Memory on TV: "Samantha Who?"

Tonight, ABC will premiere its new comedy "Samantha Who?" starring Christina Applegate as "Samantha Newly," a woman who loses her memory and attempts to find out if she was really "a good girl or bad girl." From the previews, it seems like its going to be a funny show.

Check out the previews:

Is Human Memory Going Extinct?

Check out the link to "Your Outboard Brain Knows All," a great article from Wired that my advisor, Dr. Beth Brunk-Chavez, e-mailed a few days ago. I told her that this article confirms my belief that blogs have become modern storage spaces for all our written ideas, which are strategically organized in chronological order ("online journals" sounds a bit "icky"). It also taps into Freud's theory about the unconscious being the storage space for memories. I was also thinking about Crowley's discussion about technology enhancing human memory--which is ideal.

Check it out!

"Your Outboard Brain Knows All" by Clive Thompson

(Illustration by Luke Hayman/Pentagram, with Darrow, courtesy of Wired)

"Oral Tradition" Now Online

"We are very pleased to notify you that all 22 years of our journal Oral Tradition are now available online and free of charge at http://journal.oraltradition.org/

This site now contains nearly 500 articles and 10,000 pages, with all of the contents downloadable as pdf files that you can read online or print out asyou wish. The entire electronic archive of Oral Tradition is also searchable by keyword or author name, with phrase-based and Boolean searches possible aswell.

In return, may we ask you to forward this e-mail announcement to at least five colleagues in your field? It would be especially helpful if you selectedcolleagues whom you feel might not be aware of Oral Tradition's migration to an internet-based, open-access format, or who might not already know that the entire run of the journal is now available gratis.

There are also several other ways to assist us with the process of notifying colleagues, and we would greatly appreciate your assistance: electroniclinks to the site in (1) personal blogs and (2) professional websites, as well as (3) announcements in journals and newsletters in your field. Any or all ofthese strategies would certainly help to get the news to colleagues on a broad scale.

Thank you for whatever you can do to help inform our community and share a resource that was created for the common good.

The Center for Studies in Oral Tradition at the University of Missouri (http://oraltradition.org/ )is gratified to be able to offer Oral Tradition to anyone worldwide with an internet connection and a browser. We hope that the online, open-access formatwill enlarge and diversify the journal's readership, and particularly that it will offer everyone interested in the world's oral traditions - regardless of their location and academic context - an equal opportunity to contribute actively to the discussion. Our shared field will prosper most readily if it operates as an academic democracy without financial or distributional barriers.As for future contents, the next issue of Oral Tradition (volume 22, number 2) will be a special collection devoted to Basque traditions, and will include descriptive and analytical articles, interviews with oral poets, and an eCompanion with photographic, audio, and video support. Beyond that issue we will be publishing articles on Albanian oral law, Native American storytelling, modern Greek oral poetry, Welsh saints' lives, modern Balinese epic, and many other topics across the international spectrum.

We welcome your comments and especially your submissions for publication."

John Foley

Editor, Oral Tradition

Quote of the Day

"Writing always presupposes the selection of a psychological attitude, a rapport with the world, a tone of voice, a homogeneous set of linguistic tools, the data of experience and the phantoms of the imagination — in a word, a style. The author is an author insofar as he enters into a role the way an actor does and identifies himself with that projection of himself at the moment of writing."

- Italo Calvino

Jealous and Envy

Dear Raza,

Why is that one individual must always have the need to be jealous of another individual's success?

Why is it that one individual cannot say to another: "Hey, what you did is great! It inspires me that a person from nuestra raza is aiming for the sky and I'm incredibly inspired! I'm so proud of you!"

Why is it that individuals--usually from our tribe, nuestra gente, nuestra cultura--do everything in their power to try to drag you down when one is soaring or attempting to get up from a bad fall?

Why is it that individuals cannot reciprocate the fact that one individual goes out of their way to help them?

Why can't an individual say: "There are individuals in my life that have helped me and I am committed to taking care of these individuals since they are the ones that nurse my wounds at my time of need."

Why must individuals be greedy when they are given something out love?

Why must individuals feel the need to want to run another individual's life when their own lives are in complete disarray?

Why is it so difficult for an individual to say three simple words: "I am sorry." (and carry out the words with actions)

Why is it so difficult for an individual to say three other simple words: "I love you." (and carry out the words with actions)

Why are these questions not clear to you?

Not yours,

Hector