Tuesday BP, 5/22/18

Matt Cain was inducted in to the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame yesterday and he was greeted with this...beautiful...plaque:

The likeness isn’t great or even good, but it’s a lot better than the one that greeted soccer legend Brandi Chastain:

For reference re: the Cristiano Ronaldo statue —

Photo by Octavio Passos/Getty Images

And what Ronaldo actually looks like:

Photo by Manuel Queimadelos Alonso/Getty Images

Now, I have a theory about why this keeps happening. It’s the same artist. This artist has been demoted from busts/statues to plaques. The results are slightly better, but this artist can’t shake their real problem. They have a condition:

Prosopagnosia, also called face blindness,^[2] is a cognitive disorder of face perception in which the ability to recognize familiar faces, including one’s own face (self-recognition), is impaired, while other aspects of visual processing (e.g., object discrimination) and intellectual functioning (e.g., decision making) remain intact. The term originally referred to a condition following acute brain damage(acquired prosopagnosia), but a congenital or developmental form of the disorder also exists, which may affect up to 2.5% of the United States population.^[3] The specific brain area usually associated with prosopagnosia is the fusiform gyrus,^[4] which activates specifically in response to faces. The functionality of the fusiform gyrus allows most people to recognize faces in more detail than they do similarly complex inanimate objects. For those with prosopagnosia, the new method for recognizing faces depends on the less-sensitive object recognition system. The right hemisphere fusiform gyrus is more often involved in familiar face recognition than the left. It remains unclear whether the fusiform gyrus is only specific for the recognition of human faces or if it is also involved in highly trained visual stimuli.

There are two types of prosopagnosia: acquired and congenital (developmental). Acquired prosopagnosia results from occipito-temporal lobe damage and is most often found in adults. This is further subdivided into apperceptive and associative prosopagnosia. In congenital prosopagnosia, the individual never adequately develops the ability to recognize faces.

Or... they’re just really bad at what they do.

You know who isn’t bad at what they do? StubHub. And that’s because StubHub simply helps people re-sell their tickets at a discounted price. Excited that the Giants are going for it this season? Optimistic they won’t have their bodies annihilated by the Astros, Cubs, and Rockies on this next road trip? Then plan your next visit to AT&T Park by clicking our referral link to peruse and purchase tickets for the next home stand.

The Giants return Friday, June 1st to face the Philadelphia Phillies. The Phillies are young and exciting and determined to make the playoffs this year. But the Giants are out for revenge after they were humiliated by the Phillies in a 4-game series just two weeks ago. Brandon Belt might take these Phillies to task, and you won’t want to miss it.

Finally... a poll: