NEW YORK (AP) ? A Florida man who trained for a national memory competition by memorizing a randomly shuffled deck of cards as he climbed Mount Everest won the mental bout Saturday and broke a U.S. record.
Nelson Dellis, 28, of Miami, said his rigorous training for the challenge required him to reshuffle the deck of cards at each new altitude in his climb.
"I was getting my best times the higher I got," said Dellis, who was surprised at his ability to stay focused as he made his way toward the summit before having to stop because of problems with his oxygen mask. "I was getting so much, much less oxygen up there."
It was the second year in a row that Dellis won the USA Memory Championship, which was held in Manhattan. He also broke a record for memorizing 303 random numbers in five minutes, besting the previous record of 248 numbers in five minutes, which he himself set last year.
"It's all tricks," Dellis explained of his win. "I don't have a good memory naturally. It's something I learned and taught myself."
Among the tricks he relies on is an ancient method he refers to as the "journey method," where he visualizes memorized objects as he moves mentally through a place he knows well. To recall the information, he mentally walks back through the journey.
About 50 people competed in Saturday's challenge of mnemonic skills that required them to recall random information including 99 names and faces, a 50-line unpublished poem and 200 random words.
Texan Ron White, the 2010 national memory champion, came in second; Michael Mirski, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania, came in third.
Four-time winners Hershey High School in Hershey, Pa., won its fifth title in a competition against groups from another high school and the University of Pennsylvania.
The competition, now in its 15th year, was founded by a former IBM executive to promote the capabilities of the human brain.
Dellis, a former software developer turned "memory consultant," said he was compelled to research the mysteries of memory after his paternal grandmother began showing symptoms of Alzheimer's disease and died in 2009.
He said he always thought memory was static, but he learned he was wrong: "The mind is trainable."
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News of Ratner?s involvement with Midnight Run 2 comes courtesy of Deadline. As the man behind the Rush Hour franchise, Ratner certainly has experience with buddy comedies (albeit not good ones). He recently helmed the below-average comedy Tower Heist, and I?m not exactly hopeful that he?ll turn out a fun and exciting Midnight Run sequel. The involvement of Elliot and Lovett doesn?t raise my enthusiasm either; in addition to G.I. Joe they also wrote Four Brothers. The previous draft of the sequel was written by Timothy Dowling (Role Models, Knight and Day), and last we heard the story would involve teaming De Niro up with a ?younger comedic foil.? That ?old, curmudgeon cop/young, hip cop? dynamic is probably comedic gold to Ratner, but depending on whom they cast opposite De Niro we could be in for an incredibly boring ride.
Now, while the winter is still around, is the best time for homeowners ?to get a jump start on planning and prepping for their spring and summer home and garden projects; so when the weather really does warm up, it takes little effort to get the projects underway.