Competing memories

Interesting post via BB

A new study suggests that there is a benefit to forgetting irrelevant or similar but less useful memories. According to Stanford University neuroscientist Brice Kuhl and his colleagues, suppressing certain memories reduces the cognitive load of remembering something else later on. Using fMRI to scan the brains of subjects as they performed memory tests, the researchers gained insight into the neural processing of competing memories. They published the results of the study in the current issue of the scientific journal Nature Neuroscience.

From New Scientist:

"Whenever you’re engaging in remembering, the brain adapts. It’s constantly re-weighting memories," says Kuhl. "In this simple test, we see it reverse memory to weaken competing memories. This is something that probably happens a lot in the real world."

A good example is the confusion that arises when we change passwords on our computers or email accounts. We often mix up old and new passwords at first, but through repetition we develop a strong memory of the new password and forget the old one.

Previously on BB:
• Naps improve declarative memory Link
• Better visual working memory stems from ignoring stuff Link
• Memory glasses Link

Rock on in arabic

Listening to some music on Last.fm, I heard a song by Rachid Taha, an Algerian born singer, who sings mainly in Arabic.

You can see videos of him rocking here and here, a recording from a live concert with Khaled and Faudel ...and last but not least singing Rock-the-Casbah here!

Hearing him rock in arabic truly demonstrated to me how music is a universal language. Someone has to declare the freedom to enjoy music, a basic joy of life, a basic human right that should be available to every single individual. Ok.. maybe its a given.. no one has to declare anything... for the most part, music has been the refuge for human beings through trial and tribulations although totalitarian governments, like the Taliban, did try to curb and restrict it.

--

P.S. Khaled was very popular in India in the 90s with his song Didi a big-hit in clubs and on TV. I quite enjoyed Khaled's song Aicha (sung in concert by Khaled and Faudel in the 2nd link). You can also hear more arabic music at this blog. Another famous Franco-Algerian singer I quite enjoy is Cheb Mami and have enjoyed his album, Meli-Meli multiple times. But Rachid and Faudel are new names to me and names to look for in the future when I am scouring the internet for some good global music!

P.P.S. Damn...what a coincidence. Here I am listening to Cheb Mami and other Rai singers and just read at the above wiki link for Cheb Mami that he was in the news just this week --- the French government has issued an international warrant to arrest Cheb Mami for jumping bail after being charged of "voluntary violence" against an ex-girlfriend.

Footprints on the sands of time

We read and learned the poem A PSALM OF LIFE by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as a kid and many phrases from the poem still tumble around in my head.

And so on this day, in celebration of the 90th birthday of a 'great' man.. my grand-father... a man who has lived life to its fullest and the personification of 'up and doing'....here is that gem of a poem. Wish there was reflected in me a small part of him...

---

A PSALM OF LIFE

WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,--act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;--

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

---

Note: A searchable database of his poems is here. Also, I did not realize that 2007 is Longfellow's bi-centennial year and that he lived for more than 45 years in Cambridge, MA and is buried in Mt. Auburn Cemetry, which I pass by often.

Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems for Hard Times claims “the meaning of poetry is to give courage.” In his critique of the book, David Orr say it’s not so: “That is not the meaning of poetry; that is the meaning of Scotch.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/books/review/13orr.html

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_20061231/ai_n17111397


http://www.nfsps.com/mo/ts/Poetry%20News%20001.htm
--
http://www.signandsight.com/
http://www.globalprovince.com/witandwisdom.htm

Poems help

As I wrote a short while back, the introduction by Garrison Keillor to his collection of poems - Good Poems for Hard Times is a vigorous sell for the power of poetry, if one was ever written.

Although reading the introduction in its entirety is highly recommended to get the full scope, I transcribe here a paragraph that struck a chord with me.

The meaning of poetry is to give courage. A poem is not a puzzle that you the dutiful reader is obliged to solve. It is meant to poke you, get you to buck up, pay attention, rise and shine, look alive, get a grip, get the picture, pull up your socks, wake up and die right. Poets have many motives for writing . .

... but what really matters about poetry and what distinguishes poets from, say, fashion models or ad salesmen is the miracle of incantation in rendering the gravity and grace and beauty of the ordinary world and thereby lending courage to strangers. This is a necessary thing. At times life becomes almost impossible, and you curl up under a blanket in a dim room behind drawn shades and you despise your life, which seems mean and purposeless, a hoax and a cheat, your shining chances all wasted, pissed away, nobody can change this or make this better, love is lost, hope gone, nothing left but to pour a glass of gin and listen to weepy music. But it can help to say words. Moaning helps. So does prayer. God hears prayer and restores the souls of the faithful. Walking helps. Many people have pulled themselves up out of the pit by the simple expedient of rising to their feet, leaning slightly forward, and putting one foot ahead of the other. Poems help.

A few more sentences later in the introduction that were also interesting.

How often in the past week did anyone offer you something from the heart? It's there in poetry. Forget everything you ever read about poetry, it doesn't matter -- poetry is the last preserve of honet speech and the outspoken heart.

and later..

Poetry is church. What animates poetry is faith, the same faith that moves the builder and the butcher.

..ending the introduction with:

This is a book of poems that if I knew you better and if you were in a hard passage I might send you one or two of along with a note, the way people used to do, believing in the bracing effect of bold writing. Whether you stole the book, bought it used or remaindered, found it on the bus, got it from your son for Christmas, I hope it does you some good. That was the reason for putting the poems together. These poems describe a common life. It is good to know about this. I hope you take courage from it.

However, like I wrote before, he does sell (and sometimes over-sell) poetry and its power.... this para below being a clear case of overstating the case :)

America is in hard times these days, the beloved country awash to the scuppers in expensive trash, gripped by persistent jitters, politics even more divorced from reality than usual, the levers of power firmly held in the hands of a cadre of Christian pirates and bullies whose cynicism is stunning, especially their perversion of the gospel to blast the poor and the meek and subvert the tax system in favor of the rich, while public institutions are put in perpetual financial crisis meanwhile newspapers dwindle in sad decline, journalism is lost in the whirlwind of amusement, and the hairy hand of the censor reaches out -- what mustn't be lost in this dank time, is the passion of young people for truth and justice and liberty -- the spirit that has kept the American porch light lit through dark ages of history -- and when this spirit is betrayed by the timid and the greedy and the naive, then we must depend on the poets. American poetry is the truest journalism we have. What your life can be, lived bravely and independently, you can discover in poetry.

Oblivion

Like I had written before, I started reading Bill Moyers' The language of life - a festival of poets, a collection of interviews with different poets, and particularly enjoyed the interview with Donald Hall. Reading these interviews made me want to read some good poetry and so I picked up a book of poems - coincidentally also with links to public broadcasting - Good Poems for Hard Times - selected and introduced by Garrison Keillor; as heard on The Writer's Almanac.

I started reading the introduction by Garrison Keillor - a vigorous sell for the power of poetry, if one was ever written - at 4am this morning ... but more about the introduction elsewhere.

And while it was Donald Hall who captured my imagination with his words in reading his interview in the first book, it is perhaps appropriate that amongst the first few poems I read (all good, as the title of the book suggests, it was these lines from a Jane Kenyon poem that have captured me in my waking hours this morning...

for oblivion or some condition even more
extreme, which I intuit, but can't quite name.

Some days, one does feel like this. I could never have captured this feeling in words like Jane Kenyon has so beautifully done here.

The most painful longing comes over me.
A longing not of the body....

It could be for beauty --
I mean what Keats was panting after,
for which I love and honor him;
it coould be for the promises of God,
or for oblivion, nada; or some condition even more
extreme, which I intuit, but can't quite name.
- from the poem Ice Storm, by Jane Kenyon

Memorial Day

And though I rarely blog about US politics and the mess in Iraq... on this Memorial Day (a United States federal holiday that is observed on the last Monday of May - more here), let us all remember..

A Grim Memorial Day
Americans have opened nearly 1,000 new graves to bury U.S. troops killed in Iraq since Memorial Day a year ago. The figure is telling — and expected to rise in coming months. In the period from Memorial Day 2006 through Saturday, 980 soldiers and Marines died in Iraq, compared to 807 deaths in the previous year.

In Iraq, Every Day is Memorial Day

Related Links
· Faces of the Fallen - Iraq
· Iraq Coalition Casualties
· Iraq War Casualties
· Iraq Body Counts
· Iraq & Afghanistan War Casualties
· The Cost of War - also 1, 2
· What $1.2 Trillion Can Buy - NYTimes, Jan 2007
· The Memory Hole has the pictures honoring the war dead that the Pentagon didn't want you to see.
· A Soldier's Thoughts on Memorial Day and a Washington Post op-ed by Andrew Bacevich, titled I Lost My Son to a War I Oppose. We Were Both Doing Our Duty.

· And last but not least, this table via a Dailykos post..

Major Wars	US K. I. A.	US Wounded
Revolutionary War	Est 5,000	Est 6,000
War of 1812	Est 2500	Est 5,000
Civil War	215,000	Est 400,000
World War 1	53,402	64,000
World War 2	291,557	671,846
Korean War	33,741	103,284
Vietnam War	47,424	153,303
Iraq War	3,454	24,417
Afghanistan	390	1393

Sources: Wikipedia, infoplease, icasualties


and this post, also via Dailykos

Mark Twain's "The War Prayer", an anti-war prose poem he wrote in the aftermath of the Spanish-American and Phillipine-American wars.

His family begged him not to publish it, his friends advised him to bury it, and his publisher rejected it, thinking it too inflammatory for the times. Twain agreed, but instructed that it be published after his death, saying famously: "None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth."

Washington Monthly's publisher, Markos Kounalakis, made a video of the story for release this Memorial Day. You can watch the video and read the story here.