On Anthropomorphic Snow Figures (Plus, Zootopia Watch!)

   I woke up at 5:20 this morning. I feel great. Well, right now I feel tired, but, earlier, yeah, that felt great. As for right now... I feel tired. But earlier, I felt great!

   Did I mention, though, that right now I'm pretty tired?

   I saw a snowman today. Well, not only one snowman. Today, over the course of it, I saw many snowsman (that's right, kiddos, fun fact: the word "snowman" takes an internal pluralization.)

   I'm not talking about those snowsman, though. I'm talking about the first snowman I saw today. Which I saw, this morning, before 6:00, this morning. I saw it. And I realized, wait, that's supposed to be a person? 

[I'd been going to take a picture of the exact snowman in question, but didn't get around to it. But you know what one looks like. Picture a photo of a snowman here. Go on, I believe in you.]

   If there were a snow, like, dog that came in three lumps, bag-bang-bang snowlump-snowlump-snowlump, we wouldn't recognize that as a dog. That'd be a giant ant. And, as anyone who's never seen Ant Man could tell you, those two are impossible to get mixed up. Unless, of course, the dog really is really messed-up looking. Or maybe you're that guy from The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. You'd probably be able to mix those up then. 

   And I am tired.

   I'm just going to proceed based off the assumption that you do not, in fact, live in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or Earth 99,999, as it is known by people way too geeky to have lives. And, me, of course. I, know that... 

   And I am tired.

   Neurologically, we're willing to accept almost anything as being human, or at least the face part. There have been, sciences, done on that. Sciences, man. We clearly accept a lot of stylization when it comes to identification of facial features. As long as it doesn't swing back into the uncanny valley, we're fine, yeah? But what's the degree of stylization, has there ever been any sciences done on, what we're willing to accept as a human bodily form? That's an excellent question, and it probably wouldn't be terribly difficult to look up, would it?

   But I am, putting way more mental energy into an internal debate on whether to keep "I am tired" going on as a running gag.

   This much I know, or at least have read (so if I'm wrong don't blame me): we use different parts of the brain to "read" cartoons than we do to read real life.* Neurotypically, we use different parts of the brain to "read" faces than reading objects. With autistic subjects, of course, freakin', amazing stuff, that's not the case; the same part of the brain is used when viewing objects as faces.** Also, I was probably going somewhere with that. Just pretend I quoted more science at you here. And that I wrapped all of these facts and theories up for you in a neat little bow that perfectly encapsulates how the heck we're still able to take the (not even stylization, man, but abstractification) lump-lump-lump as the human form. Pretend that, for me.

   I really am, you know.

   You know, furries are supposed to have, like, some significant number, higher percent chance of having Asperger's Syndrome than the general population. You've done a lot of imagining so far, and I'm proud of you, so just imagine that I actually bothered to look that statistic up as well.† There are so many possibilities on the causality behind that that I could probably do a whole post just speculating, but I've (to whatever degree of "always" you'll accept) always wondered if that might be part of it, something about, facial recognition, and animals?‡

   I think it does.

   I am, just, too tired right now even to finish this sen

ZOOTOPIA WATCH

   I didn't even know Walt Disney Records had a YouTube channel, but this came out on it yesterday:

   Wow! I'd totally comment on that more if I weren't among the living dead right now!

   As it is... hey, check it out, more sweet overhead sweeps of the city. Zootopia itself is, like, my 71st favorite thing about Zootopia. So yeah, it's really pretty high up there (did I mention how immensely psyched I am for this movie?)

   Alright, well, that's a day's post! Sayonara!

   * I'm trying and failing to find the source for this, but I stand by my claim. EDIT: Alright, the idea is mentioned 13:45ish in this Oliver Sacks TED Talk about hallucination... he doesn't mention what particular part of the brain is responsible for interpreting cartoons, though he goes on about fusiform gyri and all that for facial recognition... but Oliver Sacks is a relevant enough authority in my book.
   ** See page 107 of Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson's Animals in Translation, which references an unfortunately uncited study. There is a 2001 study by Pierce et al. that reports that autistic subjects' facial processing does occur outside of the fusiform face area (FFA), but I haven't actually read it to confirm that it does report where facial recognition occurs instead:
Pierce, K., Muller, R.-A., Ambrose, J., Allen, G. & Courchesne, E. (2001) Face processing occurs outside the fusiform ‘face area’ in autism; evidence from functional MRI. Brain, 124(10): 2059-2073.
   †225%, I think is how you'd notate that, based on a 2013 survey conducted at Anthrocon (2.25 x more likely is a 225% probability, right? Notation is confusing sometimes...) See here. They do a survey at Anthrocon every year, and it skims up some really interesting data. Truly fascinating reads.
   ‡ Kaniwisher et al.'s 1999 study reports that the FFA doesn't respond to animal faces in neurotypical subjects, and so I'm postulating that autistic subjects' likely more ready acceptance of animals-as-human faces probably, you know, does something.
Kanwisher, N., Stanley, D. & Harris, A. (1999). The fusiform face area is selective for faces not animals. NeuroReport, 10(1): 183-187.