Look, up in the sky...

May 22, 2006 9:32 AM

How can my wife use her superpowers for good?

My wife has this uncanny ability to remember obscure facts about people, especially famous people. She can remember faces with ease and can recall absurd amount of details related to the person.

For example, we'll watch a movie and she'll know that so-and-so was married to whosit, and their nephew was in watchamacallit, directed by that guy who is the ex of whosit's cousin.

It's all effortless on her part and the accuracy is sort of scary sometimes.

I was wondering how she can use here superpower's for good (e.g., helping people and/or financial gains).

Any suggestions?

posted by milarepa to grab bag (24 comments total)

Wikipedia editor.
posted by skallas at 9:35 AM on May 22, 2006

gossip columnist, blogger, pundit, paparrazi...

the possibilities are endless!
posted by skrike at 9:39 AM on May 22, 2006

i know someone who is a development director for a major nonprofit: that is she finds, maintains and flatters donors. the sort of recall you describe is pretty much her job: remembering who is on the board of directors of what company, how that person is related to which philanthropies and what other people who are on boards of directors at other companies and members of which organizations &c. you'd be surprised how often personal info (who you're married to, what school you went to, your golf partner) is vital to this work (at least i was).

that information helps her target organizations which are not yet donors, play corporate rivalries to her organization's advantage, and makes her very knowledgeable when talking to past donors about their next contributions.

her own financial gain is pretty modest (although she makes a decent living and really likes her job) but the work she does getting and reatining major donors (as well as increasing their donations) really does significant good, and it's in large part a result of her ability to remember that kind of stuff about people and organizations.
posted by crush-onastick at 9:47 AM on May 22, 2006

Politics, or – if so inclined – executive assistant to a politician or other person with high social requirements. Diplomat.
posted by zadcat at 9:47 AM on May 22, 2006

This is the sort of thing that is very useful for a journalist or lobbyist at a state or national capitol.
posted by grouse at 9:48 AM on May 22, 2006

Pub quiz.
posted by popcassady at 9:50 AM on May 22, 2006

Working for a politician, or becoming one. Those are the skills upon which personal networks. On preview, exactly what zadcat said.
posted by Ironmouth at 9:57 AM on May 22, 2006

Jeopardy. Seriously.
posted by bamassippi at 9:57 AM on May 22, 2006

Professional quiz show contestant. We have lots of quiz shows here in the UK, and you often see the same people pop up on quiz after quiz after quiz.
posted by afx237vi at 10:04 AM on May 22, 2006

These are not super-powers. This is what women do. What *you* have to do is obey the sexist male elite and prevent her from joining the labour-pool and making life hard for us anti-social misanthropic men.

That, or what Zadcat said.
posted by Jofus at 10:09 AM on May 22, 2006

I second the pub quiz. Challenging any takers in six degrees of Kevin Bacon- cash on the barrelhead.
I can see it now...You as the patsy/set up man, she the pool shark except substitute that great power of hers for pool...
posted by Gungho at 10:10 AM on May 22, 2006

At the moment we know the code to the human genome, which is nice and all, but the real benefit will come from knowing the degree of variability within the code and how those changes impact people on an individual basis. Doing this will require a massive effort to sift through all of these people, and their respective code, to establish how it all works. Your wife's facial memory combined with some health knowledge might allow her to put things together more quickly than this massive effort I mention.

Case in point: I'm the only person in my family with red hair, as well as the only one with freckles. Paternity isn't a question, so don't bother going there... long story. Anyway, this particular combination requires four allele mutations* on a single gene (MC1R). Both of my parents had to have a recessive copy of each of the four mutations for me to end up as I did.

What is unknown at the moment is why/how MC1R also affects the pain receptors. See if your wife can recall freckled redheads (read: those most likely to have the MC1R mutations that reduce sensitivity to "noxious stimuli") with a low pain tolerance**, which would be opposite of what seems to happen to us. Take all of the people she remembers and look for a common genetic factor. Could be high cheekbones, could be whether the ear lobes are attached or unattached, it could be anything really. Finding a common trait would be a direction to look in, whereas right now the field is so open practically no one is looking in any direction, even though discovering the cause might lead to new drugs that could reduce pain without all of the side effects from the current ones.

And that's just one gene out of the tens of thousands of genes in people.

Guess this is more of a hobby thing though... I'm doubt anyone is hiring for this :-)

* The initial dysfunctional variant, as well as one for red hair, one for freckles on the face, and the last for freckles on the rest of the body.

** Be really selective here. There is a difference between complainers and folks with a low pain tolerance.
posted by jwells at 10:30 AM on May 22, 2006

Sales. Good salespeople are famous for remembering your name, your wife's name, kids' names, vacation spots, etc.
posted by callmejay at 11:14 AM on May 22, 2006

Mother of daughters! I have this power too, and I neither watch much television, see mainstream films or purchase tabloids on the check-out line. I seem to absorb this non-information from the ether and I deploy it at the most opportune times. My daughters, 16 and 20, are constantly amazed ... They'll be having a conversation about some boldfaced names and, when they are at a loss for pedigree, notoriety or connection, I jump in and supply the 4th or 5th degree of separation. It's a good party trick when they're gathered at home with their friends -- I'm now known as the cool mom, which is like having triple agent access: priceless.
posted by thinkpiece at 11:31 AM on May 22, 2006

Copy editor at a celebrity magazine?
posted by scratch at 11:53 AM on May 22, 2006

1. Da Vinci Code.
2. The Riddler's nemesis
3. bar trivia. Play for pints every Wenesday!
4. LSAT.
posted by Mean Mr. Bucket at 11:53 AM on May 22, 2006

MIT Mystery Hunt
posted by alms at 12:01 PM on May 22, 2006

I have this, especially related to movie actors / directors and musicians. Haven't used it for good except to amuse my wife, who says its like being married to the IMDB. She's a film critic, so it comes in handy, but other than that I haven't been able to profit from it.
It doesn't work for non-famous people, i.e.: the ones I actually know and should be able to name, place, etc.
posted by signal at 12:03 PM on May 22, 2006

It doesn't work for non-famous people

Isn't there an actual Celebrity Centre in the human brain? I remember reading that somewhere, that there's an area that can be seen to light up when shown photos of celebrities but not regular people.

Maybe your wife should be studied by your local university's psychology department?
posted by AmbroseChapel at 2:17 PM on May 22, 2006

1. Work in development (fundraising)
2. Lobbyist
3. Some type of job where you do a lot of entertaining and have to make people feel welcome and important. At my college, the president's husband had this job. He was an ex-lobbyist and had a great knack for knowing everything about everyone in the room, even if he'd only met the person once before. He was great at parties since the president couldn't remember a darned thing about people (especially donors).
posted by FergieBelle at 2:28 PM on May 22, 2006

Isn't there an actual Celebrity Centre in the human brain?

Our epilepsy center has seen two patients whose seizures were reliably and uniquely triggered by 1) Mary Hart's voice and 2) hearing Supertramp.

We think that seizures like these originate in one small point in the brain and then spread. That suggests that there are special brain areas, at least in these people, devoted to Mary Hart and Supertramp. A little scary, don't you think?
posted by ikkyu2 at 2:52 PM on May 22, 2006

Thanks for all the advice everybody!

AmbroseChapel: No, she can do this for everybody. She even notices details about people's faces, clothes, speech, etc, that no one else notices. It's just more remarkable that she can do it about people she's never met.
posted by milarepa at 6:16 PM on May 22, 2006

She should run for office.
posted by Count Ziggurat at 7:04 PM on May 22, 2006

I can't really help with the question except to say I have a similar ability and am unemployed. I constantly surprise my husband (and myself) with the amount of garbage stuffed into me brainpan. Which, of course, is the problem - it's garbage. It's not really useful information to have floating about.
posted by deborah at 8:04 PM on May 22, 2006