Imagine one day you are fine, going to work and doing what you always done, then out of the blue you start acting strange. You become paranoid, eventuImagine one day you are fine, going to work and doing what you always done, then out of the blue you start acting strange. You become paranoid, eventually you start hearing voices and attempt jumping out of moving vehicles.
You must caught a bit of the crazy right?
Maybe not. This is what happened to Susannah Cahalen, a reporter for the New York Post. One morning she saw a couple of bug bites on her arm and was convinced she had a bed bug infestation. She brought exterminators into her home, even though she couldn't find any evidence of the critters. The exterminator couldn't find them, said they didn't exist, but she insisted they treat the apartment for them anyway.
This was only the beginning. Susannah kept deteriorating, doctors mis-diagnosed her many times, one even blamed it on excessive drinking with a 'wink'. You know, a young girl in New York obviously was partying too hard.....I think I would have punched that jerk in the dangly bits and blamed it on a seizure(of which she had many)"oops! Sorry doc but I couldn't help it!"
One day after about a million dollars worth of tests came up with zilch, Dr. Souhel Najjar came aboard Susannah's case, and it's a darn lucky thing that he did, because he had recently discovered a rare auto immune disease called Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis. This basically will make you seem like a crazy person, and make you do odd enough things and movements that will cause people to call in an exorcist. Since this disease has been in existence as long as humans have, it's a pretty safe bet that many of those poor people who were thought to be possessed and subsequently exorcised had in fact Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis and not the devil inside them.
"Magic is only science we haven't discovered yet." Someone said...?? Christopher Moore??
And that is the truly scary part in a very scary tale, that millions of people over countless years have been mis-diagnosed, put in institutions and left to die, or treated as evil and possibly put to a horrible death.
Good times!!
I enjoyed this book and found it fascinating. I just wish Sussanah din't have to go through this for us to get this book, but since she did I appreciate it even more....more
People do the oddest things in the name of winning.
I’m a competitive person (as are most of you reviewers out there). A Cross posted atShelfinflicted
People do the oddest things in the name of winning.
I’m a competitive person (as are most of you reviewers out there). A few years ago I would have added the word “very” in front of competitive; I’ve mellowed as I’ve aged but I remember the lengths I went to in order to be the best at whatever I deemed important. But I’m fairly certain I would not go to such lengths to win a memory competition.
Joshua Foer thought it was a dandy idea…..
Joshua found himself in the world of competitive memory when he decided he wanted to do a journalistic book about the subject and the people in it. Apparently, and I didn’t know this, there is a world competition for memory. These people memorize long lists of numbers, decks on top of decks of cards, poetry….ect, all to repeat what they remember to some judges in hopes of winning. My question was why? What purpose could this possibly serve? Who needs a skill like this and when would one have the need to memorize 20 decks of cards?
As the author points out in the book, we no longer need to remember much of anything these days, all our electronic gadgets serve as our external memory. When was the last time you memorized a phone number? Pretty close to “a really flippin long time ago” I would guess.
To accomplish the mind boggling feet of, say, memorizing the order of cards in many set of cards in just minutes, they use the technique called mnemonics. What this is, is making a visual backdrop for each card, or number, or object and putting them in ‘memorable’ situations doing strange things……and apparently the raunchier the better. Trust me you don’t want to know what his mind had conjured up for Bill Clinton and a Watermelon, but I will never forget it.
Competition got the better of Foer, and he went from writing a book about memory competitors to being a competitor himself. He wanted the American memory championship bad! So bad he resorted to wearing blacked out goggles with small holes in them to see whatever he studying and to wearing earmuffs to minimize distractions. That's dedication. ...more
I am an agnostic which means I am firm in my belief that I have no idea what to believe. I don't know what is true and what isn't and no one, no matteI am an agnostic which means I am firm in my belief that I have no idea what to believe. I don't know what is true and what isn't and no one, no matter how strong your faith, or how strong your lack of faith is.....you don't know either. You don't know what happens to you after you die. You pretty much have to die to find that out. You may really, really, really believe little alien souls are attached to your body and making your life miserable, and that the only way to make it all better is to blow your life savings in Clearwater Florida trying to rid yourself of these little bastards by way of a weird looking machine. It still doesn't make it true, it's purely your free will to believe it is.
Next to art, and generally making things that are pretty and/or interesting, I'm really fascinated with science. Books on the brain are something I generally gravitated towards which is why I picked up Free Will.
Sam Harris is obviously a very intelligent man he generally seems to know what he is talking about. But I can't digest what he is dishing out in Free Will. Basically, if I am following what he is saying (and it is possible I'm NOT) human beings have no free will.....excuse me?
Apparently there have been studies that prove that when we make the decision to do something our brain does the deciding first before we are even aware of our decision consciously. This is done with some fancy imaging machines that catch a blip of some sort go off before you do what you're going to do. So, of course we don't have free will.
I must be missing something.
My head hurts.
Somehow because we don't know what makes our brain decide something before we become aware of what it is that we are deciding we aren't actually deciding anything at all. Uhhh......ok? To me this strengthens the argument that we are something more than just our brains. Maybe....just maybe, what is making the brain do it's business is the energy (or soul if you like to call it that) that animates these meat suits we walk around in. Or not! I don't know but I believe someday science will figure out what that's all about. Science advances insanely fast. Right now I can probably take over a third world country with my Ipad. I can't even imagine what will be invented or discovered in the near future. So for Sam to jump to this conclusion seems premature.
It is more likely we have control over our decisions and that we are responsible for them than not. I believe we have free will to do the right thing despite our circumstances growing up.
I have the free will not to like Free Will all that much and you have the free will to disagree with me about that.....
The problem with books of this nature are unfortunately named.
This is true of this book, Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation, soundThe problem with books of this nature are unfortunately named.
This is true of this book, Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation, sounds as self help-y and new age-y as a book title can get. It does have some of those elements, but it's more of a science/psychology book. I read a lot of these books because I find the brain and psychology endlessly fascinating. I try to figure out what makes some people are douche-nozzles and some not. If listening to peoples problems on a daily basis had appealed to me, I may have gone into the field.
You know what they say about people who find the subject of crazy fascinating.........?
Check.
What I keep coming across in different books lately is this word mindfulness. It's meditation basically, and learning to pay attention to your mind and the thoughts that trudge though it. Notice them, and put them aside and in there place instead of letting them make you crazy. The meditation doesn't have to be complicated.....no beaches, forest,.....birds are necessary. Just pay attention to your breath, count each breath (and in and out cycle) up to the count of ten. If you have a thought creep in at any point, put it aside and start over at the count of one. Keep going until you can get to the count of 10 (and beyond) without a thought. Not as easy as it might sound.
I have done this a few times....practiced, and an odd thing happened. I started noticing my thoughts, and the things I was about to say to people slightly removed from them. I would notice that what I was about to say was a bit mean, and could stop myself before I let it fly. Before, I might have let it fly.
Also what I liked about this book and this author is that when he would treat a patient, he would not reach for the prescription pad first off. He would do therapy and mindfulness training. I have a problem with how readily doctors reach for the drugs first these days.
There is much more to this book than I can cover here, so if you are interested give it a read. ...more
Stephanie *Eff your feelings*
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