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Woman Unable To Recognize Voices, Unless It's Sean Connery
A 60-year-old British woman is suffering from a neurological defect that is sure to put her in the next version of "The Man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat." She is unable to recognize any voice she hears — any voice, that is, but Sean Connery's. Unless she sees the face of the person speaking, she has no idea who is talking to her, even her daughter and co-worker's voices are unrecognizable. Dr. Brad Duchaine at University College London, thinks she might have the first documented case of vocal prosopagnosia, a condition which makes it extremely difficult for people to recognize faces. "His accent is distinctive," Duchaine explained. "And she is a British woman in her sixties ... let's say it's probable he got her attention."
Ish that you?
'Loose' is when your pants are three sizes too big. 'Lose' is when you misuse 'loose'.
As funny as this may sound in the headline, it does appear to potentially be a legitimate and interesting medical condition. Why was this posted in Idle? We see crap every day that should have been put in Idle, but i'm not sure if this is the case.
There are two different types of prosopagnosia: apperceptive prosopagnosia, which is what the OP was describing, and associational prosopagnosia, which is more like not being able to use faces to query one's memory. I have the latter, and if I'm looking at a face I can parse it and work out age, gender, etc., which someone with apperceptive prosopagnosia typically can't do, but I can't make any associations with faces as such at all. I have to explicitly observe and notice features and make associations with those to recognize people. I usually end up going on hairstyles, with a somewhat limited success rate.
I'm pretty bad with voices too, although not as bad as I am with faces or as bad as the woman in the article. For what it's worth, I just had my first bug-fix (a race condition in arch/sparc64/kernel/trampoline.S) accepted into the kernel source a few weeks ago, so I guess I fit your definition of a Real Nerd.
Researcher: And who is speaking now?
George W. Bush declares the Axis of Evil
Patient: Sean Connery!
Researcher: And who is speaking now?
Tiny Tim sings Tiptoe through the Tulips
Patient: Sean Connery!
Researcher: And who is speaking now?
Miss Piggy takes Kermit to task
Patient: Sean Connery!
Researcher: And who is speaking now?
Roaring Elephants and Chimpanzees howling
Patient: Sean Connery!
Researcher: And who is speaking now?
Sean Connery declares "There can be only one"
Patient: Sean Connery!
Researcher: Amazing! She can only recognize a voice if it is Sean Connery!
Meh. That's only actually happened to me once, and the person in question was (probably) joking. Anyway, to extend your list: