My objective is your enlightenment.
Not from an arrogant, "enlightened" perspective of my own, but rather from the perspective of one who is always searching for wisdom, self-knowledge, interesting things in the spiritual and secular arenas, and diverse subject matter. As I encounter sparking topics in everyday life or in focused seeking, I'll offer up in these posts what it means as far as I'm concerned.
Here's a smattering of most visited or personal favorites:
Jackie’s idea, via Alice, via Shefaly, who has tagged me. And who am I to refuse such a long and distinguished pedigree as this meme clearly has? My only regret is that I am wholly unqualified to weigh in on a topic for cooks and other lovers of the food experience, but here goes [and the British spellings are the meme’s, not my own :)]:
What’s your favourite table?
The one at my dad’s parents’ old house in Penn Yan, NY. The house itself was over 200 years old at the time (still is, for that matter), which is ANCIENT by US standards. The table seemed older than that, though it was not, and it was long, narrow, old, heavy, polished and knotted pine, set in the kitchen, where everyone just hung out and talked. The energy of the entire large family was centered there, I think – or at least I thought, as a young boy.
What would you have for your last supper?
Are we talking along the lines of “The Last Supper,” with close friends and relations and camaraderie, all while the thick atmosphere of impending betrayal followed by painful sacrificial death lingers on the horizon? Or is the setting a prison cell awaiting execution? Or simply the last meal before departing from family for an extended or permanent leave? In any case, the very nature of a last supper, the knowledge that something was about to occur that would nullify any potential future occurrences of that meal, would result in my caring less about WHAT was for supper than with WHOM it would be shared. And at the risk of leaving out acquaintances, I would broadly say all of my family members in Texas (nothing against those in New England, North Carolina, Arizona, or California) and all of my friends living within 60 miles of me – as for the rest, I don’t think we’d have much to talk about, and it would only take away from my time with the ones who matter most.
What’s your poison?
Vanilla vodka. Which, back in the day, would have been expanded to include all
vodkas. That’s why I avoid it without
proper supervision and stick to all of the other members of the alcohol family
instead. Mountain Dew would run a close
second, but I have never lost days of my life and millions of brain cells to its
after-effects, so I’m going with vodka.
Name your three desert island ingredients.
Garlic. Sugar. Butter. I could rule the world, or at least the island, if I had those at my disposal.
What would you put in Room 101?
Strictly foodly-speaking, I would say vegetables. I do go entire days without eating any veggies, as bad for my health as that is claimed to be. I don’t necessarily abhor all of them, but when prioritizing and then allocating my eating time and effort, vegetables never seem to make the cut; there are simply too many other things I’d rather eat.
Which book gets you cooking?
I believe it’s just called Betty Crocker Cookbook, or something similarly generic. I’ve had it forever, just like the one my parents had when I grew up and taught myself to cook as a youngster (I think they thought I’d grow up to be a chef one day with as much time and interest as I put into it). Nothing flashy or gimmicky or “celebrity chef-ish” about it, just yummy basic recipes for everything.
What’s your dream dinner party line-up?
This is a tough one, because I only speak English, and the people who most fascinate me speak languages other than English for the most part. But if we could all magically understand each other, I’d invite Moses, Zoroaster, Siddhartha Gautama, and Jesus of Nazareth, Plato, and Immanuel Kant. I would hope for all of them to clear things up and reconcile their experiences to what Jesus taught, with Plato being there to process it all (since I would be unable to do so, even if they spoke in English) and put it into terms that were universally understandable to people, adding Kant to the mix as the Enlightenment figure most amenable to religion and least likely to shoot the whole thing down without further consideration, as well as the most brilliant of the German and French philosophers (debatable, of course, but one is entitled to one’s own opinion, and this is mine!).
What was your childhood teatime treat?
We don’t have “teatime” in Texas, but we do drink iced tea, which was unheard of in the North when I was a kid. Chocolate chip cookies, preferably homemade, were the best snack treats that I recall.
What was your most memorable meal?
It would have to be a composite of all of the Thanksgiving dinners I’ve had at my parents’ home growing up, along with the ones at both sets of grandparents’ homes in Penn Yan as a little boy. No one memory of a specific meal comes to mind, but I can vividly picture the table settings, the faces, the dishes (always the same, depending on whose house it took place at), the Dallas Cowboy games on tv, the Willie Nelson Christmas album (“Pretty Paper” was the name of it) that my parents always broke out at Thanksgiving… .
What was your biggest food disaster?
It wasn’t much in the way of disasters, but one anniversary when my wife and I were cooking steak and lobster, we lost track of the steak, it caught fire from some fat drippings, smoked up the house, and we had to run the flaming steak over to the kitchen sink to rinse it off. Good times.
What’s the worst meal you’ve ever had?
Never had a “worst” meal.
Who’s your food hero/food villain?
At the risk of sounding too sentimental, the food hero is my dad. Our place was where all of the friends hung out, for one reason and one reason only: they knew they’d get fed, and it’d be delicious. And to this day, no matter whose home the gathering is at, dad’s still the one doing all of the cooking for all of us down to the grandchildren, breakfast lunch dinner and snacks, seemingly enjoying every second of the process.
No such thing as a food villain in my book, as anyone who prepares or provides food for others can’t be all that bad!
Nigella or Delia?
Being in America, and never watching any food channels or shows, I have no idea who either of these people are, apart from reading what others on this meme have written. So no comment.
Vegetarians: genius or madness?
Militant vegetarians are clearly psychopathic, but the peaceful ones who do it for their own reasons (the parallels to religion here are just jumping off of the page) have my respect and admiration – even though I would NEVER, EVER forego eating meat myself, nor hope to understand those that do.
Fast food or fresh food?
Fresh is overrated (I eat vast amounts of frozen and canned food) with the exception of fruit, which must be fresh; give me fast, easy, no-mess food every time.
Who would you most like to cook for?
Anyone who enjoys meals made with eggs, chicken, garlic, or butter.
What would you cook to impress a date?
I think Italian dishes are most impressive to a date, with the vibrant sounds, smells, and colors involved.
Make a wish.
That everyone in the world would stop imposing their wills upon any other person, with or without their permission.
Being the anti-social introverted blogger that I am, I am tagging no one (or everyone) to continue this meme. But my deepest thanks to Shefaly, who tasked me with what I thought would be a thoroughly unfulfilling rumination on food and what has instead turned out to be a really enjoyable excursion filled with memories of some of the best times of my life - all of which, in some way or another, involved food!
Les Ruins ("The Ruins"), by Constantin Francois de Volney, is the publication that resulted from this Frenchman's visits to the middle east (Syria, Egypt, the eastern Mediterranean) in the late 1700's. He cites the words of the ancients in his descriptions of those lands, and his passages on the ancient, ancient Ethiopians as described by Diodorus of Sicily (Greek historian, 90-21 BC) and also Strabo (Hellenized Roman from Turkey, 63 BC - 24 AD) and Lucian (Syrian Roman, 125-180 AD - like the others, also wrote in Greek), who in turn cite previous Greek historians as well as the subject peoples themselves.
While meditating on the fates of formerly fabulous civilizations that have been reduced to uninhabited ruins, which struck him very deeply as he wandered through those very desert ruins, he writes of a "Genius" who imparts much knowledge to him. Here's what he has to say about Ethiopia, which is simply and utterly fascinating to one who was not aware that this line of thought existed through the millennia only to be recounted in a famous French work over 200 years ago:
"And the Genius proceeded to enumerate and point out the objects to me: Those piles of ruins, said he, which you see in that narrow valley watered by the Nile, are the remains of opulent cities, the pride of the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia.* Behold the wrecks of her metropolis, of Thebes with her hundred palaces,** the parent of cities, and monument of the caprice of destiny. There a people, now forgotten, discovered, while others were yet barbarians, the elements of the arts and sciences. A race of men now rejected from society for their sable skin and frizzled hair, founded on the study of the laws of nature, those civil and religious systems which still govern the universe."
His notes on the above passage elaborate as follows:
"* In the new Encyclopedia 3rd vol. Antiquities is published a memoir, respecting the chronology of the twelve ages anterior to the passing of Xerxes into Greece, in which I conceive myself to have proved that upper Egypt formerly composed a distinct kingdom known to the Hebrews by the name of Kous and to which the appellation of Ethiopia was specially given. This kingdom preserved its independence to the time of Psammeticus; at which period, being united to the Lower Egypt, it lost its name of Ethiopia, which thenceforth was bestowed upon the nations of Nubia and upon the different tribes of blacks, including Thebes, their metropolis."
Finally, further along in his notes with citations of Diodorus and Lucian of the Ethiopians as Fathers of Science and Religion:
"What Diodorus says of the Thebans, every author, and himself elsewhere, repeat of the Ethiopians, which tends more firmly to establish the identity of this place of which I have spoken. "The Ethiopians conceive themselves," says he, lib. iii., "to be of greater antiquity than any other nation: and it is probable that, born under the sun's path, its warmth may have ripened them earlier than other men. They suppose themselves also to be the inventors of divine worship, of festivals, of solemn assemblies, of sacrifices, and every other religious practice. They affirm that the Egyptians are one of their colonies, and that the Delta, which was formerly sea, became land by the conglomeration of the earth of the higher country which was washed down by the Nile. They have, like the Egyptians, two species of letters, hieroglyphics, and the alphabet; but among the Egyptians the first was known only to the priests, and by them transmitted from father to son, whereas both species were common among the Ethiopians.""
""The Ethiopians," says Lucian, page 985, "were the first who invented the science of the stars, and gave names to the planets, not at random and without meaning, but descriptive of the qualities which they conceived them to possess; and it was from them that this art passed, still in an imperfect state, to the Egyptians.""
Couldn't have said it more succinctly myself!
Have you ever seen a black priest? Catholic priest, to be more specific. I have never attended Mass conducted by a black priest, but I have seen many black pastors, which are the Protestant leaders of congregations. And I've also watched a black "bishop" on t.v., Bishop T.D. Jakes (a famous Dallas-area pastor at a very large, well-known, predominantly African-American church). If there is a difference between a bishop such as Bishop Jakes and a pastor, I don't know what it is. I DO know that in the Catholic Church, we have a hierarchy of clergy, with Bishop being a step up from a Priest.
In any case, watching Bishop Jakes as well as another African-American pastor on occasion always has the same effect on me: I feel energized, I am excited about God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit, I feel a great sense of urgency to determine what exactly the Lord's plans for me on earth are and to then embark on a journey right that minute to work towards accomplishing those plans, and finally, I feel obligated to give them some money. And I don't get angry at anyone for making me feel that way - I just feel like, right at that instant, something is compelling to make a contribution right then and there, for my own sake and the sake of others. I don't really feel ANY of those things at Catholic Masses, although I do donate every Sunday because, unlike the thoughts I have about the Protestant ministers, I feel like someone's actually accounting for and keeping tabs of my money, and that it will go to appropriate causes as seen fit by the Church. When I see the cars the really successful Protestant pastors drive, the houses they live in, the clothes and jewelry their wives wear (wives who almost never have full-time employment of their own, I have noted), I can't help but make the connection that all of those things are directly paid for by what's taken up in the collection baskets on Sunday. That seems wrong to me.
So what's preferred: feeling inspired by a powerful public speaker who, more often then not, seems more motivated by and entitled to my money than I myself am, or dutifully sitting through the current incarnation of over a thousand years of ritual tradition, leaving it up to myself to be open to the Holy Spirit if and when it so chooses to enter and work through me?
The Abbasids, a branch of Islam whose Imam was descended in a line from an uncle of the Prophet Muhammad, overthrew the ruling Umayyad line of caliphs who ruled from Damascus around the year 750. Baghdad became the seat of power for the Abbasids when they took control of the Dar al-Islam ("House of Islam," or the lands ruled by the caliphate). When the Abbasids entered Damascus and the royal palace there, a terrible slaughter ensued, with all who fled being chased by horsemen and cut down as they ran.
The various divisions within Islam were, and still are, frequently as brutal towards other branches of Islam as they were to other religions. The same can be said of Christianity. It can also be said that these two religions, Christianity and Islam, more than any others, have employed the sword to spread their beliefs to those who did not previously share them. But I believe that fact is more of a testament to the time that these religions took root and the state of humanity at that time than anything that can be attributed to the compassionate belief systems that the religions intended to promote. Although I believe Christ was the Son of God and the Son of Man, who never led any battles or killed another person or sought the death of anyone at any place or any time, whereas Muhammad was a military leader who directed the slaughter of thousands in battle and enjoyed the fruits of that astonishing string of victories, I also know that many (not all) of the teachings of Islam and of Christianity are virtually identical in spirit and in practice. Muhammad was directly responsible for transmitting the words of the Qu'ran to humanity, whether the Angel Gabriel (Jibril) delivered them straight from God (Allah) or not, and for that, at that brutal period of mankind's brutal history, the world owes much thanks.
At various times in the histories of each religion, it was acceptable to proclaim one's belief and be okay with the fact that your neighbor held a different one (even though you felt bad for him and the future of his soul). It is mostly that way today. For this I am grateful, and more than that, I am hopeful.
There is a phrase that has been attributed to various religious combatants in the moments before merciless slaughter of men, women, and children was to ensue, with the English translation of the original languages going along the lines of "kill them all; God [or Allah, or the Lord, etc] will recognize his own." The earliest instance of that sentiment that I have come across has been pinned on my own Catholic Church, at the time of the Cathar heresy. The Cathars were a group in an area of south/southeastern France, Languedoc, that were a thorn in the side of the Church around the year 1200. Theirs was a sort of resurrection of early beliefs, before official Orthodoxy (literally "right thinking," as opposed to heterodoxy or "different thinking") had been established in the first few centuries after the death and Resurrection of Christ, that Christ was actually of two natures: one divine, and one human. The version of Christianity that won out, however, was that Christ was both human and divine at the same time, rather than one at a time.
One of the main reasons that this group was allowed to exist within Catholic communities (remember that this is hundreds of years before the Protestant Reformation, but even the Reformation did not subscribe to this heresy) and why its membership took off at such an alarming rate was that the Cathars actually exemplified what Christians were "supposed" to be, as opposed to the frequently corrupt and wrong-living clergy and Church holy men of the time. Townspeople were rapidly converting to Catharism, believing that they must in fact be the REAL heirs to Christ's teachings and ways, since they were the ones walking the walk, and the Church was having none of it.
So Pope Innocent III (great name) has this great idea to realize the benefits of a "Crusade," i.e. keeping noblemen and fighting busy while promising them land and other spoils of victory, while accomplishing the goal of stamping out this heresy once and for all. At the city of Beziers, on July 22, 1209, surrounded by a Catholic army of the Pope, the mostly Catholic citizenry refused to turn over their Cathar friends, who were but a small minority in the town, for fear of what the army would do to them (burn them all at the stake as heretics). Upon this refusal, the army entered the town with the order to slaughter the heretics. When the question was raised "how will we know Catholic from Cathar?" the reply came to "kill them all, for God will recognize his own."
Over 10,000 and possibly upwards of 20,000 men, women, and children were put to the sword, and the town was burned to the ground. The "crusade" against the Cathar heresy, called the Albigensian Crusade, would proceed until the goal was accomplished in 1255, with no more people claiming to be Cathars.
Or, if you prefer Greek to the Latin title of this post, then "hodos, aletheia, zoe" would be the closest concepts to "way, truth, life" - as in the Gospel of John's recounting of Christ's statement (in English): "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life."
The Greeks were not recognized by other civilizations as a particularly "truthful" people; in fact, they did not even have a word that strictly translates to the English "truth" or the Latin "veritas." From Greek mythology and history, it would seem that they valued guile and slyness over honesty (the gods "tricking" [lying to] humans into doing things they were not otherwise inclined to do; the ruse of the Trojan Horse to end that war; these are but a few drops of water in a vast sea of examples). The Persians, on the other hand, as well as the Romans, were known as possessing the virtue of being truthful, but virtue is a relative term. The Greeks simply did not see it as being as virtuous as the ability to cunningly outwit adversaries in any of life's encounters.
The word "aletheia" is an interesting study unto itself, and rather than meaning the same thing as the English word "truth," would more accurately be translated as the quality of not being hidden: e.g., the revealing of everything that is known about something. This original spirit of the Greek version of truth has clearly been lost on today's leaders, be they political, executive, or otherwise inclined to sway public opinion in one way or another. Now, telling the truth has become (for some) only the strictest, most literal revelation of facts or details that are inquired of, and a very far cry from the speaker "revealing all that is known about something, leaving nothing hidden."
When you communicate with people, do you deal with the "truth" of our modern conception, attempting to reveal as little and non-incriminating as possible without resorting to outright falsehood, or do you attempt to fully engage with the notion of "aletheia" as set forth by the ancient Greeks?
A little freaked out this morning when I saw this online Wired article dated yesterday, as it goes into great detail about the subject of one of my very own posts here on April 8, but I'll recover.
One man's name is Piotr Wozniak, and his story and method of devising a method to remember things long-term (as opposed to forgetting them soon after the test or class is concluded) is an utterly astonishing tale as far as I'm concerned. What he discovered through his own painstakingly detailed research on himself as the test subject, using handwritten logs over a period of time, served as independent verification of studies conducted in labs long ago that were somehow never publicized or seized upon by the intellectual community or the public. He knew nothing of those studies (he conducted his own self research back in the 1980's before such information was readily accessible to all).
The other hero is the man who created this field over a hundred years ago with his own research and observation. Here's an excerpt from Wired that talks about him and then about Piotr's SuperMemo program, but do your best to set aside 10 minutes or so to get through the entire article (which is actually about Piotr's method for employing working aspects of this mental phenomenon) yourself:
"In the late 1800s, a German scientist named Hermann Ebbinghaus made up lists of nonsense syllables and measured how long it took to forget and then relearn them. (Here is an example of the type of list he used: bes dek fel gup huf jeik mek meun pon daus dor gim ke4k be4p bCn hes.) In experiments of breathtaking rigor and tedium, Ebbinghaus practiced and recited from memory 2.5 nonsense syllables a second, then rested for a bit and started again. Maintaining a pace of rote mental athleticism that all students of foreign verb conjugation will regard with awe, Ebbinghaus trained this way for more than a year. Then, to show that the results he was getting weren't an accident, he repeated the entire set of experiments three years later. Finally, in 1885, he published a monograph called Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology. The book became the founding classic of a new discipline.
Ebbinghaus discovered many lawlike regularities of mental life. He was the first to draw a learning curve. Among his original observations was an account of a strange phenomenon that would drive his successors half batty for the next century: the spacing effect.
Ebbinghaus showed that it's possible to dramatically improve learning by correctly spacing practice sessions. On one level, this finding is trivial; all students have been warned not to cram. But the efficiencies created by precise spacing are so large, and the improvement in performance so predictable, that from nearly the moment Ebbinghaus described the spacing effect, psychologists have been urging educators to use it to accelerate human progress. After all, there is a tremendous amount of material we might want to know. Time is short.
How Supermemo Works
SuperMemo is a program that keeps track of discrete bits of information
you've learned and want to retain. For example, say you're studying
Spanish. Your chance of recalling a given word when you need it
declines over time according to a predictable pattern. SuperMemo tracks
this so-called forgetting curve and reminds you to rehearse your
knowledge when your chance of recalling it has dropped to, say, 90
percent. When you first learn a new vocabulary word, your chance of
recalling it will drop quickly. But after SuperMemo reminds you of the
word, the rate of forgetting levels out. The program tracks this new decline and waits longer to quiz you the next time."
This is filed under "Religion" rather than "Seeking," as opposed to most of my spiritual searching-type posts which are filed under "Seeking." Why? Because, for some reason, abortion seems to be associated with Catholicism in particular, rather than Christianity or other faiths in general. Again I ask, why? To this "why?", I don't have an answer. Why is it that anti-abortion is a well-known Catholic stereotype (or at least it's supposed to be - there are some that go so far as to claim, from both sides, that if one isn't anti-abortion, then how could one consider him or herself to be Catholic? However, there is far more to Catholicism than abortion, and that's all I have to say about that here), yet not so for other faiths?
It's an unanswerable question, in that it should not even BE a question of whether religious beliefs dictate support of choice or non-choice, regarding whatever "choice" is in question. This is a question of life or death - not of when life begins, or when intelligent life begins, or when consciousness arises, or when the formation of a soul occurs, for these are also not knowable - at least not in the foreseeable future. It is, quite simply, a question of whether one believes that a human being can decide to end the physical existence of another human being for the sake of economic or lifestyle convenience, or for the possibility of the avoidance of a non-conventional life to be led by an as yet unborn person that will have a physical makeup that is different from that of "normal" human beings. It is also not a question of whether a person ought to be allowed to protect herself from the possibility of physical harm that may arise from carrying a pregnancy to term and giving birth; that point is readily conceded by all sides of the debate, and rightfully so.
Were primitive societies morally correct in their practice of discarding newborns who were deemed unfit to live and exist in their societies? Were later societies morally correct when they decided that life didn't begin until the baby was born, allowing the unborn child to be killed at any time up until birth? Are WE now morally correct in deciding that babies can be killed in the womb for any reason (or for no reason at all), provided that they haven't been alive long enough to really count as human being, say, just a few months? That the timing or method of killing them is the real issue, rather than the actual act of killing?
The wording I choose to pose these questions, as well as the questions themselves, amply reveals my beliefs in this area. I hope you agree with me, and if not, I hope you are offended or even angered by this post, because this is an issue that, clearly, people cannot "agree to disagree" on, as it is the issue of life itself.
Right off the bat, Pope Benedict XVI said some controversial things about Islam and its contribution. And it definitely rubbed me the wrong way; would Pope John Paul II have made such remarks? How could those words help bring together the two faiths? As it turns out, in my view, those were not relevant questions to be asking of this Pope. He is not Pope John Paul II, and he is likely not interested in bringing together the two faiths. In fact, some of his actions could be taken as "hostile" to any attempt at reconciliation between the faiths, and that just seems wrong, doesn't it?
Not necessarily. First and foremost, this Pope (judging by his spoken and written words, which are voluminous both before and during his Papacy) seems to be extremely well-read and well-versed in not just Catholicism, not just Christianity, but also Judaism. He cites Christian, Jewish, and Muslim thinkers in his work, and does so in a thoughtful, even admiring manner. The levels he delves into regarding the thought processes of other scholars and of the writers of bible are truly astounding, seeming to encompass several lifetimes worth of study and thought on the subjects. In his view, it's probably not necessary to reconcile faiths; in his mind, their is only one true catholic and apostolic way, and it is the way of the Church. The others are really not of interest to him, outside of what they can lend to his understanding of his own faith (in the case of the Old Testament) and he does not always take great care to hide that lack of reverence for other traditions. Can he be faulted for this? Here is a man who does all he can to understand what is of the greatest importance to him and to mankind, including considering all sources of knowledge and exegesis, yet who is not humbled by viewpoints outside of the Church, since to him they are of little consequence.
As different from John Paul II as he comes across, I must conclude that both men were/are true and worthy leaders of the Church, and I cannot help but embrace both of their styles and efforts for what they are and what they represent. It does present some difficulty for me, being a person of excessive reconciliatory nature, to take a path that does not encompass all - but the exclusion is not my choice, it is theirs. I will treat with respect, benevolence, and even love, all of those who will have it, regardless of belief or religious views; however, I continue to believe what I believe in matters of faith in God and His only Son and the tradition and authority of the Church as handed down by Jesus of Nazareth and established by Peter and Paul after the death and Resurrection, and this belief says that while I can and will enjoy my time with a multitude of "different believers," I am none too confident in how things are going to work out for them when their time on earth is through. Their choice, not mine.
I have a problem: data cannot be dumped into my brain as fast as I need it to be. The 4 main inputs, my 2 eyes and 2 ears, are limited by my speed of reading and the speed of speech and audio comprehension. At those limited rates, I will never, ever take in everything on my ever-growing list of things to know.
This technical limitation occasionally leads to wishes of a direct-to-brain interface of visual and audio media, skipping the actual joy of experiencing the accumulation of it and arriving at a state of fully informed bliss. Today, however, I took that thought process a little further, and realized that maybe, just maybe, there's a reason for the information transfer speed limit: the world has produced so much data, so much information, that if one attempted to transfer all of it (or even a small percentage of it) to one's brain, there might be an issue. I envision something akin to filling up a hard drive and getting an "out of disk space" error, which not only interrupts the data transfer process, but also results in major performance issues for the entire system. If we did contain the sum total of the world's data output inside of our brains, could our brain actually wade through all of it in its role as information processor, which is one of its other central functions (along with serving as information storage facility and director of the central nervous system)? I doubt it.
The brain is wondrous in its role as cpu, but sorely lacks in terms of storage capacity and data input, in my view. The solution would be something along the lines of "hot pluggable" information modules, comparable to loading a different dvd for each region of the country into your GPS nav unit, or a new movie into your dvd player. The information modules would contain every scrap of data ever produced for a given subject matter, instantly accessible for an individual human being to jack into and make of it what he or she will. I think Google is on that path with its project to digitize books, as is Project Gutenberg. These efforts address only books, and just a relative few of them at that, but it's easy to see where this could eventually lead.
Which brings us back to my original desire, which is a direct-to-brain interface for the data. The longing to know all that has been or can be known is both a blessing and a curse, but for me, mostly a blessing.
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