Re: Apple II: Second Best Tech Product of All Time!

[pausch@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <1176044523.086504.83490@y66g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>,
sicklittlemonkey <Nick.Westgate@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Apr 8, 5:12 pm, pau...@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter) wrote:
>> In article <20070408181642119+1...@News.Individual.NET>,
>> Roger Johnstone  <r...@roger.geek.nz.removethisbit> wrote:
>>> "We salute those amazing products that changed technology--
>>> and our lives--forever."
>>
>> Another exaggreation....  does the guy who wrote that have the
>> faintest idea of what "forever" actually means?  Does he really
>> believe that when the Sun has gone nova and mankind has been extinct
>> for millions of years, that it then really matters whether Mosaic or
>> Netscape "changed our lives" in our brief moment of time?
> 
> There's nothing wrong with using forever for emphasis.

Is it also ok to use "infinite" for emphasis?  E.g. "this 6502 accelerator
board is infinetly faster than a plain Apple II" .... what about that?

Emphasis is good only as long as it doesn't become too obviously unrealistic.

> Try this: Next time your wife says "I'll love you forever ..." explain
> to her that although you appreciate the sentiment, in fact her
> adoration will only last until brain death disrupts the neuro-chemical
> pattern of its representation.

I might phrase it differently, e.g. saying that I don't know if I
would want to be loved by a decaying corpse.... <g>

But I don't need to say any of this, because my wife never promise
anything "forever".  She knows her limits.  She'd rather say "I love
you today, but I don't know about tomorrow, we'll have to see then"
.... which of course means that love isn't something you should take
for granted, it's something you should conquer all the time.

If you and your SO take your love for granted "forever", it could end
up like this (lyrics from Pink Floyd's "The Wall" ambum):

Day after day
Our love turns gray
Like the skin of a dying old man
And night after night
We pretend it's all right
But I have grown older
And you have grown colder
And nothing is really fun anymore
....

For a macabre example of the opposite (i.e. love surviving physical
death), you could read "Anabell Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe ..... or
listen to the song "Anabell Lee" by Joan Baez, inspired by Edgar Allan
Poe's story.

> And since you're nit-picking, our sun is too small to go nova.

Thanks for the correction.  It wouldn't make any significatn difference in
this context though, since mankind on Earth will also be unable to survive
the red giant stage in the solar evolution.

And to nitpick back: our sun is too small to go supernova indeed.  But it's
not too small to go nova really.  The reason the sun will never go nova is
something else: our sun is a single star, not a close double star.

> Cheers,
> Nick.
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Schlyter,  Grev Turegatan 40,  SE-114 38 Stockholm,  SWEDEN
e-mail:  pausch at stockholm dot bostream dot se
WWW:     http://stjarnhimlen.se/