Make it harder, not easier

Twelve lines of text ought to be easy to learn – you’d think. But the first twelve lines of Ephesians chapter 3 – equating to the first seven verses – have proved very hard for my memory to retain.

Considering this, however, I remembered that when I was memorizing music more frequently, in the last couple of years, twelve bars of a fugue by J S Bach took me infinitely longer to get to grips with than twelve bars of a jazz-style piece by Christopher Norton. The Bach was much more complex, making it the equivalent of an abstract text, whereas the jazz piece, while enjoyable to learn, was more straightforward musically.

Last part of a Bach Fugue

Anyway, hacking away at the task of memorizing yesterday I gave myself some additional images to remember for the first three or four lines, since these were the ones that were particularly obstinate in terms of staying with me.

Then I managed to recite the lines backwards line by line. This made my brain claim it was going into overload, but I assured it that it wasn’t.

I still felt I needed something extra to hang onto. 

In our kitchen, where I do most of my memorizing in the mornings, there’s a large clock that was given to my mother many years ago. It has no numbers; instead it has pictures of cats – twelve different ones. Originally, on the hour, a cat would meow, but we all got fed up with the awful sound and switched it off.

A cat clock similar to ours

Yesterday, I recited the twelve lines while working from the cat equivalent of one to twelve. And when I could do that, I went backwards, from twelve to one. The cats aren’t distinguishable enough for my brain to say something like: on the Persian sitting at four, I recite line four, or on the Manx sitting at nine I recite line nine. I just have to think in my head that I’m looking at a cat picture that represents the number four or nine and hopefully line four or nine is there, ready to be recited.

If this seems over the top, it isn’t. When it comes to memory, the brain prefers difficult to easy. Things learned easily tend to be forgotten far sooner than things that are learned with considerable effort.

The authors of the book Make it Stick talk about how a test was done on two groups of baseball players. One group was thrown the same kind of ball over and over – such as a curveball - and of course, they got better at it as time went on. In fact these were already top players, so getting better for them was a considerable achievement.

The second group was thrown a different kind of ball every time, and initially they fumbled and missed, hitting some and not others. But as time went on, even though they were thrown a different ball each time, overall they improved more than the other guys. With the first group, once their brains knew that they’d get a certain ball they relaxed, and didn’t continue to be alert to changes. The second group was continually alert because they didn’t know what they’d get, and so they improved in regard to all the balls that were thrown.

There’s something about the brain that delights in difficulty. If you want to memorise something, then make it harder for the brain, not easier.

The Luddite reminisces about watches

My wife has always been very keen on wristwatches that do pretty much everything, so she tends to go for those that not only show your heart rate, the speed you're walking, the speed you should be walking, how far under water you can go, whether there's enough air to breathe and so on, but also - when they have the time to do it - tell the time.

These watches are great, but all I want to know when I look at my watch is what time it is. Yup, I know, really old-fashioned, but that's the way things are. I've had watches that would wake me up in the morning, or act as stop-watches, or tell me the time in another part of the world, but in the end I still only use them to tell me the time here where my body actually is. That's really all I need. An alarm clock is better for me that a watch that starts going pip pip pip in the morning, and when have I ever needed to time someone who's racing?  Never, that I can remember.

The first watch I had, which I was given for my 21st birthday, just rolled around second by second, day after day, and told me the time. It lasted until my daughter was 12 (around twenty years, in other words) and I only stopped using it because my wife kindly brought me home a new watch she'd purchased on her trip to England. I imagine, if I could find my first watch, that it would still be going happily.

That second watch was equally long-lived. I only stopped using it when I was back in England with my wife, in 2007, by which time it had long since got gunk in the works, and no one could fix it properly, or else the parts had long since ceased to be made. It still ran, but you couldn't adjust anything very easily. Since it was getting frustrating not being able to tell the time correctly (and I've never got used to checking my cellphone for the time) we bought a cheap watch at a stall in Norwich market. It's the one I'm still wearing, even though it's a pain at daylight saving time - the one where you have to put the clocks back - as it takes forever to shift back eleven hours (if that's what it is we do).  It's never had the happy relationship with me that my first two watches had, and perhaps it feels a little unloved. Anyway, it goes, and that's what watches are made for.

Just in case you didn't get the message

In today's Otago Daily Times, on page 31, there's a photo of the new clock in Mosgiel, with an accompanying article which tells us that the temperature part of the clock is overstating the actual temperature.  So the article starts like this:
A new $23,000 Mosgiel clock is 'overstaing' temperatures by up to 10degC, says Mosgiel Taieri Community Board chairman Bill Feather. 
Now that pretty much tells you the main point of the story.  But the reporter either has space to fill, or wants to make sure we (rather thick) readers get the point.  He continues:
Mr Feather said the new clock installed in Anzac Park in Mosgiel about a fortnight ago was displaying inaccurate temperatures. 
All right, I suppose that clarifies the 'overstating' in the first paragraph.  Somewhat.  Except that we have a repeat of the 'new clock', and of Mosgiel. The third paragraph says:
The new clock from Germany was 'overstating' temperatures, Mr Feather said. 
Ah, it's new clock.  And it's 'overstating temperatures'.  And it was Mr Feather who told us this.  Check back to the first paragraph.  Isn't this virtually the same information?   After this, things improve a little with some information as to why the clock is being inaccurate, but then in the third last paragraph we have this sentence.
Mosgiel Rotary Club president John Seddon said the German clock cost about $23,000.  
Wait a minute!  It's a German clock, and it cost about $23,000.  Didn't we already know this?  Yup, we did.
I understand that reporters are often under pressure to get stories in on time, and that subeditors are also under pressure.  But this story is basically a 'filler' in the back of the paper amongst one or two important pieces and some stuff that no one would miss; it could have waited another day or two and have been tidied up considerably.  In fact, we could possibly have had some more information about it. Its only saving grace at present is that it has a large photo in the middle of the page, so that there's some visual interest.
As it stands it doesn't give much credibility to the reporter's writing skills, or to the subeditor's editing. 

10,000 year clock

There's a website called the 10,000 year clock. It explains in detail the project to put a clock inside the Sierra Diablo Mountain Range that will last for 10,000 years. In fact, if you want even more detail, check out this site, where there's a very long post about the clock - and others like it.

Reading through the post on Technium, I had to keep asking myself if this was all some sort of hoax. The explanation for trying to create a clock that will last (of its own accord) for ten millenia is related to people who think long term rather than short.

The clock's inventor, Danny Hillis, wrote: I cannot imagine the future, but I care about it. I know I am a part of a story that starts long before I can remember and continues long beyond when anyone will remember me. I sense that I am alive at a time of important change, and I feel a responsibility to make sure that the change comes out well. I plant my acorns knowing that I will never live to harvest the oaks.

I want to build a clock that ticks once a year. The century hand advances once every 100 years, and the cuckoo comes out on the millennium. I want the cuckoo to come out every millennium for the next 10,000 years.

If you're not the sort of person who thinks this way (and I can't say that I truly am) then you may find all this long-term thinking a bit absurd. May be it is...maybe not, but there are some interesting people involved, including Jeff Brazos, the founder of Amazon.com.

The photo shows one of the models relating to the clock.