Memory...........................

     Buzan was eager to sell me on the idea that his own memory has been improving year after year, even as he ages.  "People assume that memory decline is a function of being human and therefore natural," he said.  "But that is a logical error, because normal is not necessarily natural.  The reason for the monitored decline in human memory performance is because we actually do anti-Olympic training.  What we do to the brain is the equivalent of sitting someone down to train for the Olympics and making sure he drinks ten cans of beer a day, smokes fifty cigarettes, drives to work, and maybe does some exercise once a month that's violent and damaging, and spends the rest of the time watching television.  And then we wonder why that person doesn't do well in the Olympics.  That's what we've been doing with memory."

-Joshua Foer,  Moonwalking With Einstein:  The Art and Science of Remembering Everything