Slate
Elizabeth Loftus warmed to the idea of memory tampering for the best of reasons. She wanted to help people.
In her official career, as she described it in books, she studied the art of mental manipulation only to dissect, expose, and defeat it. Occasionally, she lent her psychological expertise to lawyers or advertisers for their self-interested purposes. But these purposes weren't hers, so she never turned them into a career.
To embrace memory tampering, she needed a purpose of her own. Something she could believe in and care about. Something that could put her skills to good use.
The story of how Loftus found that purpose—the story of her shadow career—began 30 years ago with a metaphor. "Imagine a world in which people could go to a special kind of psychologist or psychiatrist—a memory doctor—and have their memories modified," she mused in her 1980 book, Memory.
http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=176793
ReplyDeleteWASHINGTON - The first-ever Jewish America Heritage Month celebration at the White House on Thursday underscored the Obama administration's determination not to be locked into Washington's conventional notions of Jewish leadership.
But the president is also hosting Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on June 9
His top Middle East negotiator, George Mitchell, this week chose a fund-raiser for the Jewish Primary Day School of the Nation's Capital to delicately advance a subtle but substantial shift in U.S. policy. Mitchell, who rarely addresses such forums, likened Hamas, the terrorist group controlling the Gaza Strip, to Irish Republican hardliners during his five years negotiating the Northern Ireland peace. Like Hamas, the hardliners did not accept the fundamental principles of the peace talks, but Mitchell eventually broke down their resistance through incentives.
"Everyone is welcome as long as they are prepared to accept" the principles of recognizing Israel and swearing off terrorism, Mitchell said. He did not say what incentives, if any, he had to offer Hamas, but the expectation that he could wear Hamas down is new.
Politico this week reported that Robert Wexler, a former Florida congressman who has a high Jewish establishment profile and whose views on peace coincide with Obama's, is under consideration to be the US ambassador to Israel.
The Heritage Month was established after legislation passed in 2006 by Rep. Debra Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), then a freshman in Congress. In subsequent years, Jewish Democrats fumed that President George W. Bush did nothing more to mark the month than issue a proclamation. After such griping, it raised eyebrows last year when Obama did not mark the month
Rabbi Alyssa Stanton of Greenville, N.C., the first black woman rabbi, read the poem by Emma Lazarus inscribed on the Statue of Liberty.
There were establishment journalists, like Roger Cohen and Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, but there was also Heeb publisher Josh Newman, and Doug Bloomfield, an irreverent Democrat who has for years been excoriating conservatives in Jewish weeklies.
Eli Winkelman, the college student who founded Challah for Hunger, which brings students together to bake challahs which are sold to raise funds for Darfur.
There were court caes in the U.S. where memory manipulations were used by prosecutors on children to falsely testify against adults accused of sexually abusing them.
ReplyDeleteThe adults were convicted and sent to prison. After spending years in jail, the memory manipulation came to light and their convictions were thrown out.
And people wonder why our Torah prohibits accepting the testimony of children.