Wednesday, 21 January 2009

HOT: Dinner@Dana: Brain Man, The Science Museum's Dana Centre, 165 Queen's Gate, South Kensington SW7 5HD

I really like the fact that there is enough interest about science in London that there is a purpose-built building like the Dana Centre, where they regularly hold free seminars and events which discuss science, technology and culture. For one of their dinner events, they invited the savant Daniel Tamett to speak about his condition and his extreme numberical and language skills. I had read that he he could do complex sums in his head with lightening speed, and that he learnt Icelandic in a week, so I'm not sure why I was expecting a dribbling Steven Hawkins lookalike. Daniel was articulate and interesting, and his most interesting proposition was that as well as having a language instinct, we all have a counting and mathematical instinct.

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