Everyone has heard, at least vaguely, about phenomenal mathematical or memory feats executed by autistic or mentally-impaired individuals. The older generation will remember the Oscar-winning movie “Rain Man” with Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. The younger among us have heard about the new “Touch” TV series starring Kiefer Sutherland.
The fact is that those exceptional individuals do exist outside of the entertainment industry, and that they are providing the scientists with clues about how our brain functions. Savantism is defined as a very rare condition in which people with autistic symptoms or a brain injury demonstrate prodigious but very narrow abilities.
Kim Peek, the real “Rain Man”, had severe motor skills deficiencies and could not walk easily or button his shirt. But he could read two pages in three seconds, one page with each eye, and remember everything on them. In fact he remembered every word of the more than 12,000 books he had read.
Jedediah Buxton, a young English villager who could not write, was tested by the Royal Society in 1754 and proved his mathematical brain was able to calculate numbers up to 39 figures.
But it is with highly functioning autistic savants like Daniel Tammet that we can get a glimpse of how this happens. Tammet looks like a normally functioning individual, but he had to forcefully teach himself social behavior. Not only can he speak 11 languages, but he has a condition called synesthesia that allows him to “see” and “feel” numbers. He learned Icelandic in a week to answer a challenge from a TV show and he once recited from memory Pi to 22,514 decimal places. He explains that he sees numbers and results of mathematical calculations as a canvass of colors, textures and shapes.
A Californian University has found links between Synesthesia and Savant Mathematical Skills. Another well-known and high functioning savant, artist and number theorist Jason Padgett, had been drawing fractal diagrams before he had any mathematical backgrounds. He also reinforces the hypothesis of a link between shapes, patterns, colors and numbers.
This is a fascinating area of research, as it could lead the scientists to better understand our brain function, and maybe, improve it. Just as for autism, there is probably a whole range of “savantism”, from mild to severe. There must be many very gifted individuals around who could, in the right framework, benefit society and themselves in spite of social awkwardness. This interesting theme is the basis of the just-released thriller by Marc Brem: “Rain Fund”. Thought-provoking.
Reality overtakes fiction: We are already at war, albeit electronic, but war all the same
It is one of the plot tenets of the thriller “Rain Fund” that foreign Intelligence services are actively preparing a future cyber-war through dormant hardware viruses and other means. Is it Fiction? Not anymore! It appears now that functional hardware viruses have been detected and that an active electronic war is already taking place under our very noses.
The Era of Cyber-Warfare
There is no doubt that future wars will be fought bitterly in cyberspace as well as in the real world. In fact, cyber-wars are being waged right now—at the time of writing, most notably with Iran—and all countries are gearing up to be cyber-ready. It is one of the premises in the new thriller “Rain Fund”, that spy agencies are going to extremes in order to ensure cyber-spying today and future maximum disruption of the potential enemy’s infrastructure.
We have the Ponzi schemes we deserve
How come Ponzi schemes are so common and keep being discovered? People should know better, shouldn’t they? It seems that human nature is such that we want to believe there is a secret formula to make us rich. Just give someone a good reason to believe it possible, and take his money. The reason used in the newly released thriller “Rain Fund” is original, and…nearly believable.
