What Do You Think Today?

[Cambo]

I heard a story told by an Iranian Lawyer working in London. He lived with his mother and father - a leading Judge in pre-revolutionary Iran - on the outskirts of Theran. His father used to drive him to school and one day he amused himself by opening the window and shouting an insult at some workers who were sifting rubbish at the city refuse dump. Furious his father stopped the car and gripped the boys arm. "Thats honest work," he said, "Never forget it!".

Good on the father. I can't stand those kinds of attitudes that look down on certain kinds of jobs- academic elitism. A friend of mine works the door at nightclubs and he once refused a snotty law major from entry for being drunk. The guy said something along the lines of "whatever, you're a nobody and I'm gonna be a lawyer." My friend calmly said "well, I have three tertiary level qualifications, how many do you have?"

[peter]

There is only one sucess or failure in life that in the end is of any significance and that is whether you suceed or fail as a human being.

[Avatar]

By whose definition?

--A

[peter]

I live in hope for the day when Cambo's friend's simple response will be to look at the fool in front of him and laugh - and we all laugh with him.

[peter]

I want to say something about what happened in Woolwich - but no words can express what I feel and my lack of comprehension is too profound.

[Cambo]

I want to say something about what happened in Woolwich - but no words can express what I feel and my lack of comprehension is too profound.

I know what you mean. The mind boggles, as they say. What gets me is the tragically cyclic nature of the whole thing. A couple of Muslims murder a guy because guys like him have killed guys like them in another country, so now some British people want to murder Muslims....retaliation upon retaliation upon retaliation.

[Iolanthe]

I want to say something about what happened in Woolwich - but no words can express what I feel and my lack of comprehension is too profound.

Peter, I feel exactly the same way; you have said what I would have said had I found the words to say it.

[peter]

Because good things happen as well - the safe landing of that plane at Heathrowwith no casualties having experienced double engine failure was nothing short of a miracle. A testemont to the skill and training of the pilots who pulled it off.

[deer of the dawn]

I recently met a man who was in Jakarta (Indonesia) as a Christian missionary, when bloody Islamic revolution took over the city.

Muslim friends came to the compound where they were living and hid them in their own homes, protected them until they could evacuate.

So yes, some good things come out of the bad, it's absolutely true.

[peter]

Will the Internet fill up? I mean we all keep posting, year in year out. New pages, new blogs, new social media etc. Even the Watch must consume masses of space with all of it's pages and posts. So what happens to it all. If I type in the adress at the top of this page in three hundred years time will it pop up like yesterday, or will a sighn come up "Sorry - your requsted page was consighned to the dustbin of (byte) history in the last 'great clean up' of 12th June 2214". Who will sort this out if it has to be done. Or do we just build more amd more storage devices ad infinitum so it all gets to stay there for the rest of humanities (and what comes beyonds) eternity! Cool if it does - someone might spot my potential in the future "Boy - that Peter was a smart dude. We better check out what *he* had to say!

[Hashi Lebwohl]

All the pages wind up getting stored but as various servers go offline the sites available through them will become unavailable. In the distant future, or for the sake of this discussion anything more than 50 years from now, you might have to use some legacy browser or legacy-enhanced browser to view the old and busted web pages we have right now.

Future generations will, as we do with those who came before us, laugh at our ignorance, our innocence, and our naivete.

[Menolly]

The wayback machine doesn't store all pages of a site, but I find it is pretty comprehensive.

[peter]

Good link Menolly.

Hashi - I doubt the day will ever come when anyone will ever laugh at either your ignorence, innocence or naiviete! (Not on the evidence of this site at least .

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Hashi - I doubt the day will ever come when anyone will ever laugh at either your ignorence, innocence or naiviete! (Not on the evidence of this site at least .

It is true that I no longer have any traces of being innocent or naive; whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is still undecided. I freely admit that despite knowing a great many things I am still quite ignorant from time to time. "Ignorant" as in "has not yet learned the material" rather than "lack of intellectual capacity".

[peter]

Unfortunately Hashi, I have reached the stage where I suspect that every new fact I commit to memory displaces one that is already there. It is a scource of frustration to know that you once knew something, but no longer do. The chief problem is you don't get to choose what gets discarded!

[danlo]

Discard the negative!

[peter]

Sherlock Holmes said our mind's are like a chest of drawers - they have limited space in them and thus care must be taken to stock them well. Trouble is we all have different size chests and mine seems to be of the particularly small variety!

[Avatar]

I don't think I agree about the limited space...everything you ever see or read or hear or think is in there somewhere...it's the retrieval that makes things difficult.

--A

[Iolanthe]

I don't think I agree about the limited space...everything you ever see or read or hear or think is in there somewhere...it's the retrieval that makes things difficult.

--A

Yes, yes, yes. Head stuffed with names, dates, all sorts of useless things I can remember. But remember what I'm supposed to email A****** about? Not a chance. I've been trying to remember all evening.

[Holsety]

I think I need to get my butt in gear in some sort of vocational training program so that I can earn some independence. I just don't feel like I'm being treated as qualified for the work I'm currently looking for, or I'm barking up the wrong trees.

I don't think I agree about the limited space...everything you ever see or read or hear or think is in there somewhere...it's the retrieval that makes things difficult.

I think there is a kind of limitation with memory that is based on perception and awareness and the like. In other words, if we take it for granted that there is a sort of external universe which we don't entirely take in, we don't necessarily remember everything we hear. And I don't think we necessarily remember everything we read. Poetry, for instance, is something that I think I don't remember very well because if I don't fully crunch down and understand the poem, some of the lines won't really be internalized. I can often only remember the gist of something.

But then again, sometimes if we take an editorial perspective, we might be very successful in "running over" something we've perceived and identifying how it "really was" (identifying errors). In a way, the only thing we really have to prove it one way or another to ourselves is our "gut," I'd say.

Also, I think the space is limited in one sense by definition (only so much matter so it must be) but I suppose we don't yet have a satisfactory way of measuring the quantity of our memories, especially if there are different types of memories (remembering thoughts, scents, emotions, sequences of events, images, etc).