The worst thing about freely associative memory...

[bluejeepkid]

Is that things just sneak up on you. Rather than being able to identify a clear chain of logic, you usually end up with an almost Zen-like sudden flash of insight, or a sudden "Where the Hell did that come from?!?" when you realise something.

Over the years, I've gotten used to it, and it's sometimes a handy way to solve problems. Of course, I can also revert to logic and deductive reasoning if FAM doesn't work. ("Quiet! I'm deducing things!")

But, every now and again, I get the "Where the Hell did that come from?" flash that I can't, for the life of me, pick apart.

Case in point - for some odd reason, everytime the "Octomom" is reminded to me (post on a blog or a board, in the news, or whatever,) the very next thing that crosses my mind is A Modest Proposal, by Jonathan Swift. (If you haven't read it yet, do so. I'll wait - it's a shortish read.)

Yes, there are always ethical questions that come up (the ethics of implantation, the ethics of allowing the pregnancy to proceed, the ethics of allowing so many implantations on someone with a fifty percent hit rate for picking up lifetime disability in their children, the decision process that leads to thinking you can support fourteen children on unemployment as a "single mom" - even though she's getting filial support, ...) but A Modest Proposal is always the lead-in.

Perhaps that's the solution to this problem. I doubt it - but it would serve to blast people right out of their well-worn grooves and make them think - and I've often kick-started problem-solving head-sheds that way...

Discuss (but only after you've read A Modest Proposal. Hell, it's probably online and in the public domain by now...)

are you suggesting that we eat our babies? haha JK

 

[5-90]

Taking all of "A Modest Proposal" seriously,(as opposed to satire) Mr. Smith was talking about well-fed infants, born healthy, used as a food source at the age of one. This was to "benefit" society as a whole, by providing a delicacy for the upper class, and a source of income for the otherwise indigent. In this case, with all the pre- and post-natal care required just to get those 8 babies up to normal birth weight, let alone the cost of raising them to one year, there is no way "society" would get any benefit. It would be cheaper to eat Polar Bear cubs! "A Modest Proposal" would only work for natural , un-assisted births of healthy children. Any type of fertility aid would not only not work, but would defeat the whole purpose of the "proposal"

Hey - I never said it was a practical idea - just something that kept leaping irresistably to mind...

 

[ChiXJeff]

Re: Spray on Truck bedliner

WTF! Take a hike bud...

I missed this one. He's gone now.

I took the liberty of removing your quoted post......

 

[Deadman 94 xj]

Re: Spray on Truck bedliner

I missed this one. He's gone now.

I took the liberty of removing your quoted post......

Quoting it probably wasn't my best idea...

 

[Mr_Random]

I'm just cursed with an encyclopaedic memory and free association. I keep a notepad just about anywhere in the house that I spend more than a couple of minutes - FAM can strike at any time, and I don't want to lose any ideas that come up...

Oh, I understand the frustrations of losing those ideas! I should do the same as you, but people would think me insane at work...

See, your reference to the "octomom" automatically sent me into pondering the Dune Series' "axtlotl" tanks, and whether the possibility of genetically engineered children could result from complete control of the parents' genetic contributions (control the dominant and recessive alleles of the sperm and egg both). Essentially, you could clone a human without using anything more than the genetic material of two human parents...

okay tangent off...

As far as eating babies goes; Yum Baby steak!

And how does one come about being diagnosed with FAM? I doubt I have it, I think I'm just a good multitasker, but would it sound familiar to you if I said I can be listening to or reading something and not get distracted persay, but have a seemingly unrelated thought hit me, that slowly unravels into a viable connection?

It seems to help in math and electronics, I make connections that don't absolutely make sense until I've already done them... My teachers have often gotten mad because I'll answer before thinking, but when they ask why it's correct I always have to say; "give me a sec, I've got to think about why."

 

[8Mud]

Oh, I understand the frustrations of losing those ideas! I should do the same as you, but people would think me insane at work...

See, your reference to the "octomom" automatically sent me into pondering the Dune Series' "axtlotl" tanks, and whether the possibility of genetically engineered children could result from complete control of the parents' genetic contributions (control the dominant and recessive alleles of the sperm and egg both). Essentially, you could clone a human without using anything more than the genetic material of two human parents...

okay tangent off...

As far as eating babies goes; Yum Baby steak!

And how does one come about being diagnosed with FAM? I doubt I have it, I think I'm just a good multitasker, but would it sound familiar to you if I said I can be listening to or reading something and not get distracted persay, but have a seemingly unrelated thought hit me, that slowly unravels into a viable connection?

It seems to help in math and electronics, I make connections that don't absolutely make sense until I've already done them... My teachers have often gotten mad because I'll answer before thinking, but when they ask why it's correct I always have to say; "give me a sec, I've got to think about why."

I did a five-six year stint as a forensic auditor. Like you mentioned, showing someone else how you arrived at the answer can be difficult. Kind of a focus, defocus type of process that is hard to explain, almost feeling the flow without losing track of the whole. Likely some sort of statistical/frequency analysis, almost instinctual. What seems obvious to me, is often hard for others to conceptualize. The math almost always works out though.
IMO most everybody is born with a skill set and I've always had a personal policy of trying to listen to every bodies input. The question isn't if they have something to offer or not, it's often a question if their skill set is relevant at the moment. Even the dullest screwdriver in the tool box is going to come in handy sometime. I found out at an early age I had a talent for packing the most in the smallest space, even if what I was packing were odd sizes and shapes.

 

[tbburg]

Even the dullest screwdriver in the tool box is going to come in handy sometime.

The "dull" screwdriver usually comes in handy only to hit with a hammer.

Admit it.

 

[5-90]

Oh, I understand the frustrations of losing those ideas! I should do the same as you, but people would think me insane at work...

See, your reference to the "octomom" automatically sent me into pondering the Dune Series' "axtlotl" tanks, and whether the possibility of genetically engineered children could result from complete control of the parents' genetic contributions (control the dominant and recessive alleles of the sperm and egg both). Essentially, you could clone a human without using anything more than the genetic material of two human parents...

okay tangent off...

As far as eating babies goes; Yum Baby steak!

And how does one come about being diagnosed with FAM? I doubt I have it, I think I'm just a good multitasker, but would it sound familiar to you if I said I can be listening to or reading something and not get distracted persay, but have a seemingly unrelated thought hit me, that slowly unravels into a viable connection?

It seems to help in math and electronics, I make connections that don't absolutely make sense until I've already done them... My teachers have often gotten mad because I'll answer before thinking, but when they ask why it's correct I always have to say; "give me a sec, I've got to think about why."

Yeah - and I'm mildly surprised that "axlotl tanks" didn't come to mind instead of A Modest Proposal, but I'm not warped. I am, in fact, severely bent. That, and AMP is more satirical, which probably explains it. Considering I've read just about the entire Dune series (Frank Herber's original six, and Brian Herbert's prequels and sequels,) I guess the idea just wasn't entertaining or shocking enough to appeal to me. After all, I often enjoy taking a contrary or shocking viewpoint (kinda like my final paper on Ancient Peoples of Mesoamerica. Hell, I had to find some humanities course that wouldn't put me to sleep for twelve weeks...)

I don't know as you can be "officially diagnosed" with FAM, it's something I'd figured out about myself some years ago, and figured out how to harness it. It is often an advantage - even if I can't explain the chain of logic on how I got somewhere to anyone (even to myself...) I can count on the fingers of one nose how many times I've gotten conclusions wrong using it. Logic has a lower hit rate than that (but logic does have its uses, and I did enjoy auditing that course in Symbolic Logic some years ago. I should have taken it for credit...) Logic probably appealed to me because I also enjoy maths - just some of the instructors I've had have been difficult ("show your work" gets a little tedious, and I had a couple of instructors who, if you skipped a step on the paper; would take a red marker, circle where the step should have been, and write "MAGIC!" in large letters while they're docking you points.) However, it does sound as if you're somewhat freely associative and multi-threaded, so don't lose that! It comes in awfully handy (and be sure to carry a notepad in your pocket, and leave one wherever you spend more than a few minutes a day. With a pen. You'll lose a lot if you don't...)

 

[Fritjov]

A Modest Proposal is a more detailed and well argued plan that I've kept with me since early grade school to solve China's food shortage and population control with one stone. I can remember receiving failing grades on algebra homework and tests in high school for not "showing my work" and doing the problems out long hand, it was just extra unnecassary steps. Although I've been yelling at myself mentally to do so after losing a "where did that come from" idea whether it be some insane schematic for a mechanical device, a humorous (at least to me) short story, or a linguistic connection between english and any of the other nordic languages i had never noticed before, I've always been too lazy to set out a notebook for myself, besides I've never liked to write, and my penmanship is beyond horrible, I went to kroger the other day and there were some letters from 1st graders taped to the doors thanking kroger for donations of childrens books, and those little bastards can write better than me. So even if i did keep a notepad with me and had the ambition to record my thoughts before they were replaced with something else entirely I wouldnt be able to read my writing and have the thought return anyways.

 

[5-90]

Heh. Yeah, the penmanship thing I can understand. There's a good reason I write pretty much everything in two sizes of block capitals. The year of drafting I took in high school did more for the readability of anything I write with a pencil than all of the wretched penmanship classes I had in grammar school.

Oddly enough, I ended up being the only left-handed kid in those classes, which just compounded the problem. They kept trying to make me right-handed - everytime they did, I fought them all the harder. Might explain why I'm so damned cranky now...

(Of course, that was a statistical oddity that I really can't explain. Normal distribution of left-handed people in the population is about 9%, or 1 in 11. In my family, it's closer to 1 in 2.5. In school, I was usually 1 in about thirty. Go figure.)

Nordic languages? I take it you've made a hobby of language as well? It's a cheap hobby for me - names and languages. Although, I've noted it easier (for me) to work in the Latin and Arabic families of language - the closest I'd gotten to Nordic was geographical - German and a little bit of Dutch. Spanish, Italian, Latin, Arabic, and Farsi were all easier for me, and I was working on Portuguese, Pastu, Urdu, Greek, and a few others. I wish I could still dig those up - other languages came in rather handy. I did try to pick up Japanese for a while (even while I was dating a Japanese woman who was fluent,) but I couldn't make the connection in Asian languages. Damn.

 

[Mr_Random]

Heh. Yeah, the penmanship thing I can understand. There's a good reason I write pretty much everything in two sizes of block capitals. The year of drafting I took in high school did more for the readability of anything I write with a pencil than all of the wretched penmanship classes I had in grammar school.

Oddly enough, I ended up being the only left-handed kid in those classes, which just compounded the problem. They kept trying to make me right-handed - everytime they did, I fought them all the harder. Might explain why I'm so damned cranky now...

(Of course, that was a statistical oddity that I really can't explain. Normal distribution of left-handed people in the population is about 9%, or 1 in 11. In my family, it's closer to 1 in 2.5. In school, I was usually 1 in about thirty. Go figure.)

Nordic languages? I take it you've made a hobby of language as well? It's a cheap hobby for me - names and languages. Although, I've noted it easier (for me) to work in the Latin and Arabic families of language - the closest I'd gotten to Nordic was geographical - German and a little bit of Dutch. Spanish, Italian, Latin, Arabic, and Farsi were all easier for me, and I was working on Portuguese, Pastu, Urdu, Greek, and a few others. I wish I could still dig those up - other languages came in rather handy. I did try to pick up Japanese for a while (even while I was dating a Japanese woman who was fluent,) but I couldn't make the connection in Asian languages. Damn.

Best thing that helped my penmanship was my engineering class in HS, we were required to write cause and effect and logic chain papers in full caps... I heard that's a common military thing too... But anyways, my handwriting looks WAY worse than my kid brothers'.

I, by far, have not had enough experience to learn as many languages as you, but I find it quite easy to learn and understand any Latin-based language. I tried Japanese at one point... just too foreign, or maybe I'm xenophobic, but either way I couldn't wrap my head around it... maybe some day.

Anyways, to Fritjov, I do the same thing with words and such... I'm near fluent in spanish mainly due to exposure, but I'll randomly jump on to a... um, not conjugate... A word that shares "base" vowels among different languages? Dang it'll come to me later at work... but yeah, I should start writing them down, because they come in handy when I want to speak spanish faster...

 

[Fritjov]

Oh I havent had any experience, just talking to people in chat rooms, and music, and a few immigrant class mates, I've never been much of a traveler, I'm from Maine, and before i came down to live in Tennessee about a year ago, the farthest south i had ever been in my life was Boston, and ive only been into a canada a handful of times.

I've pretty much always admired Nordic languages, Except some of the gay ones, like dutch and finnish, and had a distaste for mediterranian languages I took a year of latin in high school and now the only latin I remember is 'cornelia es puelle habitat i villa rustica' and 'forsvinn du som lyser' just sounds so much more badass. I first was interested in german, and then in norwegian and swedish, i speak more swedish than the 3, and then i was drawn to gaeilge, irish celtic, but all i can remember in gaelic is drug and alcohol references, ta toitcheen agat, do you have a cigarette(you cigarette with-you, ti'am oelta, I'm shitfaced.

From all the connections you make when you learn these languages, you cant help but laugh when people repeat the phrase, "hey did you know engish is %80 latin?" i know a day doesnt go by in my life when i dont use the word hydrolosis atleast once.

i can read the old futhark runic, and cyrrilic and looked at phoenecian once but only know half of those, but i cant read arabic, the only thing that i can recognize is allah aqbar, and the only arabic i can speak is the shahada, although i dont even know if i speak it in arabic or farsi, my mother is from america, straight up WASP, but when she was younger she met an iranian man, who was visiting florida for plane lessons, he was training to be a airline pilot. long story short she married him and lived in tehran teaching the shah's air force how to speak english, Aprevious husband, not my father, she lived there about 5 years up until the revolution and she came back here in '79 and never went back. So I was lucky enough to grow up with alot of good stories like smoking opium with the shahs head of secret service, but I wasnt allowed to listen to pink floyd or play with squirt guns, or pop baloons. so the only farsi i know is that 1-20 song, and that the word for elephant fart and popcorn are the same, oh and a turkey bird is bugalamun however i dont know how to spell it.