Introducing The Forumistas' Help Desk

[oddoneout]

Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.

True - but it's not always apparent at the time which is which. And there's also the odd satisfaction that comes when a useless fact turns out to be, if not truly useful, at least apposite.
Mind you, these days just remembering any fact is sometimes an achievement, let alone worrying about the quality of it!

[eighthobstruction]

....anyone know the meaning of the word eclaircissement?....

[cloughie]

Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.

No chance - the useless stuff always wins - and it’s a lifetime’s pickings from even before starting school. The memory is full.

[Joseph K]

[french frank]

'How is "education" supposed to make me feel smarter?' Good question. Actually, Homer might have been reading that Sherlock Holmes story. Having learned about the Copernican Theory Holmes said he would do his best to forget it, a useless piece of information that would be like lumber in the little attic of his brain.

[Bryn]

....anyone know the meaning of the word eclaircissement?....

Oh, that's easy. To enlighten, it's cutting open an elongated choux bun.

[BBMmk2]

I’d like to know how to load up something from an external site!

[cloughie]

....anyone know the meaning of the word eclaircissement?....

Ask Sheridan!

[Dave2002]

No chance - the useless stuff always wins - and it’s a lifetime’s pickings from even before starting school. The memory is full.

Can anyone remember the name of the cartoon series about 40 odd years ago about some peculiar little creatures (might have been the Clangers) which only could cope with four "memory" locations, so if a new idea went in, an old one popped out? Probably narrated by Oliver Postgate.

[Richard Barrett]

....anyone know the meaning of the word eclaircissement?....

... reminds me of some novel, by Samuel Beckett if I'm not mistaken, in which a character asks whether it's possible to use the word "aporia" without knowing what it means.

(Put that in your pipe and smoke it, anti-intellectuals!)

[Dave2002]

Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.

Has anyone noticed that the quote has a flaw? How does one know that a fact is useless before attempting to store it?

[vinteuil]

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... here;s a good para to stretch the grey cells -

"The Unnamable challenges Enlightenment versions of progress whereby journeys and stories advance toward an end, but to equate the work with impasse is to miss its generative potential. Invoking Derrida's re-conceptualization of aporia as a refashioning of the meaning of progress, I read the novel's radical doubt as an alternative to dialectical advancement – as a strategy for redesigning the concept of the limit in concert with one's surroundings. What The Unnamable dramatizes under the sign of aporia is a temporary imbrication within one's environment – a merging of self, words, earth and mud – that may generate unpredictable forms, metamorphoses."



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[cloughie]

Has anyone noticed that the quote has a flaw? How does one know that a fact is useless before attempting to store it?

...and one person’s trash is another person’s treasure! If you know anyone who wants a load of trash please let me know.

[Richard Barrett]

... here;s a good para to stretch the grey cells -

Here we are: “What to do now, what shall I do now, what should I do, in my situation, how proceed? By aporia pure and simple? Or by affirmations and negations invalidated as uttered, or sooner or later. Generally speaking. There must be other shifts. Otherwise it would be quite hopeless. But it is quite hopeless. I should mention before going any further that I say aporia without knowing what it means. Can one be ephectic otherwise than unawares? I don't know.” (from The Unnamable indeed)

[vinteuil]

"His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge ... My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it."...

... that Sherlock Holmes story. Having learned about the Copernican Theory Holmes said he would do his best to forget it, a useless piece of information that would be like lumber in the little attic of his brain.

... and yet Sherlock Holmes as so often contradicts himself. It was his reading and remembering the 'useless facts' about Cyanea capillata which enabled him years later to solve the case in The Adventure of the Lion's Mane ...


"But how did you know, Mr Holmes?"
"I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles. That phrase 'the Lion's Mane' haunted my mind. I knew I had seen it somewhere in an unexpected context.... "

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