
Quickies: Forgotten Childhood Memories, FDA Loopholes, and Game of Thrones Attack Ads
On April 9, 1860, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville made the oldest known recording of a human voice, using a phonautograph. (And honestly, it sounds like something you’d hear in a creepy movie.)
- Neither Female Nor Male – “So what will it do to our collective minds when forced to grasp that some people are neither gender? Not male, or female, but something else either encompassing, or rejecting, or just adapting from both? Last week, Australia had to grapple with just that after the High Court, in a historic decision, ruled that a person called Norrie May-Welby could register as “nonspecific” on official certificates.” From nowoo.
- The Forgotten Childhood: Why Early Memories Fade – An interesting article about how much kids actually remember. (I have at least one memory from when I was 2-years-old still.)
- Serious reading takes a hit from online scanning and skimming, researchers say – The first person to say “tl;dr” gets the snark award for obvious responses ;). (Bonus points if you find the unintentional swear in the URL.) From Sarah.
- Gaping FDA loophole allows food manufactures to determine for themselves whether chemical additives are safe – Potentially unsafe additives are legally kept secret from the FDA — and from the public.
- “Game of Thrones” Attack Ads – “Daenerys Targaryen: Wrong for Dragons, Wrong for the Realm.” Bwaha!
I have two distinct visual memories from when I was less than a year old, and at least ten others from before I was four. And I’m pretty sure they are indeed real memories.
But there are also memories that might just be visual versions of stories that I was told, so not real memories. I think Oliver Sacks talked about a childhood memory that he had which, when he later talked about it with his older brother, he realized it wasn’t a direct memory, but a visualization of what had been described to him in a letter about the event he thought he’d been involved in.
Loved the GOT attack ads. I wondered why none for Stannis, but then I remembered, being a religious fanatic is an asset. (Even if he’s only pretending to be one, for the usual Hollywood reason of ‘I won’t worship any gods who killed my parents.’) I do hate living ‘in the future’, as it were. For instance, trying to defend Cersei with only the first two and a half books to go by is impossible. (Also, explaining my bile fascination with the Boltons.) On the flip side, I’ve become a master of double meanings in the process. By the way, guest right is as serious as life and death.
I thought that said online scammers, actually. Like, this Nigerian princess who needs my help getting her money out of the country! And this guy who says he can make my penis bigger!
Interesting about childhood memories. I can still remember things from when I was 4.
I have several distinct memories of when I was less than two. One was when I was about 9 months old, and had the measles. I remember hurting all over, being delirious and being stuck in a hot red fog of agony. The problem is I may well have constructed this memory in the last ten years after learning (when I was a teenager) that I had measles when I was a baby and after finding out about the antivaxers on Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy blog between 5 and 10 years ago. There are no objective details in the memory that I can confirm independently.