In 1985, neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote a book that finally gave the lie to the idea that mental illness is no laughing matter. One of the most hilarious stories in the book, and the one that undergrad psychology students inevitably tell first at dinner parties, is the tale of a man who suffered from a condition known as visual agnosia.

In this debilitating – but, I should re-iterate, hilarious – condition, the sufferer’s brain is unable to recognise certain visual patterns that you and I have no problem grasping. The title of the book – The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat – sums up the story in a richly comic nut.

(Trivia fans should also know that the title provided the inspiration for The Man Who…, the debut album by Scotsoft rockers Travis, and also inspired an Opera by Michael Nyman. Oh, and I dimly recall, it was wedged into an episode of Ally McBeal in which a defendant mistook his wife’s head for a beachball and – hilariously – kicked her to death. But I digress.)

I’m was reminded of Sacks and hats and visual agnosia this evening because, for reasons too dull to explain, I’m listening to Savannah’s Limewire playlist as I work and Michael Buble’s Everything has just finished playing. I quote…

You’re a falling star, You’re the get away car.
You’re the line in the sand when I go too far.
You’re the swimming pool, on an August day…
You’re a carousel, you’re a wishing well…

Poor deluded bastard. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he mistakes himself for Frank Sinatra.

…

Anyhow, I’ve had quite a week, thanks for asking. I got a free sofa from Ikea, I finally got a dining room table and some chairs, I managed to both start and end a new relationship in the space of about 12 hours, I spoke at a conference and defended London cynicism against an attack of whooping, back-slapping Americanism. And I also went to a drinks thing at Adam Street and ran into Jason Calacanis , the former CEO of Weblogs Inc and now founder of Mahalo.com.

It’s an interesting beast, Mahal0; a new search engine that aims to have the top 10,000 most popular search results written by real life human editors. The concept is really interesting and there’s no doubt that Calacanis, a journalist by background and with the financial resources to pay decent editors to do a decent job, knows his stuff (despite being deluded that whiskey is more of a ‘man’s drink’ than rum. Pft.) What will be really interesting to see, though, is how Mahalo (which means, roughly, ‘thank you’ in Hawaiian) manages to avoid the accusation of bias.

I don’t even mean actual bias; just the accusation that the human editors are taking sides, and the inevitable blog bitching that will bring. Jason claims that he’ll take personal responsibility for firing any staffer who shows deliberate bias in choosing search results but, if that’s true, it’s something he’s going to be dealing with every hour of every day.

Every single notable person who gets their own results page will complain that good stuff has been missed out and inaccurate bad stuff included. Every campaign group will find imagined bias and every editor will be Googled to death to track down any hint of conflict of interest. And every single one will have to be investigated and refuted if Mahlo is to retain credibility.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge believer in the idea that human edited information is the future of the web; a way to sort the wheat from the chaff, and to publish the wheat. At Fridaycities we’re doing it with user-generated content and social networking, but the difference is that, unlike Mahalo, we’re proud to be biased as hell.

For the record, I’m pro-civil liberties, anti-SOCPA, pro dogs and anti cats (except for lynx) and I think I’d probably fire any staffer who didn’t bring with them their own unique set of biases. That’s an editor’s job – really it is. Even if the bias you hold is the bias towards a journalist’s interpretation of what’s true and what’s utter bullshit. Evolution, for example, rather than intelligent design. And what’s clearly right and what’s clearly fucked up. Male politicians legislating against a woman’s right to choose, to grab an example out of the air.

But Calacanis is promising that Mahalo – which I really want to work, by the way, and which if done right could well be the future of editorial-meets-search – will be completely unbiased. That it will give evolution and intelligent design equal airtime. That it will ignore the primary function of the journalist and editor – to educate and inform- and instead (on pain of firing) will give the same credibility to the sane man and the man who mistakes his wife for a hat.

Surely that way only madness – and hilarity – lies.

Mahalo.