Adult Brains Grow From Specialist Use

Xemu writes "Researchers at University College of London's Institute of Neurology have discovered that taxi drivers grow more brain cells in the area associated with memory. Dr Eleanor Maguire says, 'We believe the brain increased in gray matter volume because of the huge amount of data memorized.' She warns against the use of GPS and says it will possibly affect the brain changes seen in this study. This research is the first to show that the brains of adults can grow in response to specialist use." London cabbies, unlike their American counterparts, have to learn the layout of streets and the locations of thousands of places of interest in order to get a license.

Comments

Like every other muscle

[LiquidCoooled]

If you train it and work with it it will grow and remain strong.

My bulging typing fingers and keen google-foo are testament to that.

Re:Like every other muscle

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

If you train it and work with it it will grow and remain strong.

My right arm and wrist are stronger than my left ... not sure how it ever got that way.

Re:Like every other muscle

[rolfwind]

Interesting you mention typing. I touch-typed with a regular QWERTY keyboard for at least 10 years, and two years back, I switched to the DVORAK layout. These days, people look at me in disbelief if they know I can program computers, but I start fumble with a regular keyboard. My muscle memory has completely changed over to dvorak and I can't type QWERTY worth a damn. I am a relatively quick learner (learned fluent dvorak by forcing it on myself in 8 hours of concentration) too.

My mother used to be fluent in French, being a translator. She hasn't used the language in 20 years. She has almost forgotten it completely as she can't make sentences so easily. (Though I am sure she can get back into it 100x faster than a newcomer).

It is almost like the brain is a muscle. After Terry Shiavo died, the autopsy found that her brain shrunk to the size of grapefruit.

I wonder if there is a correlation of speed of learning and speed of forgetting and the brains that "erase" (or shove aside) old info faster take in new information easier.

Re:Like every other muscle

[Rakshasa Taisab]

What, are you trying to tell me you don't put both to good use? That's so boring.

What about trivia nuts?

[khasim]

Does memorizing the names and stats of baseball players make your brain grow?

What about people who memorize every little detail of Star Trek?

Or is it that only people with the additional brain mass CAN memorize all those items?

Re:What about trivia nuts?

[HappySqurriel]

Or is it that only people with the additional brain mass CAN memorize all those items?

Trust me, memorization has very little to do with intelligence and more to do with exposure and motivation to memorize a subject ...

I honestly don't think it should be a surprise that working with an area of your brain would increase its "strength." This is (effectively) what practice is ...

Take any person who has never learned a musical instrument before and examine the impact of musical stimulus on their brain. Spend 8 hours a day for the next year teaching them musical theory and composition as well as several instruments and then examine the impact of musical stimulus on their brain. Being that they've practiced and learned a lot about music, one would expect that their brain would suddenly become far more involved in the musical experience.

At the same time, one of the questions of a study like this would be what would the consequence of television be on a person's brain? For the most part television would be training the brain in a way which would not be particularly useful in any pursuit and yet many/most people have a ton of exposure to this influence.

Re:What about trivia nuts?

[pilgrim23]

If you consider what a NEW development in the real history of man Writing is, Memorization was not just a good idea, it was all we had! if you look close at the great works of various tribes of man that come from before writing: Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the poetic Edda, early portions of the Sutras, etc. And if you look at later works such as the Janist Canon and the Koran; Rhyme scheme was the technique used to insure the passage of a piece of information unchanged down through the generations. The Skald, Bard, Dine` Singer, and other such were more then just respected within the tribe. THEY WERE THE TRIBE or, all of the tribe that was not present around the camp fire that cold neolithic evening when real evil lurked beyond the fire light. Tales of your grandfathers or in some cases, tales that remained unchanged down through ages were all we had.
Given the predilection of most hunan cultures to gather in data then burn it to the ground: Alexandria, the Niniveh library of Asur Bani Pal, and countless other examples, memory may be all we have in the future. Get your exercise folks

Re:What about trivia nuts?

[gad_zuki!]

Depends on the television shows of course. I dont like this general dismissal of an entire medium. When peope say it about the web, the geeks get all up in arms, but the geeks do the same thing to tv.

TV is mostly entertainment. So its really not that different than me driving my ass to the comedy clubs downtown. I'm "engaged" in the same way, yet we dont see so much PC hysteria about this or other forms of entertainment. Well, we do with videogames, but again its a double standard depending on who is complaining. I am much more concerned about the pacing than the content myself. Arguably, too much tv or videogames given to too young of a person can lead to mild attention problems.

Also I think a lot of this "brain strength" and what may or may not come up on some EEG somewhere is a lot of hair-spliting. If one part of the brain lights up more than another that doesnt mean anything if we don't see a correlated human behavior. What if I found a dozen musicians who don't light up the EEG like someone in your example? Are they lesser musicians?

The brain isnt like a muscle. Nor is it like a computer. Its complex enough and not well understood enough to the point where our analogies are more trouble than they are worth. The Mark I brain is surprisingly resilient and the various fearmongering about damaging one's brain through culturally dis-approved activities borders on silliness.

London cabbies...

[soliptic]

See The Knowledge and the references from there. I think it is only required for taxicab drivers (ie "Black cabs"), not minicab drivers.

Re:London cabbies...

[soliptic]

minicabs and their drivers are illegal by the very definition.

As nogginthenog has pointed out, not so. They are just licensed under a different set of rules. Essentially the biggest difference being that you phone and order them, you can't wave them down in the street. (Although in practice many minicab drivers will let themselves be waved over in this way, so long as nobody is looking - it's a fare, and furthermore, a fare that HQ doesn't know about, so they don't have to split it, it can go straight in their pocket.)

I guess your confusion might lay in the fact that there is currently quite a big campaign against illegal / unlicensed minicabs, which (sadly) have provided many cases of rape/assault/robbery. The problem is that since, unlike black cabs, they are just standard cars, it's pretty much impossible to tell at a glance which are licensed and which aren't.

(Bizarrely enough, I used to rent digs at a minicab office, and would occasionally answer man the phone (take bookings, ring the drivers to allocate the jobs) when my landlord / company owner had to nip out shopping or whatever, which is why I know this stuff)

london streets

[endx7]

London cabbies, unlike their American counterparts, have to learn the layout of streets and the locations of thousands of places of interest in order to get a licence.

London is also harder to get around, due to the way street names in London work.

Re:london streets

[gilgongo]

One side effect of London cabbies having to do "The Knowledge" to get a license is that it creates a market for cheap, illegal cab drivers to fill the supply gap brough about by having such an exclusive system. With hoards of unlicensed cabbies around, women get raped, uninsured road accidents happen, tourists get ripped off and legitimate cab fares are sky high.

I am a Londoner, and I think the sooner the GPS makes The Knowledge a prerequisite of licenced cab driving irrelevant, the better. The times I've been to NYC and got a cab it's been paradise in comparison.

Re:london streets

[James Youngman]

Many of the smaller UK cities (Birmingham, Manchetser and Leeds, for example) have licensed hansom cabs, too. But the key thing is that they also regulate their minicabs too. It's possible to do both.

So the problem is not that London regulates its black cabs. The problem is that it doesn't regulate the minicabs.

Old news for nerds?

[the_humeister]

Studies were published in the year 2000. Why is this now getting attention? Actually, come to think of it, I think it got attention back then too.

Re:Old news for nerds?

[blakestah]

Yeah, I was suspicious of it then, too.

The taxi drivers have a 20% reduction in anterior hippocampus. And
a 7-8% increase in posterior hippocampus.

Therefore the brain grows from experience!
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/97/8/4398/F2

Then they went on to show a correlation with time as a taxi driver,
but it was only significant if they removed one outlier, a process
that COULD NOT POSSIBLY HAVE BEEN important to their statistical
finding.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/97/8/4398

That part of the brain has neurons that are selectively active
for the spatial position of the body in rats and Rhesus monkeys. So
it would not be surprising to find it responded to taxi driving
experience. But the surprising thing is the much larger reduction in
anterior hippocampal volume is being ignored...

I am totally in favor of our new GPS automatic map making
overlords!

My brane is huge

[Sciros]

Well that's good news because now I can say that playing MTG and Guild Wars and reading comic books has been simply to increase my brain size. Nothing to do with being a huge nerd. Oh, wait.

Does this mean...

[Kiba Ruby]

Does this mean that programmers are more logical than people?

Juggers too - BBC again

[26199]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3417045.stm

It's interesting, but it ain't news :)

Cause or Effect?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Do taxi drivers' brains expand to provide more memory, or do people with poor memory just forget to become taxi drivers?

A huge problem with any of these correlation studies is determining, accurately, which way the cause->effect relationship runs.

Re:Cause or Effect?

[peragrin]

while i agree with you it's more like drivers who get lost easily don't tend to last long as a cab driver.

Also while there are some cab drivers who should be doing something else, There are those whose only real talent is directions and locations.

Re:Cause or Effect?

[slamb]

EmbeddedJanitor asked

Do taxi drivers' brains expand to provide more memory, or do people with poor memory just forget to become taxi drivers? A huge problem with any of these correlation studies is determining, accurately, which way the cause->effect relationship runs.

A good question, but RTFA:

Dr Maguire said: "We are now looking at the brains of taxi-drivers before they start training, and at those of retired cabbies to see whether that area of the brain gets smaller when it is not used."

Hopefully they'll actually follow the pre-training drivers through all the way through training so they don't compare future wash-outs with present successful cabbies rather than future successful cabbies with present successful cabbies. If so, it should go a long way toward answering your question.

The ultimate would be to compare the same population of cabbies vs. bus drivers (control group) through their entire careers. Obviously that'd be a long-term study, and it will become impossible when "the Knowledge" is obsoleted by GPS mapping software. (I say "when" rather than "if". It will happen sooner or later.)

Re:Cause or Effect?

[timeOday]

I'm surprised they even bothered if it's not a longitudinal study. "This just in, basketball makes you taller. Those who give up on basketball don't develop legs as long as those who stay with it throughout professional basketball careers."

Re:Cause or Effect?

[slamb]

There seems to be an assumption that people won't learn what they don't "have to" learn (I've heard this argument against PDAs too). But maybe people just learn what they're repeatedly exposed to, or things with emotional connections. Technology may or may not interfere with that. It's not a question I would guess at the answer without some evidence either way.

I generalized from similar observations:

• Now that I have a cell phone with a good phonebook, I no longer memorize phone numbers. (I remember phone numbers I called 10 years ago, but I don't remember phone numbers I now call all the time. There's no need.)
• Now that cashiers have cash registers, they no longer do basic arithmetic. (Sadly, most don't even remember how to do the arithmetic. They were all instructed in elementary school, but it didn't stick...)
• Now that cashiers have bar code scanners, they no longer remember prices. (But they do remember the typed codes for fruit and vegetables.)
• Now that I have Eclipse toolhints, I no longer remember Java library functions' argument orders.
• ...

In general, it seems that when it's more convenient and about as effective to use a machine as to do something by hand, people will no longer take the effort to do it themselves. And memorization (of prices, phone numbers, street names, anything) is way harder for people than for computers.

If the software works well enough that cabbies can reliably enter an address and find the street, why should cabbies be made to remember all the street names? And if it works so well that it can reliably pick an optimal route (including traffic, construction, etc.) why should they even remember how to get anywhere?

In fact, I predict they'll start depending on it before it's reliable. The test will go away, and for better or for worse, there will be a lot more cabbies out there, and they won't be able to get around very well when the computer acts up, just like a lot of businesses now can barely sell anything when their cash registers act up. It will be a pain to get to certain streets because the database is wrong, and cabbies will unknowingly avoid certain more optimal turns/intersections because the software can't navigate through them.

Re:Cause or Effect?

[dirgotronix]

I'm a cab driver in Denver (who was a graphic designer/web developer for ten years prior.)

I've got TomTom Navigator installed on my ppc phone, and used it all the time when I first started driving so I could memorize the order of the streets, and see dead ends and turns before I got to them.

Nowadays, I only ever even turn it on if a: I'm driving /way/ out of my area of knowledge (25+ miles), or b: if i'm driving someone out of my area of knowledge, and they're so drunk all I get from them is an address before they pass out in the back of the cab.

In those two instances, having a GPS is a wonderful thing.

Usually, if I don't know how to get somewhere, I just ask my passenger for the best route. People know where they're going.

I didn't rely on the gps initially, I was using it as extended vision, I guess. Now that I've learned all that stuff, it only ever gets used if I honestly know nothing around me.

Plus, there are certain cities and jurisdictions in the denver metro area that decided they don't want to use the hundred block system, and start all over from zero, which /really/ throws me off. I can get anywhere with hundred blocks, or at the very least, I'm never /lost/ with hundred blocks. When you reset them in the middle of nowhere...

Re:Cause or Effect?

[dirgotronix]

I'm a cabbie.

I was in a motorcycle accident in 2001 which caused serious short-term memory issues in my brain. I started driving a cab in february of 2006, and I have noticed an increase in my short term memory.

When I first started, I would have to ask my passengers to give me directions one turn at a time (and in my mind, I was repeating that single direction) in order to get to the destination. Now, I can generally get anywhere on address alone, or, at a minimum, remember the address all the way through the trip, despite having various conversations, remembering turn by turn directions, avoiding accidents, etc.

I'd say I agree with the studies, from personal experience.

Re:Cause or Effect?

[aussie_a]

Sadly, most don't even remember how to do the arithmetic. They were all instructed in elementary school, but it didn't stick... I'm sure people said the same thing about morse code.

Re:Cause or Effect?

[General Wesc]

You're missing the best example. Remember Phaedrus? Socrates quoting the god Theus on the invention of writing: '...for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves.' Writing is evil! ;-)

Does this apply only to "brain" mass ?

[Joebert]

"GPS [Global Positioning System] may have a big effect," says Dr Eleanor Maguire, who led the research at University College London. "We very much hope they don't start using it. We believe this area of the brain increased in grey matter volume because of the huge amount or data they have to memorise.If they all start using GPS, that knowledge base will be less and possibly effect the brain changes we are seeing."

So, Construction Workers shouldn't use heavy equipment because it could effect their muscle tone ?

Re:How do they know?

[zCyl]

Did these scientists have a "control experiment" done? The very usage of the word "believe" scares me. That means that there could be another scientist who might *not* believe.

Welcome to the real world of science, where conclusions are not solid, facts are not certain, and evidence is only an indication. :)

Re:How do they know?

[niconorsk]

From TFA:

In the study, researchers at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL's Institute of Neurology carried out scans on the brains of 35 cabbies and bus drivers, all men. Various psychological tests were also carried out. Using bus drivers meant that any brain differences found could not be explained by driving stress, or dealing with passengers and traffic in London. The one big difference between the two is that bus drivers stick to routes, while cabbies have to learn the layout of streets and the locations of thousands of places of interest to get an operating licence. So clearly they had thought of that particular possibility. What concerns me though, is how they know that their brain matter has grown rather than just having large memory centers from the start. They should probably do the same experiment with cabbies preparing for their exam and take the measure before and after.

Re:Wrong brain cell, doofus!

[FyRE666]

In defence of London cabbies, it's hard to fault them on their ability to drive or navigate between two points. I've no idea how they manage to stand 8 hours a day of London traffic without becoming raging psychopaths though...

It's true

[Tablizer]

I've found my Bullshit Lobe doubling in size since I entered the corporate world.

Re:What is it with...

[CmdrGravy]

Oooo, touchy !

No doubt British Taxis are better than French & Egyptian taxis as well but since most people who read this are American it makes more sense to point out how much better they are than Americans rather than some other random country.

Plato/Socrates said that about writing too...

[KarmaRundi]

"Soc. At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters. Now in those days the god Thamus was the king of the whole country of Egypt; and he dwelt in that great city of Upper Egypt which the Hellenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the god himself is called by them Ammon. To him came Theuth and showed his inventions, desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of them; he enumerated them, and Thamus enquired about their several uses, and praised some of them and censured others, as he approved or disapproved of them. It would take a long time to repeat all that Thamus said to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts. But when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality." Translation nabbed from here

Bet he would have hated Google. All we have to remember now is how to use it and a few key words.

Re:Good job!

[CmdrGravy]

In fact Black Cab drivers anywhere in the UK have to take the same test tailored to their own areas. Since London is the largest urban area in the UK the London test includes more locations and streets and is the most complex.

Mini cab drivers do not have to take the Knowledge but if you ask them they are mostly studying to pass it, this can take up to 2 or 3 years of study even whilst operating as a mini cab in that time.

London cabbies vs American cabbies

[56ker]

London cab driver (visiting my mum's cousin):-

No map required, took us directly to the street - no problems - good tip

American cab driver (picked me up from Dallas Fort Worth airport)

Said he "used to live there", had a map - was only 6 miles from the airport but he managed to get lost, take about an hour or two to get there (had this insistence he must drop me off at the correct number) and ended up charging less than what was on his meter out of embarrassment.

So, yes I'll take a London cab driver (or walking/public transport if I'm in America) vs their American equivalent any day of the week. :)

Re:London cabbies vs American cabbies

[StikyPad]

Well you sure convinced me! I mean if a sample size of 1 per set isn't enough to draw a conclusion, then what is?!

Anyway, as long as we're on anecdotes, when I was in Japan, I asked the cab driver to take me to a well-known club, even using what Japanese I knew, plus a Japanese accent with my English (which actually works better than trying to speak Japanese in many situations). Apparently the language barrier was too steep, so I just showed him the flier with the map all written in Japanese. Instead of looking at it, he just stopped in the middle of a busy road and told us to get out. At least I think he said to get out.. I didn't really understand what he was saying, but the automatically opening doors sort of gave the impression he wanted us out. In hindsight I suppose it's possible he'd spotted some gravel or something on the side of the road and he wanted us to retrieve for him.

Anyway, we just grabbed the next taxi we saw, and the driver was much more helpful.

It's not like we were in some back woods villiage either -- we were in Yokohama, which is a fairly big tourist area.

Re:Now, What is the motivation?

[CmdrGravy]

In the UK mini cabs mostly have GPS ( the legal ones at least ) whilst the Black Cabs don't. In my totally unscientific studies the Black Cabs are far more effective at getting you to places than the GPS equipped mini cabs.

For example the road I live on has a name which is repeated a number of times in the City I live in in different areas but with Black Cabs I only have to say "[my road name] by the park just under the bridge" to get there with no further questions asked whereas with the mini cabs it can take them a long time to put my postcode into their machines or determine where exactly the road is to plot a route to it. Normally even having done this you have to tell them the way at every junction anyway.

Sounds like a good reason *for* GPS

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Sounds to me like using a GPS means there is more space in your skull for your brain to expand to deal with interesting tasks rather than mundane crap like how to get from A to B. I think I'll get one today.

Use a GPS. Save your brain for something better.

[cvd6262]

Recommending that GPS units shouldn't be used because it would cause a change in the person's brain is ridiculous unless the benefit of *not* changing the brain is good for anything other than the task the GPS does.

American Scientist had an episode where they taught a seeing girl braille, and tested her ability while doing an fMRI. The sections of her brain that fired during the test were associated with tactile processing. Then they blindfolded her for 100 hours, and retested. This time, her visual cortex was firing. The brain is dynamic and can repurpose unused neurons. This may be why people can no longer remember 7-digit telephone numbers: We all have PDA/cell phones to do it for us.

Is this bad? Not unless you value the ability to remember phone numbers.

Would it be bad if London taxi drivers no longer knew every little alleyway? Not so long as they could still accomplish their task.

BTW, I had a very different experience with a cabby in Paris. I told him where I wanted to go and he handed me a road atlas and said, "Trouvez-le."

Re:+1 Funny

[cp.tar]

from a Military perspective it has been a very successful and reasonably casualty free war.

if you say that it has been anything except for successful for the American Military (or that there are a lot of civilian casulaties in this war) you're demonstrating a lack of objectivity in the discussion.

Well then, from a military perspective, the terrorists who brought down the Twins were also very successful and did a reasonably casualty-free job.

If you're saying that it has been anything except for successful for the terrorists (or that there were a lot of civilian casualties), you're demonstrating a lack of objectivity in the discussion.

Re:So how does this explain George Bush ?

[modecx]

The truth is that NO ONE who manages to become president is dumb.

Exactly. The truth is, he is actually quite an intelligent and eloquent man off camera, but for one reason or another, he doesn't let the rest of the world know. The truth is, he's manipulated the lower and middle voting classes like no other president has before him, undoubtedly because he's excellent at acting dumb. Ronald Regan was known as the actor-president, but GWB is a much better actor--yet he hasn't been in a single film. Heck, if there were an award for acting dumb, even Jim Carey and Jeff Daniels would have to work pretty hard to overcome Mr. Bush.

There have been many people who have interviewed him one-on-one, and their stories are often similar. For instance, Matt Lauer said that he was surprisingly thoughtful and intelligent before he sat down in front of the camera, and that all of this went away the moment he did so, and the interview then proceeded like a typical President Bush interview.

However, the fact that I do acknowledge that he is smarter than he lets on, and that I rebut the popular meme which says that he's a dumb-ass should not be taken to mean that I like the man. I think he's a lot more evil than people can give him credit for, and I think he's just about the worst person to have in this position of power. I don't like their family, and I especially don't like Mr. Bush. I think it's a real life case of the fox guarding the hen house.

Spatial aspect is important

[dfedfe]

Well, the reason they looked at London cab drivers is because of the massive amount of spatial information they have to know. The hippocampus was first shown to be involved in spatial memory in rats in the '70s (if memory serves), though it is also known to be involved in episodic memory.

The original idea was that the hippocampus holds a map of spatial environments, and so if someone has a very large amount of spatial knowledge, maybe their hippocampal anatomy will reflect that. This hypothesis is supported by this evidence (that lab has been doing these studies for years, not sure why this is claimed to be so new, except perhaps the control subjects who were bus drivers in London, reducing one potential confound). It should be noted that lately it has been shown that there is a very robust spatial code outside of the hippocampus (and feeding into it) so it appears to not be quite as simple as the hippocampus just holding a map.

Now to your questions. Names, stats, and details are semantic memory, not episodic memory, and are therefore not directly related to the hippocampus (except that all semantic memory appears to start off as episodic memorys, which are slowly re-coded, if you like, into just memory of the facts and not the specific episode where you learned the facts). So if you were constantly learning large amounts of new such data, perhaps you'd see such growth in the hippocampus, but merely having it all memorized would be relying on storage out in neocortex, not the hippocampus.

As the hippocampus (specifically the dentate gyrus, one part of it) is one of the few regions known to constantly be producing new cells, it is expected that experience might cause changes in size there. In other parts of cortex it would be more surprising (to me, at least) if there was a significant change in number of neurons. There the changes are more likely to be structural: neurons making new connections with other, existing neurons.

In summary:
hippocampus = spatial information and acquisition of new memories
neocortex = use and storage of existing knowledge

It's not jingoism when it's true...

[Space cowboy]

I lived in London for 15 years (I now live in the USA). I've got into a cab in London and asked for a road 30 miles away, the guy not only gets me there without asking me for directions, he takes me down tiny narrow streets that avoid the traffic.

Compare this to my experiences in the USA:

- Wanting to get back to my hotel in Sausalito from San Francisco. I'm standing on Lombard (which turns into the Golden gate bridge, the best way to go) and hail a cab. He turns (right) onto a side-street, turns left, turns left, crosses Lombard again, turns right, turns right, crosses Lombard again, etc. He's being told how to get to Sausalito by his controller (I can *hear* his controller saying "turn onto Lombard" at which point he says "I've just crossed Lombard"). This goes on until I lean over and tell him I can direct him.

- Getting off a plane at Newark, having the rest of the day free before a plane home to the UK the next day. Ask cabbie to take me to the Empire State building - hell why not. He doesn't know where it is. I direct him to roughly the right area, and he says "this is as close as I can get". WTF ? Walking about 8 blocks (diagonally) I get to the ESB...

I could go on. In my experience, cabbies in London are top-notch. The only place I've found that has vaguely-similar cabbies is Las Vegas, and I've travelled a fair amount in the US.

Simon.

Where the streets have TOO MANY names.

[The Monster]

Aren't American roads in the large cities laid out in grids anyway?

The older a city is, the less true this is. In a city like Boston, there are neighborhoods with local grids at roughly the same granularity as those in London, and the same tendency of a road passing through an intersection to change names and reset numbering back to 1. Even Manhattan Island, the stereotypical grid of numbered Streets and Avenues, has them laid out according to the general orientation of the island, rather than the points of a compass

By contrast, Washington, DC was carefully planned, with a Cartesian quadrant system of N/S and E/W 'Streets' numbered from the Capitol building, as well as 'Avenues' that run at odd angles to that grid. The Public Land Survey System, which was used for the territories gained/defined after the US became independent of Britain, imposes a compass grid that largely governs newer areas, such as Florida and Western states.

It is often said that St. Louis (built long before the survey system) is the westernmost 'eastern' city, and Kansas City the easternmost 'western' city. A comparison of the two shows that the former indeed has virtually no streets that align with the compass, while the latter has most major roads aligned with the survey grids, right down to the streets across the state line not being quite exactly aligned (due to accumulated errors over the distances from the 5th and 6th Principal Meridians, from which the surveys were conducted).

The reason why London cabbies have to learn so many different street names is because there's so damned many of them, and no particular scheme to tie them together.

Writing Destroys Memory

[Ranger]

Plato putting words in Socrates mouth had this to say in Phaedrus about how the art of writing destroys memory. So this is nothing new. I think this GPS destroys memory story breaks the record for old news, 2,400 years old:

Socrates: At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters. Now in those days the god Thamus was the king of the whole country of Egypt; and he dwelt in that great city of Upper Egypt which the Hellenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the god himself is called by them Ammon. To him came Theuth and showed his inventions, desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of them; he enumerated them, and Thamus enquired about their several uses, and praised some of them and censured others, as he approved or disapproved of them. It would take a long time to repeat all that Thamus said to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts.

But when they came to etters (i.e–writing), This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit.

Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.

Re:So how does this explain George Bush ?

[Nefarious Wheel]

Gerald Ford was inept, not stupid, and he inherited the job. He made at least decent one pun* during his tenure, which puts him above average; modern US presidential candidates generally display less wit than Jay Leno.

Sometimes vice-presidents are chosen for their intelligence, which I believe is a ploy to keep them from competing for the top spot.

*("I think you're guilty of putting Descartes before TerHorst")

Re:So how does this explain George Bush ?

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Dumb compared to the average American? Of course not. Dumb compared to other presidents? You bet.

In other news...

[ultranova]

Med-I-Cal, Inc. has filed a patent on a revolutionary new method of improving muslce tone. From an interview with company CEO Mr. Smith:

"After long and expensive testing, we have found that repeatedly lifting heavy objects for as little as 15 minutes each day causes muscle mass in adults to increase and the amount of body fat to decrease without any of the side effects our current line of hormonal products may, under extremely rare circumstances and with no liability to us, show. We are seeking to bring such objects with an easy to grip handle into the market within the next 10 years."

Mr. Smith also stated that the makers of many piratical weightlifting products currently flooding the market would face "heavy consequences" and proceeded to pick up and throw a car towards a 3rd-story window in a fit of hormone-induced rage. Luckily a passing taxi driver was able to stop the car in midflight and bring it down safely with his amazing psychokinetic powers, the result of strenuously exercising his brain for years beyond human limits.

Mr. Smith and the taxi driver then engaged in a superpowered fight that reduced most of downtown into smoking rubble. The fight ended in a draw when the smoke caused the combatants to lose sight of each other and wander off. The taxi drivers union settled out of court to use their mind powers to restore the city, heal the injured and raise the dead, a task that took them approximately 15 minutes. Mr. Smith, being the head of a large corporation, was not accused despite having started the fight.