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#104408 05/31/03 05:08 PM
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Reference starting at the bottom.
Here's the dilemma, Jackie.

I have some time throughout the day, a few minutes here and there - sometimes it's long enough to read through an entire thread, but usually not. I can start at the top or at the bottom. I used to start at the top and sometimes I still do, but I found often I had said things that were already said or that the subject had changed. I could break it up and read an entire thread in several sessions except I will have 1) lost my train of thought and 2) forgotten anything I'd read earlier. (Cursed with a small short-term buffer.)

I try to scan the new topics, but I only read a small fraction of posts generally unless it's raining outside and the kids are out with their mom.

Beyond this - if I get someone else's idea stuck in my head or their words stuck to my lips or fingertips - it's not done by purpose but only because it resonated, I guess, and I inadvertently osmoted it. Maybe subconsciously I'm thinking "Gee, I wish I'da said that." Consciously I don't recall having read those particular words. In your case, I'm sure I started at the end and didn't read yours. I blurted a random brainfart that came to me.

It's a poor excuse for plagiarism or being conversationally boorish, of course, but it's not like I go out of my way to imitate other people.

k



#104409 06/01/03 01:19 PM
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In reply to:

I inadvertently osmoted it.


I like osmoting. Osmoting is one of my preferred ways of assimilating information.


#104410 06/01/03 03:21 PM
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Dear WW: There may be a drawback to "osmoting". Osmosis
depends on existence of a membrane that it permeable to water and some very small ions, but not to large ions.
So by analogy, you could absorb only little ideas.


#104411 06/01/03 10:52 PM
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wwh, so that explains that.


#104412 06/02/03 06:22 AM
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... and thus spake WWH, the Zarathustra of literalism ...


#104413 06/02/03 09:46 AM
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[Ahem]

You can osmote big ideas if they are made up of small components.


#104414 06/02/03 04:33 PM
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Osmoting prevents the ideas from being watered down. Besides, I like the way the words "inadvertant osmosis" feel on my tongue.


#104415 06/02/03 06:20 PM
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Actually, osmosis "waters up". If you take a sample of blood, and add water to it, water penetrates the red cells by osmosis, and causes them to swell until they burst.
I assisted at a post mortem in the Philippines on a soldier who was given 12 bottles of Glucose in water, and no saline. He had enough hemolysis to kill him.


#104416 06/03/03 01:12 AM
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Keith, I was only teasing; you do just fine! And, I've got you beat--only a glimmer of recollection prevented me from posting a self-osmosis, not long ago!


#104417 06/04/03 09:59 AM
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I wondered whether there was a connection between cacography and the expression 'cack-handed', but it seems not:

Cack-handed: Chiefly British 1. Left-handed. 2. Awkward; clumsy. Perhaps from Old Norse keikr, bent backwards; akin to Danish keite, left-handed.



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