Weird.

Lots of times, when everyone goes to bed, I need to unwind my brain and just sit in front of the tv and think about something other than kids, life, and/or photography.  So when I get caught up at night or when J just wants some darkness in the bedroom so he can sleep, I go to the living room and turn on the Science Channel, Discovery Health, or something like that...  Last night was no different and I watch something very strange.  Many times when I watch the Science Channel I end up rolling my eyes at all the talk about evolution or whatever.  But last night they had this thing on "Real Superhumans."  It was about people with genetic traits, or at least they thought, that were extraordinary.  

They had a man who could calculate enormous equations in his head.  And sometimes the equations weren't enormous, but the answers were.  Things like "what is 98,301 to the 12th power?", or "what's 39 divided by 4397?"  He could do it all in his head and name every number right of the decimal point.  Every number...in his head.  

They also had a man that was born without eyes who was a painter.  He painted landscapes, still-life, animals, and had a unique understanding of perspective that someone without the capabilities of sight could never be able to have.  He painted with his fingers and they showed him painting a seascape complete with waves crashing on rocks of a shoreline in the foreground and sailboats in the distance.  How in the world could he be able to do that?  

Another woman they talked about was one who had "combined senses."  I didn't know what that meant or even how that worked.  They described it as "seeing and tasting music."  Weird...  She says she can hear a note coming from anywhere, such as a dog barking, a rain drop, a skateboard rolling by.  She can see the color the note makes (which I totally don't understand), and even tastes what the note tastes like.  This is just bizarre.  They had an illustration, which I needed badly, about the time she figured out that she had this ability.  She said that she was sitting at an outdoor cafe with a friend when it started to rain.  As each drop fell onto the ground, onto a tea cup, a plate, on a plant leaf, she could hear the precise note it was making.  As she heard the note she saw a splash of color as it hit and tasted different things as she heard each drop.  She would hear a "G" see a splash of blue and taste a creamy taste.  (I don't know exactly if those are the combinations, but you get what I mean).  Crazy.  Then, of course, throughout the show, they were talking about being able to "generate" superhumans by locating the gene of which these people had in a lab.  Is that scary to anyone else?