One thing I have to do sometime in the near future (among so many other things listed here) is see the Aurora Borealis with my own eyes. It must really be amazing. Although seeing it from space like the photo above won’t be possible until the price of space tourism comes down quite a bit, I should really remember to set up an excursion to a pole to witness this phenomena from some ground based location.
Well, according to Dr. Maoshing Ni turning yourself upside down for a couple of minutes daily is part of a collection of daily activities that should improve my memory! Who knew it was so easy? He lists a couple of other tips I should probably give a try as well in the post titled Paving the Way for Memory Lane, so I better remember to get with the program or be doomed to a dwindling memory and decreased concentration caused by “decreased blood flow to the brain and loss of brain cells.”
Image: upside down people for peace, originally uploaded by nycjournal.
According to a story in The New York Times, it’s true:
Scientists studying how sleep affects memory have found that the whiff of a familiar scent can help a slumbering brain better remember things that it learned the evening before. The smell of roses — delivered to people’s nostrils as they studied and, later, as they slept — improved their performance on a memory test by about 13 percent.
Hmm… so if I smell booze while sleeping, I can better remember what I did while out boozing the night before? Brilliant!
I need to remember to smell code my life.
Posted in Science |
This is from an article on Wired about “Big Questions.”
Most brains can handle only five to nine short-term memories at once. Newer information – phone call! ice cream! – can bump a previous memory out of storage before it’s committed to long-term recall. Even worse, new memories tend to merge with permanent ones, muddying the recollection of ritual activities. Michael “Professor” Solomon, author of How to Find Lost Objects, says it’s easy to accidentally substitute one routine motion for another. So look for your keys where you normally put your wallet. If that fails, check the car, the sofa cushions, the door lock, and (duh) your pocket. You’re probably staring right at them.
Now, if only I could remember to remember.
Well, today marked a strange occurance in the world of science that saw the amount of planets in our solar system revised down to 8!
It seems like a small thing bacause it doesn’t really affect our everyday lives, but somehow I feel like reality has changed. All my life, I’ve been taught that there are 9 planets, but now Pluto will no longer carry that designation. Kids growing up now will get new text books in the near future where the new rules will be the norm making our adult pasts seem that much more ignorant, quaint and misguided.
Again, I don’t really know why this is weighing on my mind so much, but I would at least like to remember this day for future reference should I ever have kids I can tell them the very day their solar system got a little more cozy.
From the AP:
For now, membership [of the planets] will be restricted to the eight ”classical” planets in the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
Much-maligned Pluto doesn’t make the grade under the new rules for a planet: ”a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a … nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.”Pluto is automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune’s.
Instead, it will be reclassified in a new category of ”dwarf planets,” similar to what long have been termed ”minor planets.” The definition also lays out a third class of lesser objects that orbit the sun — ”small solar system bodies,” a term that will apply to numerous asteroids, comets and other natural satellites.
Photograph of the IAU’s Richard Binze, Christopher Corbally and Jocelyn Bell-Burnell by Petr David Josek/AP
This has nothing to do with anything except that it’s something I might like to remember… and I guess that means it has everything to do with everything. Anyway, I came across a story on BBC News about an extinct killer kangaroo that lived millions of years ago and that was pretty interesting, but I could probably forget that… then I ran across a mention to another once native of Austrailia nicknamed “The Giant Demon Duck of Doom” that grew to over 3 meters tall and weighted over 500kg!! WTF!? A demon duck of doom? Scientists are such huge geeks pulling out names like that. I love it! I need to remember that!
I shouldn’t forget to have fun at work and name things appropriately.
As could probably be expected, I’m currently horrible at remembering names. But that’s all going to change! I just ran across Merlin Mann‘s 43 Folders post on tips for remembering names he culled together through a bit of googling. (Yes, I can use that word correctly now. Thanks Merriam Webster!)
Anyway, the one that seems the most likely to work is the repetition one. I could see simply repeating a person’s name 3 times when I first meet them (or perhaps talk on the phone) a good way to embed that name into my sieve of a brain.
Don’t forget to repeat names! Over and over and over…
The New York Times site has a story up called Déjà Vu, Again and Again about the science behind how memories of different kinds work and what happens when they stop working as expected. It seems like an interesting read, but it’s also a bit of a long article. Although I started it, I just didn’t feel like making my way through the whole thing.
I really shouldn’t forget to finish reading the whole article.
Posted in Science |
Patrick Bennett has a very bad memory. This site serves as a repository for random items he's run across that he should probably remember.
