Monday, June 07, 2010

memories

the daily dish



Spring-boarding off a series of articles by William Saletan, Jonah Lehrer reveals the true nature or remembering:

We like to think of our memories as being immutable impressions, somehow separate from the act of remembering them. But they aren't. A memory is only as real as the last time you remembered it. The more you remember something, the less accurate the memory becomes. The larger moral of the experiment is that memory is a ceaseless process, not a repository of inert information. It shows us that every time we remember anything, the neuronal structure of the memory is delicately transformed, or reconsolidated. And that is why it's so easy to convince naive subjects that they met Bugs Bunny at Disneyland.

Video above via David Craney who provides a false memory test and digs further into the research.

Monday, February 08, 2010

When in Rome

HuffPo

Two cardiac-arrest-themed fast food joints on opposite sides of country are locked in a federal lawsuit over restaurant themes.

Heart Attack Grill in Chandler, Ariz. has sued Heart Stoppers Sports Grill in Delray Beach, Fla. Heart Attack's owners argue that Heart Stoppers is too similar to their own restaurant.

Both feature monstrously fatty menus, scantily-clad "nurse" waitresses, and signage with an EKG design. At both restaurants, customers over 350 lbs. eat for free. At Heart Attack Grill, customers who finish the biggest burger on the menu get wheeled out of the restaurant in a wheelchair.

According to Heart Attack's owners, the proprietors of Heart Stoppers were in talks to open a franchise of Heart Attack Grill before they opened their own restaurant in December.

Lawyers for Heart Stoppers say the restaurants are actually different. The Wall Street Journal reports:

But a lawyer for Heart Stoppers claimed the restaurants were different. "It's not the same concept," Eric Lee told Slashfood. "The Arizona restaurant's concept is high-caloric food that is bad for you and will basically kill you . . . My guys have a restaurant that is medically themed . . . My clients' restaurant seems more like an actual medical facility."

Uh, really? A medical facility? Apparently so. Heart Stoppers is, according to Slashfood, decorated with defibrillators, dialysis machines and other medical equipment, has tables that resemble wheelchairs.