Do you want me to pick you up?

That's what I was planning, but if you want to rent a car and drive yourself that is okay. I don't want you to feel trapped here. You can always use one of our vehicles; it's up to you.

I got celebrity email today. Jan Wong is a writer for the Globe and Mail. she wrote a article about how she is this supposedly well known journalsit, but as soon as she leaves the Globe and Mail building, her own collwagues don't recognize her on the street because she looks like "just another Chinese person." Or she is confused with another Asian columnist who works for the Globe. She interviewed professor of something-or-other who said this happens because of cultural sterotyping, subconscious racism, etc.

Anyway I emailed her said that inability to recognize faces of other ethnic groups may not have anything to do with stereotyping - I've read more than one article about scientific studies concerning face recognition, and they claimed that infants and small children who are not exposed to certain racial features have difficulty distingusihing variations among them later in life, and people of different races really do look very similar to them. It's not just a white person phenomenon; other groups have the same problem. And I said that there was even a particular area of the brain (fusiform gyrus of right temperal lobe) responsible for recognizing faces - people who have a stroke or injury there often have normal recall except for the ability to recognize faces or learn new ones. I said I wished I could remember the names of the studies, but it was a few years ago, and that I was late for work.

I was surprised she emailed me back. She said "That's interesting stuff. Might be worth looking into," but from the rest of her email, I think she still felt it was it primarily a socialogical not a biological thing. But then most journalists are like that. Science isn't their strong suit.

Although, there are probably some socialogical aspects - Since moving from a city of 2 million to a twonship of 250, it's been a struggle to change the way i interact with people. In a big city you just sort of float anonymously through the crowds without really even looking at people. But in a township of 250 people, you have to pay attention, all the time, to whose walking past you on the street, standing next to you in the grocery store, or passing you on the road, because they will think there's something wrong if you don't acknowledge them. And sometimes I thin I do have some kind of brain defect in remembering faces; although it isn't ethnic groups so much as all of those little old ladies in fuzzy hats who come intinto the doctors office where I work.