Mem'ries

There's a front porch story-telling tradition in my family. My grandpa was known for telling entertaining, semi-historical stories to the family circle in evenings sitting on the front porch. It was a tradition that my own parents would carry on, at the dinner table, sometimes about family and sometimes about current events. As we grew up, we children learned that those stories were as much about steering us in the directions my family wanted us to go, as they were about telling us about real happenings.

I know that some of the direction seeped in, although I hope that a lot of the worst has long ago been weeded out. Not too long ago, I confidently informed a fellow commenter at Eschaton that the mockingbird laid its eggs in other birds' nest and was embarrassed to discover - that I had somewhere picked up totally wrong information that I had completely credited.

An article I came across today gave an explanation of the memory, and how we can have misinformation - like Obama being Muslim - implanted in our heads as firmly as if it were true.

False beliefs are everywhere. Eighteen percent of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth, one poll has found.

Thus, it seems slightly less egregious that, according to another poll, 10 percent of us think that Sen. Barack Obama, a Christian, is instead a Muslim.

The Obama campaign has created a Web site to dispel misinformation. But this effort may be more difficult than it seems, thanks to the quirky way in which our brains store memories – and mislead us along the way.

The brain does not simply gather and stockpile information as a computer's hard drive does. Facts are stored first in the hippocampus, a structure deep in the brain about the size and shape of a fat man's curled pinkie finger.

But the information does not rest there. Every time we recall it, our brain writes it down again, and during this re-storage, it is also reprocessed. In time, the fact is gradually transferred to the cerebral cortex and is separated from the context in which it was originally learned.

For example, you know that the capital of Texas is Austin, but you probably don't remember how you learned it.

This phenomenon, known as source amnesia, can also lead people to forget whether a statement is true.

With time, this misremembering only gets worse. A false statement from a noncredible source can gain credibility during the months it takes to reprocess memories. As the source is forgotten, the message and its implications gain strength.

Of course, the study used assumes that the subject is some one who hasn't learned to examine information carefully. Posting on a blog is something that has honed a lot of our skills at recognizing shaded information. If I put up something that is wrong, I am confident I'll hear about it, and always appreciate being corrected. Of course, I look before I leap. But all of us have some little areas of knowledge that is 'folk tales' and we can occasionally find out we've been taken in.

I have run across a few 'family history' tales printed in books that I doubt got those stories from my front porch. It teaches us to make sure before we misinform some one else that we look into the background of information.

From the amount of printed articles I'm seeing on the 'error' in emails that falsify Obama's background, and increasingly revealing McCain's 'errors', it looks like that lesson is seeping in among right wingers' friends in the press crew.

The front porch was a source of lots of the stories that my family used to shape us in one way or another, and the internet sometimes takes on that shading role now.

My friend in Nigeria probably can find someone else to give his inheritance a home in their bank account.

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A conviction has been adjudged in the coup attempt in equatorial New Guinea, to get access to the oil resources there.

British mercenary Simon Mann has been jailed for 34 years for his part in plotting a coup in Equatorial Guinea.

The former British military officer confessed to trying to topple long-time ruler Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo - but denied being the plot's leader.

The goal of the plot was to install exiled opposition leader Severo Moto who is currently in Spain awaiting trial on charges of arms trafficking, and to gain access to the former Spanish colony's oil wealth.
(snip)
After his stint in the British army, Mann was affiliated with the South Africa-based mercenary firm Executive Outcomes. The firm described itself on its now-defunct Web site as a "military advisory service" that had played a "crucial" role in ending two African civil wars.

These mercenaries that are used extensively in Iraq are developing a professional level of warring with other countries and other administrations that is all too tempting to those seeking power and wealth from sources that they haven't any right to.