Saturday, June 20, 2009

Memory - friend or foe?

Some books I must have choosen because the contrast between me and the subject matter fascinates me. For example, the allure of reading about the Arctic and Antarctic is that it's unconceivable to me that anyone would choose to spend time in absolute cold. "The Woman Who Can't Forget" is a true story about a woman who remembers everything she ever did or read or heard. It boggles the mind! I have a hard time with several hours ago! She even remembers things from others people's lives. As long as she had contact with the person or information, it's filed away in her brain. In a instantaneously retrieved mind file.

I can often remember information. It just takes my file manager several hours to bring it up from cold storage to the front of my mind. Of course, by then the moment may have passed when I needed it. Such is life - I've always had a memory like this, it just gets worse as time passes. This quote sums up my experience with memory: The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time. ~Friedrich Nietzsche

Even more than a look into this woman's life story and what having the most remarkable memory known to science means to her, this book gives a great deal of insight into how the mind works and memory in general. An absorbing read. Three stars.

I learned a new knitting technique the other day. The project got frogged and turned into something else (see Aviatrix baby hat), but it was a learning experience in any case. To get a knitting project started, you must first cast on (CO), which is setting up the yarn onto your needles so that you can proceed with the actual knitting. I have always CO in the manner that I learned as a child - a form called the long-tail cast on. I really didn't know there was any other way to do it until I took up knitting again in the last few years. Now I know that there are many, many different ways to cast on. The cable CO is the one that I just learned. It created a nice looking edge, but was more time consuming than I'm used to, so only if the pattern calls for it will I use it. Here's a video that shows how it's done:

No comments: