Unlikely Kindred Spirits

Daniel Tammet is a young man who is a high-functioning "autistic savant". He has an extraordinary aptitude for numbers, and is able to perform incredible calculations in his head, even rivaling computers. For him, numbers are not mere abstractions -- he sees numbers as actual figures, each with its own personality. Nor are his spectacular mental skills limited to the numeric realm: among other things, he has taught himself 10 languages, including the difficult Icelandic, which he learned in a mere week. Sic.

One of Daniel's most celebrated feats occurred on March 14, 2004, when he recited the number pi to 22,514 digits in slightly more than 5 hours.

According to the 2005 documentary on Daniel, The Boy with the Incredible Brain:

Daniel's brain appears to be doing something almost magical. It appears to be doing maths without him actually having to think.

Just so.

Lauren Caitlin Upton is a very pretty young model. She was Miss South Carolina Teen USA in 2007. She is known for the very unique response she gave to the following question put to her during the Q & A portion of the pageant:

Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can't locate the U.S. on a world map. Why do you think this is?

Caitlin's response:

I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some, people out there in our nation don't have maps and I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, or, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future for our children.

But the above text doesn't begin to capture the gestalt of the response; hence, the proffered one-minute video.

Usually, when we speak, the words which come out of our mouth are, both consciously and sub-consciously, processed through 1,001 different filters, the products of our growing up self-consciously aware of the myriad rules we are taught, both explicitly and subtly, of what is and what is not acceptable discourse in polite society. Not that we are phonies, but there is a slight tinge of the artificial and contrived in much of our speech.

With two breathtakingly refreshing exceptions.

When I picture Daniel reciting digit after digit after digit of pi, I get precisely the same feeling as when I picture Caitlin's verbal cascade. And even though the former is the pinnacle of human mental achievement, while the latter is a torrent of utter nonsense, yet, they have a profound commonality: both represent the purest stream of verbal expression coming at us straight from their minds, completely unprocessed and unfiltered by any internal self-conscious contamination or strait-jacket. And there is something beautiful about that.