The temperature is supposed to get up into the mid-seventies (23-24 C) for the first time in a week or so. It's been cold and dank and cloudy for the last six days in a row. What a drag, man. The Sun is out in full force today, however, and I'm gonna take a long shower and lay around naked in the sun for a while just to luxuriate like a rich man.
I spent about two hours or so reading an article on the state of SSDs (Solid State Drives) at the Anandtech web site this morning:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=1
The guy that runs this site is a fine writer in general, but he's one of the best explainers of technology for all levels of experience I'm aware of. When he sets out to inform you about some new technology, what he writes is probably gonna be your best shot at understanding it unless you're as close to the fire as he is. He wrote a previous review of SSDs that practically changed the whole industry because he found them grossly lacking, and he said so in no uncertain terms. Brave lad. He bit the hand that feeds him to get them to do right. One of them did, and it made all the SSD manufacturers better for it.
I read the first article and found it very useful. This new article on SSDs is very timely. He openly admits that the Intel SSDs are as good as it gets, and although the improvements the other SSD manufacturers have made increased Intel's competitors marketability, Intel SSDs still rule the roost. They're more expensive, but for the superior performance thay offer Anandtech appears to think it's worth it.
Having to pay that huge penalty for my pipe springing a leak has dampened my excitement about the possibility of installing an SSD in my Mac Mini. I read where I'd have to upgrade my Operating System to do it anyway. The hard drive is the biggest bottleneck in the Mac Mini, and even one of the cheaper SSDs would change everything including the slow graphics. Shuttling data between a slow 5400 RPM hard drive and the motherboard graphics chips would change dramatically. I'll just have to sacrifice some other diversions that give me a little pleasure. How much I spend for food is about the only place I could watch my pennies. I'm overweight anyway.
I'm thinking more about memory systems lately. I've read somewhere the Koran was created by professional memorizers who listened to Mohammed's sermons, and then recited them to professional scribes. Islam seems like it''s based on these professional's capitalism. Why would it not be? Everything else is... or will be.
I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person who is convinced that a person who has a highly developed long-term memory can make a middling living from remembering stuff that other people don't know how to preserve. Many of the systems of expertise some people practice amounts to the systematic way they employ memory pegs or hooks to associate with any event they wanna remember.
The constellations of stars can be used as pegs for remembering things. They're famous for being in the same place for long periods of time. This really is a complex way of remembering things. The learning curve can be daunting. Just look up into the heavens on a crisp cold winter night when the stars seem so close you can reach out and touch them. The appearance of them are so random that you can pick out any part of the sky canopy and find an assemblage of stars that look like the Little Dipper. Just keep looking in the same direction for a while with the intent of locating the Little Dipper where you're looking, and your mind will assemble what's there into what you're filtering for.
After you have memorized some of the Major Constellations you have to memorize the myths, stories, and metaphors associated with specific groups of stars. Some of which may be only recognizable by your mentor. Why not? Any group of stars can be used symbolically by anybody who decides what they want them to mean. It's the epitome of me-and-thee-ing.
There are natural holy spots on Earth that are holy spots because they have distinctive features that can serve as memory hooks. Mountains are particularly useful because normally they stay the shape they are for a long time. I used to have reason to drive to Drexel, North Carolina just off of I-40. On a clear day I could tell how close I was to Drexel by a small mountain called High Peak. It was located on the other side of I-40 from Drexel and served as a landmark. A holy place is usually loaded with landmarks for using as hooks to associate specific memories with.
Mount Rushmore is like that, but what makes it a holy spot is partly man-made. I've been there a couple of times. Mount Rushmore wouldn't attract much attention without the faces of four Presidents sculpted on it. Now, the sculptures make the surrounding mountains landmarks of a Mount Rushmore visit, and it's a dandy wholy spot. Bow-tied conservatives worshiping patriotism. '-)
Temples and museums and huge libraries are deliberately built with their own distinctive features for the specific purpose of be-co-me-ing a holy spot. People who commit the distinctive features of a certain edifice to memory for the purpose of using it's features and statuary as memory hooks are said to be "of that temple", just as college graduates are said to be of that university. The Greek temples had teachers like Plato and Socrates hanging around the stoas and porches. They lectured alright, but one of their main jobs was to help their students memorize every feature of that temple. I'm guessing it was actually the only lessons they needed to become professional memorizers to serve the tops. If they learned to read and write and work numbers, they were even more useful, and sometime exalted.
The printing press was probably responsible for graven images taking over the mental direction of homo sapiens. With a memory system like that of astrology or temples (as above, so below) in place, learning the various systems of graven images should be easier at every turn.
There is another source to consider than systems of expertise. That's a system without a learning curve. A pre-existing system that can only be brought into consciousness by being revealed for what it is. It is in place even before you are born and will be there when you die, after the learned systems will be dust unto dust long before you realize you never needed them.
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
