October 24, 2003
Human brain is a strange thing

As I was updating a user's account with an e-mail address today (don't ask) I felt I've seen it before. That's unusual, since it's not a user I normally interact with or really ever remember seeing before.. checked the history and sure enough. This is the second time this year that I've helped with his e-mail address. Same e-mail address.

Last time was back in March.


So, essentially. Back in March I saw an e-mail address for about a minute (that's about as long as it takes to paste it into an SQL statement) and now, seven months later I remembered it perfectly.

Seven months later remembered something I only glanced at very briefly. I remembered *that* but I don't remember where I put my car keys the night before!

Apparently my brain is wired to remember the most inconsequential of things and forget the important stuff. Can I use this as an excuse at work? "I forgot to show up today, sorry.. I was writing a letter to the boy who sat next to me on the second day of kindergarden. He moved to Italy few months later, but I still remember his address and he owes me a lollipop from the field trip we took to Museum of general stupidity on Pratt street in Warsaw."

Posted October 24, 2003 08:36 PM in Random
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.unix-girl.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/978
Comments
On October 24, 2003 10:36 PM Daniel added:

That's no excuse to forget about the $250 you owe me.

#
On October 24, 2003 10:41 PM Daniel added:

Oh and you can have that lousy lollipop back. I never managed to sell it on eBay.

#
On October 25, 2003 03:44 PM Peter added:

It's dangerous at this age to be calling up old male friends and telling them you want a lollipop.

#
On October 26, 2003 12:14 PM Starfish added:

So true! the human brain can be wired in some strange ways ;-)

I still recall the example I got in Psychology class over 4 years ago:

3 seconds, 9 random letters on an overheadprojector. I was asked to recall them, but only after counting backwards from 20, describing my house, and giving a small summary about the last 6 months of my study.

After that I told my teacher that the sequence was:
s, f, g, m, b, t, f, z, n.

9 'storage locations' in my brain wasted forever.. but the look on the face of my teacher: priceless! :D

(especially when I talked about it 4 months ago.. he grabbed the presenation and verified that I still knew it ;)

Fascinating! :)

#
On October 28, 2003 11:38 AM John added:

If you are into reading science fiction, there is a great book by Thomas T. Thomas (please keep reading...silly name but good book:) called Me. It is about an artificial intelligence and it is programmed to 'randomly' forget things so that it's thought patterns more closely resemble a humans.

#
On October 30, 2003 09:55 AM Bill Kearney added:

I just hope that in my old age I can remember things like bodily functions. I've this nagging fear that I'll instead remember how to do Z-80 assembler programming instead of how to wipe my own ass.

#
Trackbacks