Have you heard the one about the agoraphobic who collected restaurant menus

Sounds like the set-up line for a joke, right? It's not. According to this Atlantic blog post, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History recently added to its archives a collection of 4,500 menus from restaurants around the world, collected over four decades by one Virginia Mericle of Washington, DC.:

Mericle was a life-long collector. As a star-struck 16 year old, she would write to movie studios and request photographs of actors. Bing Crosby, John Wayne, and Dean Martin were a few of her favorite stars. She received many replies; some of the pictures were even signed by the stars themselves.

After marrying and having children, Mericle developed agoraphobia and gradually stopped venturing outside her home. Yet she remained very connected to the outside world -- through the mail.

...Interestingly, Mericle seems to have taken little interest in the actual menus, and merely sorted them into American and international piles. Furthermore, the influx of menus had no impact on the family's culinary habits. It is quite possible that Mericle simply wanted to feel connected to the outside world, and accomplished this goal through mail correspondence. Perhaps her experience with the movie studios taught her to select institutions that would readily respond to impersonal mail solicitations.

The Willows, in Honolulu. Timmy Chan's in Houston. The Luau Hut of Silver Spring, MD. Apparently, if you bring a little yearning purpose and vision to it, your hoard can end up being thought of as a collection. Go forth, agoraphobics, and bring into being exquisite collections of yellowing documents! Just remember menus have already been done.

Suicide kills more people than wars Lets do something about it

A snippet from Sanctum:

Malachi held my gaze for a moment, then looked away. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but you’re on an impossible mission. Three thousand people arrive at the Suicide Gates every single day. Haven’t you noticed the size of this city? You could wander for years and never find her ...

When we were preparing to go on sub with this book, my agent flagged this part, wondering if my numbers were accurate. Three thousand people a day??

Here's how I got that number: The World Health Organization estimates that over a million people in the world commit suicide every year (with estimated annual fatalities rising to 1.5 million by 2020). Suicides account for half of violent deaths in the world, more than the number from murders and war combined.

Suicide kills more people than wars.

In the United States, every year, over 35,000 people kill themselves. And if you consider the fact that, for every completed suicide, there are about 10-20 attempted suicides ... that's heinous. That's tragic. That's an epidemic.

When I was in college, I worked for a local helpline, and I took a lot of calls from people who were considering ending their lives. It was an up-close introduction to the anguish some individuals experience--and the need to provide them with support and help that keeps them here with us in the land of the living.

Probably that experience was, in part, why I wrote Sanctum. It's about Lela, who is given the opportunity to rescue the soul of her best friend, Nadia, who committed suicide. But in real life, none of us have that chance. Once a friend or loved one has committed suicide, we are left here to mourn. And to try to keep anyone else from leaving this life because it was too painful to continue living it.

When I got my first advance check for Sanctum, I donated a portion of it to The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, because people who are in despair--who feel alone--need to connect. It saves lives. And when my friend Justine Dell came to me and asked me if I wanted to help her raise money for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, there was no way I was going to refuse.

All next week, Justine and I are going to be raising money for this cause. I'm really hoping you'll help.

http://justine-dell.blogspot.com/p/out-of-darkness-suicide-prevention.html

We're making it easy. And fun. Worth your while.

On Saturday, October 6th, we're going to have an auction. Every dollar raised will be donated to the AFSP. You'll be able to bid for things like book prize packs and agent query crits. For a rundown of some of the prizes, check out Justine's blog.

We need your help spreading the word, though (and to give you the chance to raise money even if you can't bid in the auction on Saturday). Starting Monday, October 1, we'll have a Rafflecopter giveaway of prizes here. You'll get entries for spreading the word about the  giveaway and the auction.

And even by doing that, you'll be raising money, because the more entries we get, the more I am personally going to donate to the AFSP. More details about that on Monday.

Plus, if you donate directly to the AFSP and send us your receipt, you'll be entered in a special drawing to win some especially cool stuff.

How does that sound? Would you like to join us in raising money to help stem this epidemic?

Please check out our donation page--that's the place to start if you want to donate to the AFSP's fundraising arm, which sponsors the Out of the Darkness Community Walk that Justine's going to participate in (you can also donate directly to the AFSP here if you prefer), and remember that there will be a cool drawing just for those who do that and email us the donation receipt--one entry for every dollar donated.

Also check out Justine's FB page for this event. She's having it in conjunction with her launch party for her debut novel, Recaptured Dreams.

And please, please: come back Monday to enter to win prizes, help us raise money, and spread the word!

More Baloney about Implanting False Memories

TV show available at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/memory-hackers.html

In an otherwise excellent episode of Novaon PBS about recent research into memory - available for viewing in its entirety at the website above - the show takes what is for me a disturbing turn around the 38 minute mark. It starts to discuss the issue of whether false memories can be implanted in people. An academic psychologist named Julia Shaw discussed her experiments which she believes "proved" that you can induce in someone a memory of a crime in the distant past that they did not actually commit.

Dr. Julia Shaw

According to an articlein the New Yorker, Shaw modeled her work after that of child abuse apologist and memory pseudo-expert Elizabeth Lofton. Shaw claimed that she was able to induce this kind of false memory in 70% of her subjects. Of course, even if this were true, it means that she was unable to supposedly accomplish this feat in almost one third of her subjects, which leaves us with the question of what distinguishes that portion of the sample from the others.

But leaving that aside, let's look at the experiment she did, as shown with a film of one probably illustrative subject during the experiment. The experimenter brought up a supposed incident that occurred when the subject was 12 years old. Dr. Shaw told the subject that the subject's parents had told her about the false incident. She said, "What happened was you initiated a fight that was so severe that the police called your parents. They said it happened in the fall when you were with Ryan when it happened." She mentioned two facts that were in fact true - a move the family had made around that time, and the name of someone she knew.

The subject's first response was not surprising, and it was quite definitive - if not emphatic. As I relate the dialog in the experiment, I want readers to notice that the subject moves from a quick and clear-cut response at first, denying this happened, to later describing an event that she starts to think may possibly have happened. In the later interview, not only is her language tentative, but she looks puzzled and is intermittently shaking her head no! If you don't believe me, watch the show segment for yourself by clicking on the link under the picture at the top of the post.

The key point the reader should also consider is that the experimenter has now put the subject in the position of calling her parents liars! If they are generally truthful, hearing that they reported something that seems completely alien to her whole personality will at the very least introduce cognitive dissonance and self doubt. I mean, why would her parents make up something like that? This self doubt is clearly manifested in the patient's facial expressions and tone of voice as she says the things she says in the film. 

However, even if the parents were notorious for being fast and loose with the truth or made a habit of blaming the subject for things that were not her fault (a not uncommon feature in dysfunctional families), due to family loyalty the patient might still become motivated to protect her parents' reputation to the experimenter and perhaps also to save herself from an argument with the parents later on. Family loyalty is something Dr. Shaw apparently either knows nothing about and/or has never even considered.

The subject's initial response to the experimenter relating to her what her parents allegedly said had "happened" was this:  "Honestly, I don't remember. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't think I've ever been in a fight." (She laughs). I'm so confused!" While she said this, I observed not the least bit of hesitation.

Dr. Shaw admits during the program that she uses techniques meant to create social pressure to get the subject to come up with the false "memory." Experiments in social psychology have shown that the pressure to conform to a group can cause people to say things that they actually know are not true. In other words, they blatantly lie in order to fit in. The most famous of these experiments were done by Soloman Asch, as described here.

Shaw tells the subject, "Relax, close your eyes, and focus on trying to retrieve this." This instruction implicitly assumes that the event the experimenter concocted actually took place. Then comes a little extra social pressure: "It seems strange, but it does work for most people." She then has the patient picture herself at the time and place under discussion. "Picture yourself at the age of 14 and it's Fall and you were with Ryan when it happened."

A week later, the subject starts talking tentatively, "I remember like a verbal fight." She has an unmistakable puzzled look on her face. "It seems so unlikely." Clearly, she is not really recalling any specific event, but trying to put together bits and pieces in her memory from other things that might have happened to her - again, I strongly suspect, to avoid either saying or believing that her parents have lied about her. 

She continues, "Maybe I pushed or something."

Shaw encourages her to continue. "Good! Ok!"

Subject: "I feel like she pushed [significant pause] me first. 

Feeling like something might be true is hardly the same as actually remembering it.

A week later, the subject embellishes the non-story: "I think the cops showed up." (Translation: I'm not really sure about this). "We were kind of having maybe like a verbal kind of fight and it got into a push." Maybe? Again, does not sound like a specific memory at all. And the coup-de-grace: After saying this, she again shakes her head no.

Dr. Shaw confidently asserts that she has now proven that you can induce false memories in people, when what she actually proved was that under conditions of social pressure, cognitive dissonance, and/or family loyalty issues (and probably in several other contexts), you can induce people to make stuff up. And sometimes even lie to themselves about it.