Category Archives: The Morgue

Mama’s Boy

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Mama's Boy, Michael Goldsmith, Betsy Aidem

Michael Goldsmith & Betsy Aidem, photo: T. Charles Erickson

First up in the George Street Playhouse (New Brunswick, N.J.) 2016-17 season is Mama’s Boy, by Rob Urbinati. It’s a family drama about a very particular family—that of JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in the period leading up to and after the events of November 1963. Directed by David Saint, the play runs from October 18 through November 6.

The assassination of President Kennedy continues its dark fascination. Already this year I’ve read two thrillers that riff on the case, and Hulu televised a terrific 11.22.63 (starring James Franco, Chris Cooper, and Sarah Gadon), based on the even-better Stephen King time-travel book, 11/22/63.

Mama’s Boy probes the assassination from the viewpoint of Oswald’s monomaniacal mother, Marguerite. In real life, she did try to put herself at the center of the story, and Urbinati capitalizes on her obsession to great dramatic effect. Marguerite (played beautifully by Betsy Aidem) is convinced—or claims to be—that Lee’s defection to Russia, his U.S. return 32 months later, and the plot to kill Kennedy, were orchestrated by the State Department or FBI, for whom he was working as an agent.

Oswald himself (Michael Goldsmith) doesn’t give her theories the time of day. He is preoccupied with finding a “clean” job to support his baby daughter June and wife Marina (Laurel Casillo) and, subsequently, getting to Cuba. He refuses help from his mother—not an easy job, that—but older brother Robert (Miles G. Jackson) provides some support.

Marguerite says Lee is the only one of her boys who ever loved her. (They shared a bed until he was 12.) She is manipulative and distrusting, overbearing and intrusive, wildly jealous of Marina, and believes the “little people” will never receive any help or support from the government, the media, or other social institution. She rails at the fact that Jackie Kennedy is escorted to and from Parkland Hospital, where the President died, whereas she—equally deserving, she thinks—gets nothing. Her domestic drama plays out as tragedy writ both small and large, at the level of the living room and on the world stage.

Urbinati’s vision of warped mother-love is as powerful as that of Gypsy’s Mama Rose, and Aidem has called Marguerite “the role of a lifetime,” and the skewed vision thrust upon Oswald (who was barely 24 at the time of the assassination) may make you think somewhat differently about him.

Mama’s Boy premiered in Portland, Maine, in October 2015, with Aidem and Casillo in their current roles. It’s clear they inhabit these characters totally. The men, newcomers to the play, are fine. Also in the cast is multiple Tony-award-winner Boyd Gaines, who plays one of Marguerite’s interviewers in voiceover.

Saint and the production staff have made the most of George Street’s capacity, using projections in combination with the revolving stage platform. Admirable use of technology!

For tickets, call the box office at 732-246-7717 or visit the box office online. The theater is an easy 10-minute walk from New Jersey Transit’s New Brunswick station.

Disgraced

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disgraced, Caroline Kaplan & Maboud Ebrahimzadeh

Caroline Kaplan & Maboud Ebrahimzadeh, photo: T. Charles Erickson

McCarter Theatre Center, Princeton, N.J., is presenting Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Disgraced, through October 30. The production, directed by Marcela Lorca, tells the story of four Manhattan friends with diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds. They are a successful, congenial group until a dinner party devolves into a series of confrontations that painfully reveal the schisms beneath the surface. It is a blistering commentary on identity politics and the nation’s most-produced play in the 2015-2016 season.

The characters are lawyer Amir (played by Maboud Ebrahimzadeh), who has masked his Pakistani and Muslim heritage, “passing” as Indian. Amir is pressured by his wife and nephew, Hussein (Adit Dileep)—who has changed his name to the more American Abe Jensen—to look in on legal proceedings against a controversial imam accused of terrorism. Amir initially resists, fearing his act may be misinterpreted by his firm’s Jewish senior partners.

His beautiful wife Emily (Caroline Kaplan), Caucasian and apparently Christian, is a painter and in her own work is entranced with the artistic language of Islam. In turn, she entrances their Jewish friend and Whitney curator Isaac (Kevin Isola), who wants to include her paintings in a high-profile exhibit. Isaac met Emily through Jory (Austene Van), his African-American wife and another associate in Amir’s law firm.

These convoluted relationships could go wrong in many ways, and do at the ill-fated dinner party. The social landscape under their feet crumbles. By the play’s end, all of them are disgraced, one way or another, publicly or not.

It is director Lorca’s aim that the audience empathize with each of the characters. She says, “A play like Disgraced has the power to hold mirrors to us, invite us to embrace complexities, ponder our contradictions, widen our view of others, and invite us to practice empathy, one character at a time.” Her success in achieving this is evidenced by the dead silence in the theater for many seconds after the play ended and the standing ovation the cast received.

The play raises important questions about identity and self-identity, passive observer and activist, and religious and secular choices in a fragmented American society, as well as the persistent and entangling prejudices (in the original, pre-judging sense, emphasis on “judging”) that lurk inside each of us. “Who is an American?” it asks, and “Who gets to decide?” It’s a 90-minute production that rapidly moves into the quicksand of what the playwright calls our “degraded social discourse.”

McCarter has prepared a show website rich with information, including an essay on Islamic art and a Velázquez painting that provide an important symbolic backdrop in the story. Call the box office at 609-258-2787 or visit http://www.mccarter.org.

Richard III – at STNJ

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richard-iii, Gretchen Hall, Derek Wilson

Gretchen Hall & Derek Wilson; photo: Jerry Dalia

Shakespeare’s quintessential villain erupts into being in this Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey production directed by Paul Mullins (on view through November 6). The cast is huge—16 actors playing 22 parts—but all depends on the sly malice and believability of the title character, a role Derek Wilson fulfills admirably.

Shakespeare’s Richard is more duplicitous than history supports, since in the Elizabethan era, theater was required to explain and justify the monarchy, but the play’s machinations seem perfectly plausible in Wilson’s hands. Fawning here, back-stabbing there, and slyly engaging the audience in his treachery.

The story describes the culmination of the War of the Roses, and it’s a familiar one, as most theater goers have seen one or more productions of this classic. In (very) short, Richard murders his way to the throne of England, but getting the crown isn’t keeping it. The play’s most famous lines come at the beginning  and end, but like all Shakespeare’s plays, it is filled with juicy bits. Here’s one for this political season: “And thus I clothe my naked villainy with old odd ends stolen out of holy writ; and seem a saint, when most I play the devil.”

STNJ has provided a helpful Plantagenet family tree in the program, which, abbreviated though it is, is at first glance a stumper. I studied it before the show and had a few relationships sorted out, and at the intermission I gave it another go, putting everyone in place.

In addition to Wilson’s Richard, the many fine performances include those of the three principal women: Gretchen Hall (Queen Elizabeth, wife of Richard’s brother, King Edward IV), Carol Halstead (Margaret of Anjou, Henry VI’s “warrior queen,” who lives up to her sobriquet), and Amaia Arana (Lady Anne, widow of Margaret and Henry’s son, Edward, and later wife of Richard). In Shakespeare’s story, Richard instigated the murder of both Henry VI and Edward. For these crimes, Margaret and Anne hate him. The widowed Queen Elizabeth has reasons to both hate and fear him when her two sons “the little princes in the tower” are believed murdered at Richard’s behest.

Though lots of murder is talked about, most of it occurs off-stage. In keeping with the production’s modern dress, there is gunfire as well as swordplay. Richard III is a long play, but the energy of the cast and the direction (as well as some judicious trimming) make the story move apace.

Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey productions are hosted at Drew University in Madison, N.J. (easily reachable from NYC by train), and until October 30 you can also see there an exhibit of Shakespeare’s First Folio, on tour from the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.

STNJ has prepared an excellent “Know the Show Guide.” For tickets, call the box office at 973-408-5600 or visit http://www.shakespearenj.org.

The Girl on the Train

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girl-on-the-trainThis movie thriller (trailer) written by Erin Cressida Wilson and directed by Tate Taylor is based on Paula Hawkins’s runaway best-selling novel. Cognoscenti in the crime fiction world consider the book distinctly overrated, so an investment of two hours in the movie theater may be preferable to a dozen hours of reading. Maybe this was a bad choice. As Christy Lemire at RogerEbert.com says, “The Girl on the Train is good trash. At least as a novel, it is. As a film, however, it’s not even that.”

The story is initially engaging, thanks primarily to excellent acting by Emily Blount as Rachel, the alcoholic protagonist. She knows her husband Tom had an affair and left their childless marriage primarily because of her drinking but seems to be spinning ever-further out of control, a vodka-in-the-water-bottle kind of drinker.

I’m not persuaded by critics who say the film withholds pertinent information, because it is mostly told from Rachel’s point of view. We see the world as she does—none too clearly—with a few scenes from the also-limited perspectives of the other two principal women.

Rachel commutes into the city every day from Westchester (London in the novel), and her train passes behind their former house. She can see him (played by Justin Theroux), his new wife (Rebecca Ferguson), and their baby. She also sees the devoted neighbor couple (Luke Evans and Haley Bennett), whose love seems perfect in these tantalizing glimpses. If her city job were real, exposing herself to hurt with this voyeurism might be torture. Since her job is imaginary, it’s pathological.

You will have guessed that the neighbor couple’s relationship is more complicated than Rachel apprehends, and when the woman turns up missing, Rachel’s obsessions and her hazy perceptions create havoc. It’s always fun to see Allison Janney, here as a police detective investigating the disappearance and trying to make sense of Rachel’s “evidence.”

Ultimately, the motivations that drive what turns out to be a six-sided story of love and lust, deceit and dangerous truth-telling are deeply clichéd, and there are a few too many close-ups of a befuddled Rachel. The Girl on the Train is a ride to nowhere terribly interesting.

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating 44%; audiences 56%.

“Mandir – A Place of Paramount Peace”

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Mandir

BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, Robbinsville, N.J.

A 5/2021 update on the labor scandal that has rocked this place is here.

You don’t expect to find one of the nation’s most astonishingly beautiful spiritual centers in tiny Robbinsville, New Jersey. However, on 247 acres a few miles from my home, a major center for Hindu religion, study, and celebration is quietly growing up. Only two parts of this multi-building complex are complete, and construction continues on the others—construction reportedly involving the largest building crane in North America.

This past week, with a group of friends I visited this complex, establish for the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan sect of Hinduism. Other major North America BAPS Swaminarayan centers are in Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and Toronto. Bhagwan Swaminarayan, who died in 1830, worked to assure the education of women and aid the poor. (Mahatma Gandhi criticized some of his teachings for doctrinal reasons I am not qualified to explain.) Differences of opinion about succession after Swaminarayan’s death led to several divisions among his followers, with BAPS one of those.

One of the first buildings to be completed was the Mandir, and I suspect I will never forget the profound awe this structure inspires (video tour here). The word Mandir means “a place where the mind becomes still and experiences inner peace.” It is a space for worship, constructed according to certain ancient rules and specifications, the Vastu Shastra. Much of this Mandir’s iconography is intended to convey a strong spirit of welcome and recognition of the divine spark within each person (the meaning of the word namaste).

Unusually, the Robbinsville Mandir has two equally sized domes—most have just one principal one—each thirty or thirty-five feet in diameter. Under these domes are floors of vari-colored stone beautifully inlaid in geometric patterns incorporating peacocks and elephants. The many carvings of the pillars, ceiling, and walls of course have religious significance, and it contains shrines to significant Hindu deities. If I understood the guide correctly, these deities’ garments are changed throughout the day to accord with various ceremonies.

Blocks of Italian marble—11.5 tons in all—traveled to India for initial carving, then to tiny Robbinsville for final carving and polishing by artisans and volunteers. Outside the Mandir proper, the builders have created a large box, made of more durable materials (Bulgarian limestone), to protect the sacred space within—making it a building within a building. The artistic photo at top doesn’t show this outer “box,” which also is decorated with elaborate carvings, including 236 stone peacocks on the entrance gate.

The mesmerizing video is great, but cannot convey how overwhelming it is to be inside! If Robbinsville is not on your travel itinerary, consider visiting one of the other major sites, each of which I suspect is spectacular in its own way. (Robbinsville is about 60 miles from New York and 45 miles from Philadelphia.) Visitors are encouraged, and check the website for visiting hours. At the bottom of the home page for the BAPS organization are links to its major centers around the world.

Namaste.

mandir-3

Bathing in Moonlight

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Bathing in Moonlight

Hannia Guillen & Raúl Méndez, photo by T. Charles Erickson

Thirteen years ago, McCarter Theatre’s artistic director Emily Mann and playwright Nilo Cruz teamed up to present the premiere of his Pulitzer Prize-winning Anna in the Tropics, and their new collaboration—the world premiere of Bathing in Moonlight—is terrific! On stage 9/16-10/9.

In today’s Miami, three generations of a Cuban family are exiled. The widowed grandmother Martina (Priscilla Lopez) has early dementia and feels she’s never found her place in America; daughter Marcela (Hannia Guillen) is desperate to hold the family together in tough economic circumstances; and granddaughter Trini (Katty Velasquez) is an assimilated American teen, bent on a career in marine biology. Two men disturb the stability of this affectionate home.

Marcela’s brother Taviano (Frankie J. Alvarez) is away, studying to become a doctor, which may finally solve the family’s precarious finances. Her beloved piano was sold to help pay for his education, but he’s been out of touch for two years. When he returns, his resemblance to his father discomposes the already confused Martina. Worse is the news he gives Marcela—he’s failed his medical exams.

The other man in their lives is Father Monroe (Raúl Méndez), a dedicated and sympathetic parish priest. He lets Marcela play the piano at the church and, attuned to the family’s poverty, lends her money to cover their rent. Marcela finds him attractive in an unattainable way. However, the attraction is mutual, and difficult choices loom.

Director Mann considers Cruz “one of the great poets of the American theater, akin to Tennessee Williams,” and certainly in this play, the poetry, humor, and humanity in these simple situations shines through. Cruz thinks of his works as musical compositions, with each character an instrument contributing to the whole. Their speech contains Spanish rhythms, and even the three levels of Cuban accent create a chord, with the abuela’s accent the strongest, Marcela’s medium-strength, and the granddaughter’s almost disappeared.

The role of Father Monroe is the U.S. stage debut for Mexican actor Raúl Méndez, and he is powerful in it. From the opening when he charms the audience with a sermon about inclusion, his every gesture and expression is pitch-perfect. He’s a stand-out in a strong cast. Lopez and Velasquez imbue the aging grandmother and sprightly granddaughter with personality and verve. Cuban Alvarez in the dual-role of father and son expertly plays two generations. The most opaque character is Marcela, oddly, and I think that’s the play, not Guillen’s performance. Marcela is surrounded by people with so many needs, and so accustomed to putting those needs first, it’s hard for her to come into her own.

Charles Isherwood in the New York Times was ungenerous in his review, saying, “the Catholic Church’s strictures on the priesthood (no women, no marriage), . . . which even many Catholics consider ludicrously out of step with today’s world — have been fodder for debate in the popular media for years,” but this is a narrow interpretation. The play unfolded against the backdrop of Father Monroe’s opening sermon about including “the other,” about how we shouldn’t construct walls to keep people out, but to bring them in. To me, that was (alas!) as relevant to 2016 as to 1716 or to 1139, particularly for our Latino brethren.

The play, which received an Edgerton Foundation New Play Award, raises interesting high-level questions about faith, orthodoxy, exile, and love across generations, beautifully staged and acted—well worth the trip to Princeton!

McCarter has prepared a show website rich with information. Call the box office at 609-258-2787 or visit http://www.mccarter.org.

Hell or High Water

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Ben Foster & Chris Pine in Hell or High Water

Ben Foster & Chris Pine in Hell or High Water

This modern outlaw Western directed by David Mackenzie (trailer) is receiving high praise from critics. Like the faceless cattle barons and railroad tycoons memorialized in 1950s celluloid, today it’s the bankers who are handy villains bent on destroying the little guy. That’s true even if the modern cowboy rides a drilling rig.

Brothers Tanner and Toby Howard (Ben Foster and Chris Pine, respectively) team up to rob branches of the Texas Midland Bank, an institution that has drained the value from their late mother’s ranch and now (since corporations are officially people, I can anthropormorphize) sits rubbing its hands, waiting to foreclose. That would be a double catastrophe, because oil has been found on the land, and Toby is desperate to hang onto it so he can pass this valuable parcel to his kids. But he lacks the cash to save it. Thus, the robber scheme is hatched.

Jeff Bridges & Gil Birmingham, Hell or High Water

Jeff Bridges & Gil Birmingham, Hell or High Water

On the hunt for the robbers are two Texas Rangers—Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges) and Alberto Parker (Gil Birmingham). Hamilton is just weeks from retirement, and figures out the broad outlines of the plot. He just can’t quite put the pieces together. He rides his American/Indian/Mexican partner mercilessly, and you understand Parker’s stoicism in the face of these insults is part of the joke. He gets his own barbs in too. Early on, he asks Hamilton: “Are you going to do anything about these robberies, or just sit there and let Alzheimer’s take its course?”

Watching Hamilton and Parker is fun; watching the brothers is fun. They are real characters and they have real relationships here. For me, a big part of the fun is not knowing exactly what to expect, because the movie falls both within and outside the usual formulas. As Philadelphia Inquirer reviewer Stephen Rea says, it’s “at once a tale of desperation in hard times and a keenly observed character study—or studies.” I’d give it 7 stars out of 10.

I had a little flutter when the lawmen referred to Lubbock (home of my grandparents) and Young County (my great-grandparents). The filming, however, was in New Mexico. Not the same at all.

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 98%, audiences 90%.

Mad-Town & Milwaukee

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UWisc marching band

photo: Vicki Weisfeld

A recent midwest trip took us to spots in Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, you might want to add to your touring agenda.

Madison

In town for a University of Wisconsin football game, we put on our red shirts and walked to Camp Randall stadium on a gorgeous fall day. There’s nothing like the Big Ten football game for over-the-top pageantry. The 300-member Wisconsin marching band is justifiably famous for both musicality and precision maneuvers, plus cheerleaders, pep squad, Bucky Badger, smoke cannon, and boistrosity.

When the opposing team took the field, taking note of the deafening roar from a sea of red, I thought they might just turn around and go home. The Wisconsin fans may have wished they had that day, because though the spectacle was great, the UW football was only so-so (video highlights). In the end, though, Badgers ruled!

The Wisconsin Veterans Museum (which currently has a special exhibit of World War I posters) provides a manageably sized, well designed tour of Wisconsin residents’ role in the military, from the Civil War to the present day. (30 West Mifflin Street on the Square).

Madison, state capitol

Wisconsin state capitol dome – photo: Vicki Weisfeld

The State Capitol is well worth a visit. We didn’t take one of the guided tours, and just walking around the building offered plenty to see. Beautiful murals throughout the Supreme Court and legislative chambers (missed it, if there’s a brochure explaining these). The rotunda I’m told that, of all the state capitols, is most like that in Washington, D.C. Building and grounds are in impeccable, restored condition.

 

Hungry? Great places to eat:

  • with kids: Ella’s Deli, 2902 East Washington Avenue
  • if you love Italian: Naples 15, 15 North Butler Street
  • for a casual, tavern atmosphere: Old Fashioned, Pinckney Street on the Square

Milwaukee

To recreated our experience in Milwaukee, I’d have to provide the contact information for a lot of friends and family members! Failing that, something all visitors might enjoy—either in Milwaukee or in a theater near you—is the IMAX National Parks Adventure, narrated by Robert Redford (trailer). This will be one of the last films to be fully shot on 70mm celluloid, rather than digitally.

It’s a terrific, dizziness-inspiring look at our nation’s jewels—from Hawaiˋi to Acadia, from the Everglades to Alaska, from hot, hot, hot to Lake Superior ice caves. And I’m not ever going to do that bicycle thing.

Reading on the Road

Nick Petrie’s The Drifter – a former Marine lieutenant visits Milwaukee after the suicide of one of his men and finds unexpected danger, starting with the vicious dog hiding under the widow’s porch.

Do I Need Your Love, Babe?

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eight-days-a-week, Beatles, Ron HowardThe new Ron Howard hit documentary about the Beatles, Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years (trailer), is a love letter to the musical group and the exuberance of youth. Using sometimes grainy footage of early performances up through the final live performance at Candlestick Park (and the final-final live performance for a few people, including unsuspecting passers-by, from the roof of their recording studio), the Beatles as a phenomenon still amaze. They not only had a brutal tour schedule in this period, 1962-1966, they transformed the music industry and changed the culture through their truly overwhelming and unprecedented worldwide popularity.

That popularity led to nearly riotous conditions for their concerts and forced promoters into using stadium venues for the first time. They just couldn’t risk the hordes of disappointed fans in a conventional, smaller-capacity concert hall. It also forced the band away from stage performances, where they made their money, and into the studio where they could actually hear themselves think. Right. They were musicians.

For a long time and during this intense period, they were also very good friends and colleagues. The members were strengthened by their closeness, always having each other to rely on. In an archived interview, George says something like, “I always felt sorry for Elvis. He didn’t have that. It was just him.” If a decision had to be made, they all made it, including the decision not to play in segregated venues in the United States, a provision included in their contracts.

It was 52 years ago that the Beatles’ first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, an event watched by nearly 40 percent of Americans. They came on the scene during a tumultuous time here, amidst civil rights and Vietnam War protests, and only a few months after the assassination of President Kennedy. And while the boys appear sweet and lively in these old clips, there’s that clap of nostalgic pain, too—knowing what happened later and knowing what was lost, including youth itself.

They were So Young when crushing fame and amazing music happened to, around, and within them. That they managed themselves with such grace is astonishing. Ron Howard and producer Giles Martin (son of Beatles’ recording producer George Martin) have done a great job in creating a film to introduce a new generation of fans to the group. Recent interviews with Paul (looks old!) and Ringo (looks great!) bring out new information and insights, and a worldwide call for footage from people who took their film cameras to the concerts brought lots of new visuals with a startling sense of unstaged immediacy.

And there’s lots of head-filling, memory-sparking music too.

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 95%; audiences 86%. In theaters and streaming on Hulu.“Yeah, yeah, yeah!”

The Future of Facial Recognition: Man vs. Machine?

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cctv2

photo: Andy Roberts, creative commons license

DCI Mick Neville of London’s Metropolitan Police Service runs a unit of people with superior facial-recognition capacity. He believes that image recognition will turn out to be the third revolution in forensic science, after fingerprint and DNA analyses. (This is part 2 of a 2-part story. Read part 1 here.)

Currently, the Met solves about 2000 cases a year based on fingerprints, another 2000 using DNA analysis, and 2500 with imagery recognition, at a tenth the cost of the other two techniques, he says. Writers of crime fiction have a lot to work with here.

Can’t Computers Do It?

Can computers eventually take over this job? People in the super-recognizer community say no. Part of the reason is the sub-par environments in which many closed circuit television (CCTV) images are captured. Says Patrick Radden Keefe in The New Yorker, “After the 2011 London riots, the Met gathered two hundred thousand hours of CCTV footage. Computer facial-recognition systems identified one rioter.” Gary Collins, one of the Met’s super-recognizers, identified 190.

Of course, computers are becoming more skilled all the time. Facebook’s recognition program, is touted as one of the best. Unlike CCTV, it mostly has well-lit, good-quality images to work with. It has a further advantage because it can narrow the universe of possible matches to the friends, family, and friends-of-friends of specific users. Yet even FB’s algorithm consistently identifies the wife of a friend of mine as me. When I look at her picture, I don’t see it, but Facebook does.

Computers definitely have some role, though, and the Met combines machine and human expertise. It uses a specially created computer program to narrow the number of images by broad demographics and type of crime, for instance, then lets the human super-recognizers make the match.

And, if facial recognition software is prone to error, Keefe says, logo-recognition algorithms work well. “It turns out that many criminals not only commit the same crimes again and again; they do so wearing the same outfits,” he says. That shirt with the six-inch polo player stitched across the left chest? Dead giveaway.

Where Next?

As super-recognizer approaches migrate to the United States (as they have already to St. Petersburg, Florida), authorities will need safeguards against false identifications. In the U.K., a case is never made against someone based solely on facial recognition evidence.

No one wants a repeat of the situation that occurred after the Boston Marathon bombing when the F.B.I. crowd-sourced the identification process, and innocent people were fingered. In these hysterical times, that could be deadly for false suspects (another plot wrinkle for us crime-writers). In the recent New York City/New Jersey bombings, a fingerprint had given them a specific name.

Hiring people for sensitive security positions at airports and nuclear power plants perhaps shouldn’t rely on the assumption that everyone is more or less the same in facial recognition skill, just as we don’t assume everyone is just the same in other job-skill domains. We test for those.

Because millions of Americans have little or no ability to recognize faces (see earlier post), researcher Richard Russell believes “it is statistically inevitable that some passport officers at American airports are face blind—and that quite a number are significantly impaired.” Why not make sure people in such sensitive positions are especially suited for these sensitive jobs?

Further Reading

Have a scientific bent? Here’s the research paper that started it all: “Super-recognizers: People with extraordinary face recognition ability,” by Richard Russell, Brad Duchaine, and Ken Nakayama, published in 2009 in the Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.