Memory

Few stories will match this one in terms of the joy it will bring to people with a sweet tooth.

At long last, scientists have confirmed what the rest of us chocolate junkies have known for a long time – eating the chocolatey deliciousness actually makes you smarter.

Scientists say they’ve found a “linear” correlation between chocolate consumption per capita and the number of Nobel laureates per 10 million persons in a total of 23 countries. We say “Hooray for that”.

Continue reading "Sweet news for chocoholics: it makes you smarter!" »

If I know you, I’ve probably lied to you - or at the very least misled you. And it’s time for me to own up. The second time we met, I probably didn’t recognise you, but pretended I did. You see, I’m bad with faces. Really bad with faces. It’s also called prosopagnosia.

Which isn’t a good trait for a journalist. So I bluff. All the time.

As well as the practical problems - and opportunities missed - failure to recognise somebody invariably causes offence. A few examples:

• The time I had lunch with somebody, then introduced myself to him again the next day.

Continue reading "It’s time to face facts on why I can’t remember people" »

Ali Baba had it good. In medieval Persia, one password was enough.

Imagine Ali nowadays, having to modify the magic words once a month. From OPEN SESAME to oPen1sEsame%. Hieroglyphics are back in fashion.

I recently tried to log into my online bank account (or was it Centrelink, health insurance, superannuation, the ATO, email, Twitter, Facebook or any of the dozens of “services” for which I now need a password?) and received the following gibberish masquerading as a message:

Continue reading "Forgotten your password? Click here." »

It was not until I recently heard an art historian visiting Australia to talk about Guernica – the iconic anti-war painting by Pablo Picasso – that I connected the dots of why the 9/11 attacks had such a penetrating impact on the global community.

Art historian Professor Timothy J Clark was explaining in a Sydney Ideas lecture why Picasso’s depiction of the world’s first terrorist air-raid continues to have political currency in the post-9/11 era, despite the existence of more “real” forms of media than existed in 1937.

Clark said that in essence Picasso managed to communicate what it is really like to be bombed. He told me after the speech that “Guernica wouldn’t have its continuing political relevance if it didn’t somehow manage to wrench the material reality of suffering out of that black and white virtual world”.

Continue reading "Cool heads are needed when horror is writ large" »