Curious collection of stories on "CBS Sunday Morning" on 23 September 2018

The cover story on Sandy Hook was sad: A battle currently pits parents still mourning the loss of their children in the Sandy Hook school shooting against purveyors of the most mean-spirited and outlandish of myths. Our Cover Story is reported by Tony Dokoupil

Kurt Andersen was quoted in the piece, in turn quoting Patrick Moynihan:


"As Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said 30 years ago, many times, repeatedly, 'You're entitled to your own opinions but not to your own facts,'" said Kurt Andersen. "He was kind of joking back then. And we've come to this place where many, many, many millions of people feel absolutely entitled to their own facts."



Although the details of the case against Alex Jones were not enumerated, Floyd Abrams was quoted:


Floyd Abrams is a respected First Amendment lawyer, famed for defending The New York Times' publication of the Pentagon Papers. "This is a very tough case for Alex Jones to win," he said, "because what he has said is so appalling."

He says Jones may have gone beyond the protections of free speech, and the consequences may be severe.




The Almanac feature touching on "Typhoid Mary" was a bit grim: And now a page from our "Sunday Morning" Almanac: September 23, 1869, 149 years ago today … the day that saw the birth, in rural Ireland, of Mary Mallon – remembered today as "Typhoid Mary."

The piece by Dr. Sanjay Gupta somewhat indirectly addressed the Kavanaugh / Ford issue. Although the connection was made clear in the prefatory text --The question of whether alcohol affects memory hangs over the current Supreme Court confirmation battle. Here with some answers is Dr. Sanjay Gupta: --, the indicated conclusion was a bit oblique, with the story ending on a suggestion "to improve your memory":


Truth is: When it comes to alcohol and memory, people assume a lot of things – and a lot of those assumptions are wrong.

(...)

One study last year showed that in this situation mild- to moderately-intoxicated people had very similar recall as sober people.

Now, there is a thing known as "blackout drunk." That is not the same as "passed out drunk." Someone who is blacked-out drunk may still be talking and walking. But they might be totally amnestic to the event, meaning they have no memory of it.

The biggest culprit is not necessarily how much you drank, but how quickly they drank it – the binge drinker.

With memory and alcohol you also have to consider how much time has passed. While a mild- to moderately-intoxicated person can remember things pretty well in the short term, their long term memories are much more difficult to retrieve.

And to understand why, it helps to understand how memory works. You take in sensory information – see, hear, feel – and that almost immediately gets transferred to short-term memory. From there, short-term memories get encoded into long-term memory.

It's this last phase where alcohol seems to have the most impact. For someone who's intoxicated, that encoding into long-term memory often doesn't occur very well, or at all. And that is why days later someone may have a hard time remembering something that was so vivid earlier, but can't retrieve the memory from the long-term stores, because the memories were never there in the first place.

[Then, the narrative abruptly and oddly switches from absence of long term memory through binge intoxication (related to the viewpoint of the Ford scenario AND why Kavanaugh might not remember) to a recommendation to the general public]

If you want to improve your memory, the best things you can really do: pay attention when something is happening; that helps a lot. And don't forget sleep, because it's when you sleep that your body consolidates and transfers your short-term memories to long-term memoriesm the kind you'll have for the rest of your life.





link: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dr-sanjay-gupta-on-how-alcohol-affects-memory/

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The moment of nature involved dolphins in the Red Sea. Previously, on Jan 21, 2018 , Sunday Morning did sea slugs in the Red Sea.

***Merely as background

Christine Blasey Ford, Kavanaugh accuser, commits to public hearing this Thursday , including


In a statement on Sunday [23 Sept. 2018], Ford's lawyers Debra Katz, Lisa Banks and Michael Bromwich said their client "has agreed to move forward" with a public hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, Sept. 27, at 10 a.m. on Capitol Hill. The legal team said that "important progress" had been made with committee staffers after a week of negotiations over the format and conditions of her testimony.

"Despite actual threats to her safety and her life, Dr. Ford believes it is important for Senators to hear directly from her about the sexual assault committed against her," the attorneys wrote. Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley confirmed the hearing would be taking place on Thursday in a statement late Sunday, calling it a "continuation of the hearing to consider" Kavanaugh's nomination. Following Ford's testimony, the statement said, Kavanaugh will then "appear before the committee."