電影、書評、隨筆

Author:        Tim Jackson Subject:       S ustainable development Publisher:    Earthscan,  London Year:            2011 ISBN:            9781849713238 Although the importance of sustainable development needs not be explained any further, there are many different ideas as to how to tackle the problem.  In the his book, the author explains pretty succinctly that from the historical data, the so-called "decoupling" of economic growth is not significant enough to make an impact in the dire challenged of climate change. On the other hand, the only way out is to challenge the fundamental concept of "eternal economic growth".  The issue goes beyond environmental issues into economic and social factors - the core values of sustainability. I hope the writer can write a sequel to discuss some new ideas and progress made during the past few years after...

(N.B. This article was originally published in the April 2015 issue of the Mensa World Journal , the official publication of Mensa International.) In the comic Naruto , there is a character who cannot remember other people's faces, and he is usually being made fun out of that. It may well be that this idea stemmed from somebody whom the author had encountered. Indeed, there is a formal medical term for this disability in the real world – prosopagnosia . Prosopagnosia, or face blindness in laymen terms, is a condition where individuals have difficulties in identifying people's faces. Of course, everybody has some problems with remembering faces at times, so the condition can be understood as performing below a certain threshold of a spectrum of varying degrees of facial recognition abilities. However, if you are prosopagnosiac you would easily have problems with following the dialogues of protagonists in a movie, and rely heavily on non-facial features such as hair style,...

（註：本文原為本人於台灣 國立自然科學博物館文教基金會 所舉辦之 「 2015科普寫作網路平台」活動中投稿之文章，可在 這裡 參閲。） 在曰本漫畫《火影忍者》裏面，有一個不能夠記得其他人臉孔的角色，他常常給其他人取笑。很有可能作者是從生活當中遇到的人找到靈感。的而者確，在現實世界中真的有這一個奇怪的醫學現象存在：「臉盲」。  「面孔辨識能力缺乏症」，或一般俗稱的「臉盲症」，是一個患者對辨認人臉有困難的病症。當然，每一個人都會有記不住人臉的時候，所以這症狀可以理解成在臉孔辨認能力的頻譜當中表現低於某一個標準。現實中的情况是，如果你是臉盲的話，你會很容易會在跟進電影角色的對白時感到吃力，而且會非常依賴其他非臉部的特徵如頭髮、體型和聲音去分辨不同的人。一旦這些特徵被掩蓋的話，你就會在五里迷霧當中。更甚的是，這病說的辨認人臉可以泛指所有人，包括自己的家人在内。在最嚴重的案例裡，臉盲症患者甚至不能夠辨認鏡中的自己——這便是著名神經科學家 Dr. Oliver Sacks 的狀況。諷刺的是，他自己寫了一本叫《錯把太太當帽子的人》（原英文書名 The man who mistook his wife for a hat ），裡面講述包括臉盲在內十多個奇怪的神經病例。如果你對這病好奇的話，可以到 youtube 裡面找美國著名節目 60 minutes 關於此病的專輯。  一般來說，臉盲症患者擁有不低於正常人的智商、記憶力和視覺能力，他們只是在辨認人臉這一特定任務裡有困難（不過有文獻指出部分人在認路或是辨認物件如汽車型號也有問題 1 ）。根據功能性磁力共振造影素描（fMRI）的實驗發現，臉盲症患者一個位於大腦顳葉、稱為梭狀回（fusiform gyrus）的地方在辨認人臉時的活躍程度比一般人低 2 。從這一現象推斷，人臉的辨識功能個獨立於一般的視覺處理，因此才會產生臉盲這種特别的知認知障礙。  其實，醫學文獻裡面對面部辨識能力缺乏症的敘述已經超過五十年。在這些案例裡邊，人們在腦部受傷之後喪失了辨認他們身邊親密的人樣貌的能力。可是，一直到最近這病症才被發現有可能是先天遺傳，而且出符意料地普遍——根據統計，大約2%的人口有不同程度的臉盲症狀 3 。當中有研究指出，這是一種「體染色體顯性遺傳」，即由第一至二十二對（不包括第二十...