Taking Notes Helps:

Decades ago when I was in college I learned that simply taking notes helped me remember lectures. Often I didn't even need to go over those notes, or at least didn't need to spend much time studying them afterwards, in order to recall information for a test.

Now it turns out that even just doodling can help a person recall information with an improved efficiency of up to 29 percent, according to findings published in Applied Cognitive Psychology. (You can find the story at Yahoo's "Health Day" site.) Which was my argument in English class during my junior year of high school when I had the least enthusiastic teacher in the history of public education. Quite a feat since during my sophomore year I had the second least enthusiastic teacher. (How, I always wondered, could such a good public school, nevertheless, host two such improbable performers?)

Joe, the former of these two, was an ex-Marine, combat veteran of the Korean War, with the scar tissue on his face to prove it. Apparently, he had survived being hit by shrapnel from a grenade, and he had all the demeanor of a drill sergeant and the indifference of a modern day CEO. Even though I was a starting linebacker on the varsity football team, I knew to be very careful with this man. Better not to look too closely at him.

In order to distract myself and in the hopes of not being called upon in class and publicly humiliated, a favorite form of control, I began doodling whenever Joe lectured. I also figured this might keep me awake. There was nothing worse than falling asleep in one of Joe's classes.

One day shortly after I had begun this practice and Joe had been castigating first one student and then the other, he looked over at me in the corner of the room where I had hoped his faulty peripheral vision might allow me some protection and demanded to know just what I was doing. Quite possibly he thought I was writing a note to another student or doing my math homework.

"Doodling," I responded, trying to imitate the concerned and thoughtful expression I had observed on rare occasions by my elders. "It helps me concentrate and remember."

For the first time, I discovered that Joe had at least one other expression than the various degrees of disgust his face normally displayed. He seemed very nearly astounded.

"Well," he said loudly, "see that you do."

Now I was stuck. I would have to go on doodling in his class for the rest of the year, even when I didn't feel like doodling, and my sketching abilities were extremely limited. Sure, I had won a blue ribbon at the state fair when I was six years old for a pastel I had created in first grade art class, but my drafting abilities had gone down rapidly after that.

Worse, Joe was sure to tell the other teachers, and I would have to doodle in all of their classes as well. Truly, high school is hell, but one thing seems certain. Doodling has had a profound effect on my memory. How else do you explain this story, unless I just made it all up.

More Growing Pains for TV:

First it was going to make us all better educated, then it rotted our brains, and following this it was going to bring an unbelievable wealth of choice, dramatically improving democracy, allowing us to talk back.

None of this proved quite as wonderful or terrible as the hucksters and social critics thought. Currently, the issue is over plummeting advertising dollars. Revenue is drying up. There are limits that economists seemed to have never warned anyone about. Environmentalists told us a long time ago that we live in a finite world, but economists seemed to believe that wealth could grow exponentially throughout the eons (or at least the next business quarter).

Broadcast networks are in trouble. Dramatic shows cost around $3 million per hour to create, and the ad revenue that used to pay for them is drying up. The spigots at GM and Ford have been closed. The dirty little secret of business—there are limits to the amount of advertising dollars—is out of the closet. (See Tim Arango's article in today's New York Times.)

Americans, however, seem to be adapting, even if TV executives are fumbling about with ever more "reality" TV shows to cut costs. Viewers are tuning in to cable, renting movies and TV shows, and watching TV on their computers. The consumer is driving the market even if the vehicle has no idea where it is going.

The War America Never Should Have Fought Will End:

The news has been full of the Obama time table for America's cessation of military involvement in Iraq, but the topic that will be most important is being skirted. What will happen to the country that was never a country?

As everyone should know by now, Iraq is a European concept imposed on the people of the region, maintained first by foreign intervention and then by strong-man-government. The latter model has been broken and no one wants to impose the former, except perhaps Iran.

So far, no one is talking publicly about all of that "sweet oil" that lies so close to the surface. Or about the American desire to maintain a strong military presence in the region for reasons other than toppling a petty dictatorship or fighting terrorists.