Search This Blog

31 October 2010

Postalo Vleeptron / 1st Day Issue: Anosognosia / it stings like hell, but I'm invisible! / she says she's my wife, she probably is

Click image for larger.

Postalo Vleeptron
First Day Issue

Anosognosia

Have I posted a version of this stamp or anything about anosognosia before?

I had a hospital procedure the other day, and I'm so hopped up on dope that I can't remember. Also they used that Forget Drug -- I think it's called Versed -- in the anesthesia. 


I'm pretty sure the woman who drove me home was my wife; she said she was my wife, anyway.

But things have been pretty fuzzy on Planet Vleeptron this week.

~ ~ ~

The two armed bank robberies were low-rent and ordinary. But with a difference: The robber wore no mask, no motorcycle helmet. He made no effort to disguise his face.

So the Pittsburgh police began their investigation with perfectly clear security camera video of the robber's face. A very short time later, they had their suspect in handcuffs. He seemed upset and confused.

"But I wore the juice!" he told the cops.

"What juice?" the detectives asked.

"Lemon juice! I rubbed it all over my face! It really stings, but it makes you invisible to the bank cameras!"

Of course he was too smart just to swallow a street rumor like the power of lemon juice to render the wearer invisible to cameras. He needed proof. So he tested it. He rubbed lemon juice all over his face, took a Polaroid snapshot of himself, and claimed that his face didn't show up on the test photo.

That was good enough for him. He was ready for bank heists.

David Dunning, a professor of social psychology at Cornell, was fascinated by the Tale of the Invisible Bank Robber, and, with graduate student Justin Kruger, published (in 1999) a research paper about an apparently common, but previously unreported disorder:


Unskilled and Unaware of It:
How Difficulties of Recognizing
One’s Own Incompetence
Lead to Inflated Self-assessments

and termed the disorder they described

anosognosia

Deconstructing from its Greek roots, it means, roughly:

 
I'm so stupid
that I don't realize 
I'm really stupid.

Anosognosia seems to be both widespread and incurable.

But as a theory of intellectual disorder, it explains a great deal of human behavior that was previously mysterious and inexplicable.

Now, for the first time, it all makes sense.

The documentary filmmaker Errol Morris wrote about anosognosia in The New York Times. His remarkable essay begins HERE.

4 comments:

PatFromCH said...

In most Cantons in CH the school year starts after August 1st which you could call National Day. The school board of the village where I grew up tried an experiment and hired a traffic guard to help and assist first graders getting across the road. These guys were fully convinced that the new school year would indeed start the first Monday after Aug 1st. Unfortunately that was not the case the year that happened, The Guard didn't know either so he stood there but no kids showed up. School would start a week later and down at the pub we all had a laugh about people who were so convinced that they failed. Would that fit the category ?

Or what about the bank robber who wrote a ransom note on the back of his own pay check ? Anyone for Politics today ? I heard Quinn The Eskimo is standing on a verry small Ice cube surrounded by open water and huge sharks these days.....Dont worry, at the end of the month I might have a new bomb shell out of CH for you...

Ryszard Wasilewski said...

Vleeptron!
I miss reading your posts.
I hope all is well, or at least as well as can be, and that that woman was your wife, and that you have a wave of remembering, unfuzzing, wash that digital lemon juice right off...

Vleeptron Dude said...

hiya Ryszard sorry about long delay before replying, but I was on drugs. masked strangers were probing me. Why do UFO aliens come 11.6 parsecs to look up our dupa?

On the other hand, I'm all hopped up on drugs, a woman who says she's my wife helps me into the car and drives me to some place where she says we live. That could have a Happy Ending too. And if the versed takes a long time to wear off, I could forget all about it.

the masked aliens said they liked what they saw up my dupa. all other systems are doing okay. I am fatally stricken with Growing Older, however, and my health insurance does not cover very expensive drugs and treatments to halt or reverse that.

How are you? how was the kielbasa harvest this year? how are the pierogis? (we live in a very heavily Polska-American neighborhood, the food's great. You should try the Fried Dough, too!)

But POLKA is CZECH! NOT Polska!


Vleeptron Dude said...

Oh this book

"After Many a Summer Dies the Swan"
by Aldous Huxley

describes the very expensive drugs and treatment my health insurance wont pay for to stop Growing Older. It works! National Health Single-Payer NOW! Vote for Bernie Sanders!