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May 24, 2013
May 22, 2013
John Thorne:
They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman
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Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
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David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
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Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
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May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
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Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
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Jewish World Review
What happens when I forget where Google is?
By
Jim Mullen
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
"What's your cell phone number?" has got to be the most annoying question ever asked. How would I know? I never call it. Even if I did call it, I'd just go into my phone's address book and tell the phone to dial the number for me. I know it's listed in the phone's memory somewhere, but I can never remember how to find it.
When someone asks me the number, I just call their cell phone and their cell phone will give them my number -- as well as my name, my e-mail address, my address, my birthday, my wedding anniversary, my mother's maiden name, my Social Security number and the numbers of a few hundred of my nearest and dearest friends. It's all in my phone and my computer; who can remember all that stuff?
I have no memory for phone numbers anymore. My home phone remembers the last 50 callers by name and number for me, so it's so easy just to scroll back a few numbers and hit "dial." Why waste my precious brain space on that? My computer's address book and calendar store all that information for me. Why should I try to hold all those numbers in my head? Now I can use all that extra brain space for Twitter messages and Facebook friends. Maybe not. I can't remember them, either. What was I talking about? Oh yeah, memory. Funny story: I upgraded the software on my computer last week, and it erased my calendar. Ever since then, I have a nagging feeling that I'm always missing a doctor's appointment or an important anniversary or someone's birthday. I could look it up on my phone, but I've forgotten how.
You might think I'd be better off with an old-fashioned desk calendar and address book, but that's the great thing about having a paperless office: no messy desk calendars and bulky Rolodexes. Writing things down is gone with the … What do you call that stuff that blows? They made a movie out of it, remember? Never mind, I'll Google it. Wind. That's it! Writing things down is gone with the wind.
See, I didn't have to remember that or write it down. All I had to remember was Google, leaving space in my brain to remember the really important things like that thing Sue asked me to do this morning. Something about plants and water. Or was it plants and fire? Did she want me to put out her plants with water if they catch on fire? That must be it. She doesn't have to worry. I won't let her down.
They say as you get older, you should exercise your brain every day by doing something challenging, like learning a new language or doing crossword puzzles. I've gotten so much better at crossword puzzles with Google. I can breeze through the most difficult ones and only have to look up a few of the hardest and most obscure words, like rivers that end in "issippi" and Prince Charles' mother's name.
Sometimes I wonder how we lived in the Dark Ages before the Internet and cell phones came along.
We must have been really stupid. I'll give you an example. Last weekend, I wanted to grill some hamburgers out on the, what do you call it, oh yeah, the patio … so all I had to do was look up the recipe for hamburger on the Internet. In the old days, I would have had to remember the recipe, and I might have gotten it wrong.
As it was, I got the recipe exactly right and the burgers would have been perfect if I had remembered to buy propane for the grill. Even that would have been OK for the people who like it rare, except I forgot to buy those round, bready things you put the hamburgers on. I remember now that it was on my to-do list until my computer erased it. Stupid computer.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment by clicking here.
Jim Mullen is the author of "It Takes a Village Idiot: Complicating the Simple Life" and "Baby's First Tattoo."
Previously:
Don't let the doorman hit you on the way out
Picasso fiasco
Purple (hair) Daze
Let me hear your body talk
Working from work
Babies deserve clean restrooms, too
3-year-old bear-killers are a thing of the past
Money-making ideas on the fly
Collecting and hoarding
Chain of fools
Please come pick up your acting awards, ESPN commentators, you've earned them
You've been superpoked by the U.S. gov't
e-Readin', e-Writin' and e-Rithmatic
A pose by any other name
Warning: Column contains 2010 spoilers
He loves only gold, only gold
Think about direction, wonder why …
Flushing your money down a diamond-studded toilet
More like wack Friday
The good, the ad and the ugly
The desert of the real
Let books be large and in charge
I was insulting people way before the Internet
GPS drill sergeant: Left, right, left!
Butterfly in the sky, you make winds go twice as high
Music to my ears it's not
You don't light up my life
Fair or not: Country living is far from Little House
A parable for the ages
Top 100 Cable news stories of the century
Green dumb
A developing story
Thinking outside the lunch box
What's good for the goose is good for the scanner
Newspapers will survive, but network TV?
A really big show of generation gaps
When pigs flu
The reports of our decline have been greatly exaggerated
Mergers and admonitions
Invest in gold: little, yellow, different
Stuck in Folsom Penthouse
Collecting karma
Setting loose the creative juice
It's all in the numbers
You're damaging your brain with practical skills
The real rat pack
The unspeakable luxury of the Park-O-Matic
Gross-ery shopping
© 2009, NEA
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