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DJ Shadow “Scale It Back” by Ewan Jones Morris

This is for real. Did you know there is a U.S. Memory Championship for “mental athletes” where memorizing a deck of cards in a couple of minutes would only elicit a “meh”? I learned about it a few months back when the blogosphere was abuzz over “Moonwalking with Einstein” a book by Joshua Foer (brother of Jonathan Safran). Joshua was at the 2005 Championships writing an article for Slate when he became so intrigued by the ability of the country’s top memorization experts that he trained for a year and became the 2006 Champion. In the book he lays out the secret of top memorizers—assign images to the items you’re trying to recall, then situate them spatially in your mind. Someplace you know intimately, like a childhood home, is recommended. It’s a pretty funny concept, and while it’s one thing to read about, it’s another to see it visualized, like in this wonderful video directed by Ewan Jones Morris and Casey Raymond. The memory guy? 3-time World Champ Ben Pridmore.