Posts Tagged ‘memory’

The Brain Loves to Make Boxes. Which Explains Why I Discovered the Muslim Yellow Pages at My Favorite Lebanese Restaurant. And Why Box-Making Can Be Such a Dangerous Thing

My favorite menu item at my favorite Lebanese restaurant is the meze platter. It’s a little of this and a little of that: baba ghanouj, hummus, grape leaves with their soft, moist rice filling. All accompanied with fragrant, freshly baked pita bread. Um-um-good!
I was still luxuriating on the aftertaste as we exited and not paying [...]

The Dirty Little Secret of Every Courtroom Is That Every Witness’s Memory is a Leaking Sieve or Shifting Sands or a Shaky Pastiche, the Scooter Libby Trial’s Included

“Scooter” Libby’s defense is that he forgot and thus did not intentionally commit perjury and obstruct justice.
Such a defense won’t look good on his corporate resume, but believe me, it’s high time somebody in high places confessed to just how unreliable human memory is and made it stick.
In fact, the more we learn about our [...]