Also, to those curious, the source material of Luria's story is online, for those who read Russian: http://www.psychology.ru/library/00035.shtml

Mr. S's full name was Solomon Veniaminovich Shereshevsky. In case anyone is curious.

Enzymes, (and proteins), are very big complicated molecules that have very specific shapes.
Their shapes are formed during their manufacture by ribosomes. I doubt anyone really knows how this works. This would be a good project for anyone interested in incredible uses for human brains, have a person learn to figure out a protein's shape based on it's building blocks.

Technology is allowing us to tap multi-sensory memory enhancement (somewhat like synaesthesia): Girton Labs Cambridge UK has MRI brain images of patients using its "SenseCam", an otherwise passive device that takes pictures when triggered by change in the environment, capturing momentary memory aids. http://bit.ly/SenseCamMemory [Lyndsay Williams]

The BBC video segment on the SenseCam and memory: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAi2X6qf-4w

The scientists' interpretation of the brain imaging seems to indicate that vividness and clarity of recollection is significantly enhanced, even with only the fragmentary visual snapshots from the SenseCam. One can only imagine that a device that can also record smell, sound, humidity, temp, bio-statistics etc. could drastically alter the way we remember everyday life!

Given this seemingly inevitable technological direction, we might find that the limit of human memory will lift for *everyone* in the near future.

My friends and family comment on my excellent memory. I often win trivia games. But my memory is nothing like Mr. S.'s or the folks in the memory contest.

Unfortunately, I can't easily choose what I'd prefer to remember. I remember all kinds of trivial facts, but important stuff can fade from my mind. For example, I always struggled in learning a foreign language, because I couldn't remember the words. I'm also a horrible speller. I can't remember whether the vowel should be an "i" or an "e".

Another problem is that I really only get "one shot" at a movie, TV show, book, etc. Once I've experienced it, it's pretty much there in my memory.

A friend of mine was once at a movie with her husband and about three quarters of the way through the movie, it occurred to her that she had already read the book.

Memorising beautiful things such as poetry and music is good for thinking. Memorising random sequences is pointless and boring.

I had exactly the same thought about Funes el Memorioso. Forgetting can be a gift.

Listening to the man with the prodigious memory, Mr. S., and the similarities in his fate with that of the young Ireneo Funes in Jorge Luis Borges' "Funes el memorioso" ("Funes the Memorious"). In the story the teenaged boy dies drowning in the sea of his memories.

I had a moment of getting the most from the "energy governor" once when I was young and at out jogging (for the first time) with my dad. I was not much of a runner and I was flagging quite a bit - gasping for air and holding the stitch in my side - by the the final third of our run, which was about a half mile all told, and not all of that flat.

The place I grew up was fairly rural, and I when I stopped to catch my breath I heard rustling in the bushes. I thought perhaps the sounds were made by one of my friend's dogs (my friend's house was across the street from where I stopped) so I started making kissy noises at it. However, when the face came out of the bushes and turned to look at me, it was not a dog but a *bear cub*.

I *flew* the rest of the way home, screaming all the way at the top of my lungs - just like a cartoon. Apparently the governor had quite a lot more energy than it was sharing *before* thoughts of mauling by an angry mother bear spurred it to be more generous.

On Jad and Robert's musing about "making sense of the world as an act of negation"; I think this sentiment is part of the folk lore that defines the concept of wisdom. In essence, 'wisdom' is differentiated from 'intelligence' or 'knowledge' as our ability to recognize what is *not* important, thereby allowing us to act upon only the most relevant information.

There are many famous quotations to this effect. The theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "To understand reality is not the same as to know about outward events. It is to perceive the essential nature of things. The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential. ... To recognize the significant in the factual is wisdom."

I love the choice of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" Night Fight as musical backdrop for the memory competition.