Our Culture Is An Edifice Built Of

Growing Up In The Days When You Still Had To Punch Buttons To Make A Telephone Call, I Could Recall The Numbers Of All My Close Friends And Family. Today, I'm Not Sure If I Know More Than Four Phone Numbers By Heart. And That's Probably More Than Most.

Evolution Has Programmed Our Brains To Find Two Things Particularly Interesting, And Therefore Memorable: Jokes And Sex - And Especially, It Seems, Jokes About Sex.

Some Memorizers Arbitrarily Associate Each Playing Card With A Familiar Person Or Object, So That The King Of Clubs Is Represented By, Say, Tony Danza. The Grand Masters Associate Each Card With A Person, An Action, Or An Object So That Every Group Of Three Cards Can Be Converted Into A Sentence.

If You Want To Live A Memorable Life, You Have To Be The Kind Of Person Who Remembers To Remember.

Since At Least The Middle Ages, Philosophers And Philologists Have Dreamed Of Curing Natural Languages Of Their Flaws By Constructing Entirely New Idioms According To Orderly, Logical Principles.