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This is a short,very personal reverie.

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 22 (HealthDay News) -- It sounds like science fiction, by scientists say it might one day be possible to erase undesirable memories from the brain, selectively and safely. Using a complex genetic approach, U.S. and Chinese researchers believe they have done just that in mice, but the feat is far from being tested on humans. Study co-author Joe Z. Tsien, co-director of the Brain & Behavior Discovery Institute at the Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, says the "work reveals a molecular mechanism of how [memory deletion] can be done quickly and without doing damage to brain cells." The...

Sliding down memory lane (This classic Dave Barry column was originally published April 13, 2003.) Recently, my little brother Phil (he's only 50) gave me a box that wound up with him some years ago, when our mom died and a bunch of family flotsam drifted down one generation. The box contains slides. For you young digital readers, I should explain that slides are transparencies made from photographs. They used to be very popular. When you wanted to look at big, bright images of your vacation, you'd get out your slides, spend a few seconds thinking about what a pain...

When it comes to memory it is clear that men and women are simply not on the same wavelength. While men may fail to match a woman's ability to remember the date of an anniversary, they are better at storing a seemingly endless cache of facts and figures. Scientists believe they have now uncovered the reason for this difference between the sexes – they make the memories in different ways.

Writing a book to answer Billy Ayers.

WASHINGTON, June 2, 2008 – For the past two years, one troop-support organization has made sure children of fallen servicemembers have an avalanche of fun. “Snowball Express” began in December 2006 with the mission of providing hope and new memories to military children who have lost a parent since 9/11. “The belief is these children should never be forgotten by a grateful nation,” said Roy White, the group’s chairman of the board and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel. “Snowball Express accomplishes its mission by providing an all-expense paid, multi-day fun experience for eligible children [18 and younger] who...

BASTOGNE, Belgium, Dec. 21, 2007 – Standing next to the killing field where he once found himself face-down in the snow surrounded by the dead and dying, Ted Paluch said his return wasn’t as emotional as it once was, especially having visited three other times. Emotions begin to overcome Malmedy massacre survivor Ted Paluch after he presented a wreath to remember 84 U.S. soldiers executed in World War II. To Paluch’s right is Fabien Steffese, curator of the Baugneze 44 Historical Center, which recounts the tragedy. Photo by Ray Johnson  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. His resiliency and...

Your brain can distinguish between real and fake memories, even if you can’t. Tell the truth: our brain can sometimes reveal if our memories are real or false.stockbyteIt’s a common situation: you’re embroiled in an argument over a fact and you know for certain that you have the right answer. But when someone rushes to their laptop to google the correct answer, you discover that you were wrong. Whether in a fight with a spouse or giving testimony on the witness stand, it is clear that our memories are not always trustworthy. Now, researchers have found that although those vivid...

The Villages, FL (LifeNews.com) -- The newest Republican presidential candidate appeared to stumble on Friday while campaigning in Florida. Fred Thompson appeared as if he didn't remember the national controversy surrounding the euthanasia death of Terri Schiavo and presented mixed views on whether Congress should have gotten involved. Terri was the disabled woman whose former husband won a court order to remove her feeding tube and starve her to death. Before she died from a painful 13 days without food and water, Congress approved a bill by large bipartisan margins allowing federal courts to review the state court's decision allowing...

SIERRA VISTA — When soldiers threw nickels, dimes and canteens over the fence Joe Garcia and his brother knew what to do. After filling the empty canteens as quickly as they could from their family’s drum of water, they threw them back before the soldiers were caught resting on their march. “Then they’d march off with full water canteens,” he said. It’s one of the memories Garcia has as a child in Sierra Vista during World War II and one of the stories from residents being collected for the Henry T. Hauser Museum’s World War II Homefront exhibit. Local residents...

Tomahawk Troops Embrace Pocket-Size Memories Soldiers keep pieces of metal which wounded them during their deployment to Iraq. By Spc. Jeffrey Ledesma 1st Cavalry Division, Multi-National Division, Baghdad BAGHDAD, April 17, 2007 — One undeniable commonality in every battle fought is the memories of war that burn into the minds of the soldiers who fight in it and the small pieces that remind them to never forget. Three infantrymen with Company C, 1st "Tomahawk" Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, experienced three different attacks, on three separate occasions and each came away with...

A new movie about the bloody but heroic World War II battle of Iwo Jima, brought back 61-year-old memories for Manuel Rodríguez. Seeing ads for Clint Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers" brought into focus the sight of thousands of Marines disgorging from the flat-bellied landing craft, some falling the moment they stepped out on the dark sand. In an interview at his Sahuarita home Friday, Rodríguez, 81, shared some memories. Others he left dormant. The one memory that bolsters his spirit, invigorates his patriotic pride, is the movie's centerpiece: the Stars and Stripes being raised on Mount Suribachi, an enduring...

The U.S. Marines rationed him two beers a day. It's a detail Ken Kurkowski remembered about serving in Vietnam. He recalled war protesters spitting on him at the San Francisco airport and barely escaping death when his tank exploded. The veteran poured everything -- the bloodshed, the wild nights, the letters to his girlfriend -- onto 106 pages. Within a year, the Library of Congress will make his memoir a piece of American history. Congress launched the Veterans History Project in 2000. It collects oral and written histories, photos and video interviews from veterans, Red Cross workers, United Service Organizations...

WASHINGTON, July 21, 2006 – If a deployed servicemember misses a milestone in a family member's life, it's gone forever, unless someone at home keeps a good record. "The military family, unlike any others, has multiple stresses related to daily life," said Linda Davis, founder of Connect And Join. "Our communications portal is designed to easily allow families to share events while they are apart, and this scrapbook will allow families to capture ... events to share for a lifetime." Today in Chicago, Connect And Join, a Web-based company that provides a forum for military families to keep in...

I picked up a CD by Alan Jackson at a Christian bookstore. I saw he was doing some of the old hymns and Gospel songs. I expected he was going to play in the Alan Jackson "country style". Instead it was a simple, pure versions of these songs using an acoustic guitar, piano, and organ. His family joined in on some of the songs. I learned on Amazon from a review that the songs were originally intended for his mother but he allows us to in a sense sit quietly in the room for this special moment. Anyway, for those...

“Stolen” memories investigated Jan. 21, 2006 Special to World Science Memories may be the lifeblood of our identity. To some extent, you are what you remember. But what if some of your memories aren’t really yours? Brain structures thought to be important in memory formation. The hippocampus is thought to be central for initial storage of long-term memories. It also receives strong inputs of information from the medial septum and frontal lobes, which are responsible for many advanced cognitive functions including planning and decisionmaking. Some researchers have also proposed memories may be a form of "mental time travel" in which...

On My Way to Viet Nam Memories of that day. 5 Jan 1969 I kiss my wife and kids good bye and board the plane in the El Paso Airport, heading to San Francisco, eventually to Viet Nam. There were a few other GI on board, since El Paso has Ft. Bliss Texas and White Sands Missile Range close to it. I get off the plane and , walking down the concourse spot a blinking sign “COLD BEER”. Although it is only 11 am that sounded awfully good to me. After all, I’m heading to Viet Nam. Belly up to...

LONDON (Reuters) - Do you have memories of being abducted by aliens and whisked away in a spaceship?You wouldn't be alone. Several thousand people worldwide claim to have had such close encounters, researchers say. But in a new study, a psychology expert at London's Goldsmiths College says these experiences are proof of the frailty of the human memory, rather than evidence of life in other galaxies. "Maybe what we're dealing with here is false memories, and not that people are actually being abducted and taken aboard spaceships," says Professor Chris French, who surveyed 19 self-proclaimed alien abductees. Several of the...

The last time I talked to my dad, he didn't seem too perturbed. He was a little tired and amused that my brother and I had taken turns calling him in New Orleans from our Florida homes all morning. At 8 a.m. Monday, I could hear the hurricane creeping up on his end of the phone. A tree limb that had threatened our roof for years was pounding a loud hole into my youngest sister's room. A neighbor's tree had fallen in our front yard. "Luckily it missed your sister's car," he chuckled. That was hours before the levee hemorrhaged....

REMEMBERING HIROSHIMA : AUGUST 6, 1945 All over the world today, people are coming together to tell us how awful it was we dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They have their memories – and I have mine. Sixty years ago, I was with my Dad and my brothers : haying in the hot August sun. We had a portable radio with us, and we stopped work to listen to the broadcaster – who spoke of a bomb – hotter than the sun – that had been dropped on, and that had utterly destroyed the entire city of Hiroshima....

The Fallen Hero and the Living Traitor By Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu FrontPageMagazine.com August 2, 2005 Here is yet another case of the kind of bizarre juxtaposition that continues to characterize the Vietnam War well into the first decade of the new century. I refer on the one hand to the recent loss of Admiral James B. Stockdale, a highly decorated Navy aviator and prisoner of war of the North Vietnamese for seven grueling years. His funeral services were held, appropriately, on the Navy carrier the USS Ronald Reagan with the full military honors the Medal of Honor winner deserved....

See Dick talk. See Hanoi Jane talk. Mark Malaszczyk July 29, 2005 She is nipped. She is tucked. She is enhanced. And she is BACK. Sixty-seven year old Actress/Activist Jane Fonda has announced that she will launch a cross-country bus tour to protest the war in Iraq, scheduled for March 2006. "I've decided that I'm coming out," she said. Green tea drinking, tofu-eating, Birkenstock-wearing, pale, emaciated vegans with multi-colored ribbons all over their tattered backpacks are rejoicing across America, running to get a second tattoo on their lower back and a ninth piercing in their left ear in tribute to...

FRANCE -- "Hanoi Jane" Fonda seems to have tired of her moniker. The wilted flower child who firmly established her place in American history when she mounted a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun has decided it's time to teach a whole new generation to blame America first. If she actually goes through with her plans for a new protest movement, she may well become known as "Jihadist Jane." It has a better ring. More alliteration. Fonda says she wants to criss-cross the nation in a bus powered by vegetable oil, advocating the end of U.S. military operations in Iraq. She's inviting...

Like millions of Americans, I heaved a sigh of relief upon reading that Jane Fonda finally is going to speak out against the war in Iraq. Where has she been? On book tour promoting her autobiography-in-progress, "My Life So Far." We might have guessed a real-time sequel was in the offing. Fonda says that, having met some veterans and their families while on tour, she's decided to break her silence. "I've decided I'm coming out," she told an audience in Santa Fe, N.M. "I have not taken a stand on any war since Vietnam. I carry a lot of baggage...

The other night Ann Coulter asked my boss, Chris Ruddy how old I am. That got me thinking that since late next week I'll be having a birthday, it might be instructive to recall not how old I am chronologically, but how old I am to be able to remember a whole lot of stuff. My friend Michael Reagan, no spring chicken himself, was kind enough the other day to tell me that I am as old as dirt, and suggested that I had been around long enough to have been baptized by John the Baptist. That's not quite true,...

With the approach of a new moon over Iraq next week, and the darkness it will provide for air operations, the days for diplomacy would appear to be dwindling fast. That is why Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary General, is preparing for an urgent visit to Baghdad, and it is why President Clinton traveled to the Pentagon yesterday to issue his most explicit warning to Saddam Hussein that the United States will use military force if he refuses to allow unrestricted access to U.N. weapons inspectors. In these anxious hours, it is important not to lose sight of what...

It is not often that a young person can connect with the personal side of the President of the United States, but John Barletta’s new book, Riding With Reagan, allowed me to do just that better than any other book I have ever read about President Ronald Reagan. Reagan was elected one year before I was born. Some of my earliest memories include watching Reagan on the evening news with my mother. Because I was so young, I had no way to understand the profound impact this man was having on our country and our world. But there was so...

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY, remembering Mom...Could it have really been 25 years since I kissed my Mom good night? How could that be, it seems like only yesterday? Her memory is still fresh, her wonderful smile is vivid in my mind. I can still feel the tenderness of her kiss on my cheek, and I can recall everything she whispered to me as I held her close... Could it have been so long ago... I still remember you Mom... each and every time I say good night to the kids on a holiday... I kiss them once more just for you......

Ronald Reagan kept a diary -- handwritten, blue-inked reflections and observations of nearly every day of his eight years in the White House -- and now it will be published, executives of HarperCollins and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Foundation announced yesterday. The existence of the five leather-bound volumes embossed with a gold presidential seal was not a secret. Key entries were quoted in the press during the investigation into the Iran-contra arms sale controversy in the mid-1980s: "I agreed to sell TOWs to Iran" -- Jan. 17, 1986. Reagan drew on the diary for his 1990 memoir, "An American...

A young man was getting ready to graduate from college. For many months he had admired a beautiful sports car in a dealer's showroom, and knowing his father could well afford it, he told him that was all he wanted. As Graduation Day approached, the young man awaited signs that his father had purchased the car. Finally, on the morning of his graduation, his father called him into his private study. His father told him how proud he was to have such a fine son, and told him how much he loved him. He handed his son a beautiful wrapped...

In Memoriam: Pope John Paul II  "Well done, good and faithful servant..."

This is marvelous! Turn up volume. Sit back. Listen! Oh, nostalgia, thy name is "fireflies forever!" If this isn't a trip back down Memory Lane, I don't know what is! http://www.thestatenislandboys.com/U_thrill_me/index.htm

                                Each year, we look forward to the New Year with expectations of good fortune, good health and a renewed faith in God. It is also a time to reflect on all of the events of the year that is about to pass. Here are just a few of the highlights, good and bad, of the year 2004, courtesy of NewsMax (*with the exception of the Boston Red Sox article which is courtesy of http://www.boston.com/sports). Just click on any of the links to review the news article.      January 2004: All 148 Aboard Killed in Egypt Jet Crash...

About this time of year I start to feel like crap. The holidays arrive, and along with hideous plastic illuminated Santas and creepy blue icicle lights returns the painful memory of Grandpa’s last Christmas. I remember it well. You see, I wasn’t there. I volunteered to work at the newspaper that day because a) I needed extra money, b) I wanted to score bonus points with the boss and c) I figured no one would miss me. Back then, in my early 20s, family gatherings seemed more an obligation than times to be treasured. How I wish I’d gone. It’s...

A sassy classic Ralphie, the lamp, the BB gun and why we love them Every year at this time we get to unwrap a gift package filled with red cabbage, BBs and fishnet stockings. It's the movie "A Christmas Story," arguably America's favorite holiday film. The 90-minute picture celebrates its 21st anniversary this year, happily planted in the middle of our pop traditions. In 2003, more than 38.4 million viewers tuned into the 24-hour "A Christmas Story" TV marathon, said the film's director, Bob Clark, by phone as he sat next to a special lamp in his Los Angeles office....

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

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The far right has made startling gains in regional elections in Germany as former communists made advances around Berlin, but parties of the centre clung to power with reduced support. The anti-immigrant Nationalist Democratic Party (NPD) won 9 per cent of the vote in Saxony, almost equal to the vote for the Social Democrats of the Chancellor, Gerhard Schroder. The Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) took 28 per cent of the vote in Brandenburg, its best ever showing in a state election. Eastern German resentment at high unemployment and welfare cuts undermined support for Mr Schroder's Social Democratic Party (SPD)...

You'd think the details would be scorched into a veteran's memory like a cattle brand: ducking gunfire, seeing someone die in battle, bracing against a blast's concussion. Who could forget? Yet such memories not only blurred over time in one classic psychological study of soldiers, but mutated too. Old recollections faded; new mental pictures took over. Whole new chunks of personal history materialized from the muck of memory. "People went from, `Yes, I saw one friend killed,' to `I saw no friends killed,' to `I saw two friends killed,' to `I saw three friends killed,'" said Dr. Andy Morgan, a...

Today I bought a VCR. It's used and all, but I wasn't sure if I'd be able to watch President Reagan's funeral live. It is a huge deal for me to see it. .......

WASHINGTON, June 7 — Former President George H.W. Bush said that although he clashed President Ronald Reagan on a number of issues, particularly the economy, he always respected the 40th president, who he said ultimately influenced a number of policies put forth by his son, President George W. Bush. "He's always been a Reagan admirer," Mr. Bush said of his son in an interview on Monday on NBC's Today Show. "I think when you see them fighting for the same principles," — he cited tax cuts — the two presidents appear to share "a certain common ground." The former president,...

  HAPPY MOTHERS DAY, remembering Mom...Could it have really been 25 years since I kissed my Mom good night? How could that be, it seems like only yesterday?Her memory is still fresh, her wonderful smile is vivid in my mind. I can still feel the tenderness of her kiss on my cheek, and I can recall everything she whispered to me as I held her close...Could it have been so long ago...I still remember you Mom... each and every time I say good night to my kids on a holiday... I kiss them once more..  just for you...I still remember...

05/07/04 -- For the first time, UCLA neurobiologists have pinpointed a region of the brain called the anterior cingulate as responsible for retrieving and storing distant memories. Published in the May 7 edition of Science, the findings may suggest new ways of treating memory disorders, including Alzheimer's disease and other dementias. "Scientists have long understood that the hippocampus processes recent memory, but we did not know where the brain housed our oldest memories," explained Dr. Alcino Silva, principal investigator and professor of neurobiology, psychiatry and psychology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "We knew that the hippocampus...

LAUREL, United States (AFP) - Jan, John, Jon and Stosh have two things in common: They are all veterans or former combatants who served in the US military and they also want to see Democratic presidential contender Senator John Kerry (news - web sites) sitting in the White House in 2005. The four ex-soldiers who range in age from 54 to 71 sat down amid a dozen veterans to talk with an AFP correspondent just outside Washington last month to explain why they are marching in step behind Kerry's presidential campaign. "I remember hearing about a young navy guy who...

Memories of 2000 energize Dem organizers By Ron Fournier, AP Political Writer April 27, 2004 ST. LOUIS -- Armed with Palm Pilots and a $95 million budget, Democratic organizers hope to exploit voters' anger toward President Bush and the disputed outcome of the 2000 election to produce a record-breaking Nov. 2 turnout. They're doing it the old-fashioned way -- knocking on doors and registering voters -- with information-age technology, such as the hand-held computers carried street-to-street by canvassers. "There's going to be people crawling out of the woodwork to vote against Bush after what happened in 2000 and what he's...

While we're slip-sliding around these frozen streets and the groundhog remains in his cozy den for at least another day or two, we harken back to the old days of sled-riding, or coasting, on the same, though not so crowded, roadways. Morgantown's hilly terrain has always been a blessing for winter recreational activity, in particular the free sledding on snow-covered slopes. The practice dates back as far as records are kept and since the city has had improved streets.For many decades the city designated "coasting streets." Lists of those basically closed to vehicular traffic during snowy times were published in...

There was a sense of d j vu. I had been working at my computer, just as I had been on that fateful Saturday night nearly two years ago, when a suicide bomber blew himself up at Cafe Moment, just around the corner from the Prime Minister's residence. On Thursday morning, I was again working on my computer when I heard the blast. I didn't give it too much attention. Ever since the Cafe Moment explosion, security in the area has been beefed up considerably and every couple of days there's some kind of security exercise. Then came the radio...

<p>Paul O'Neill is angry that the world has passed him by.</p> <p>Monday, January 12, 2004 12:01 a.m.</p> <p>I once had dinner with Paul O'Neill, the former Treasury secretary who is now making headlines with a scathing portrayal of his days in the Bush administration prior to his firing in December 2002. Bush critics will hail Mr. O'Neill as a truth-teller, White House aides are already calling him a back-stabber. In fact, Mr. O'Neill is a relic. The man I broke bread with was clearly a product of the Nixon and Ford administrations, in which he had served, and simply hadn't adapted to the post-Reagan Republican Party.</p>

Remember the Commodore 64? The Tandy TRS-80? Computer museum saves relics from the past By Andrea Ball AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Friday, January 9, 2004 Drop the mouse, move away from the iMac and step back in time for a moment. Remember the Commodore 64? The Tandy TRS-80? Clunky word processors, Atari Super Pong and black-screened monitors with blinking green cursors? Ahhhh, memories. Those days might be gone, but an unlikely agency is preserving Austin's computer relics: Goodwill Industries of Central Texas. The agency has more than 1,000 donated computers, calculators and gaming systems housed at Computer Works, Goodwill's used computer store...