Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Which way?

What's your sense of direction like? Do you know which way you need to turn when you come out of a building or subway station? I'm lucky because most of the time I do - although I've been a bit wrong-footed! Both in Shanghai and San Francisco. Guess it's something about a grid-street system and the moon being in the part of the sky it was last night - even if you're not. Is a sense of direction something you can learn - like memory skills? And is your sense of direction impaired (although affected might be a better word) if you spend significant time in the different hemispheres?
And on the subject of memory there's a woman who has an astounding memory. Name a day and she can tell you anything about it (and you can check if she's right in the detailed journals she's kept over the years). She might have had an unfair advantage if she took part in the USA National Memory Championship - held recently in New York. Contestants were required to recite poetry, playing card order and strings of numbers. The winner, Joshua Foer, said he didn't expect to - even though he set a new US record in playing card recall. After 5 minutes memorizing a deck of cards, he recalled the entire deck, in order (heh heh, that's the trick) in 1 minute 40 seconds. It was a personal best and now he'll take part in the World Championships in Malaysia later this year.

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