I'm doing well, thanks for asking. Recently had a holiday, further than I'd ever gone before. Had some marvelous experiences, met some interesting people, at least as flawed as I am. How are you?

You can put bad smelling shoes in a bag in the freezer overnight and it usually kills the bacteria that causes that smell.

thanks, will be worth a try.

syne the threda has been answered, what are bernd's thoughts on death and legacy? i am not much of an individualist, i believe that, whatever we are, we live beyond death in our works, at least in the sense that our blood and bones, hair and skin cells are 'us' even when we can't feel them or they are alienated from us.

by extension, there cannot really be a separation between a man and those things he has affected or even made in this world, and that is the problem with the slippers. if i were to destroy them, i would surely be killing him again in a lesser way.

you might say 'but sneeter, that reasoning is insane and retarded. if you destroy the slippers, then the fibers and the fumes from their destruction would be a remnant of the man who once wore them, the bangladeshi slave who made them, the corrupt garkh who had them made in the first place.' true, but it is the consciousness of legacy in the minds of men that makes it such, its only our awareness that distinguishes one thing from a generality of faceless objects, none of which bear any weight on us. and are we not, as the soy anthem says, the ruler of everything?

is this sensible? if not, then i should very much like someone to tell me why, because its a paralysing way of thingking.

Soon or later everyone will be forgotten. Those that leave behind something, whatever it is, will be remembered a little longer. Wanting to leave a positive impact on our world after death definitely is a nice goal to work on.

 

Being able to upload your mind and live forever possibly becoming reality in the next 50-100 years is absolutely ebin though. My goal in life is to live long and become rich so I can afford a mind upload for eternal life and eventually experience traveling the space with droids like in star wars.

 

Oh, droids will be in our everyday life by 2030 mark my words.

time is relative imo, a little is a lot to an infant, or to a hypothetical alien that lives only a couple of years. i doubt that otzi the iceman expected he would be a well known public figure 5000 years after his death in total obscurity, not to mention the artist behind those murals in cave of forgotten dreams

for my part i don't think uploading minds is possible, perhaps you could immortalise a near perfect computerised representation of 'you' but not be immortal 'yourself,' as you see out of your eyes and so on - in a funny way that is sort of what i'm talking about, to be rendered immortal in your works.

and thinking about it further i wonder whether i haven't poked a hole in my own thinking. we're no more conscious of the tiny bones in our ears than we would be of this computer program, would it be something other than an electric organ? im not clever or well read enough to discuss these things in a fruitful way, im afraid. i'll keep the slippers nevertheless.

Just throw them away you messi

 

He isn't even known. We know nothing about him as a human, we only know his dead body.

no. bernd's suggestion worked out very well, the slippers no longer smell.

granted, i skimmed his post and neglected to put them in a bag at first, but they don't smell.

i know him, you know him. we know he had a poor diet and probably struggled a great deal in his life.

Does us knowing him the way we do make his life any better?

that isn't relevant to this serious discussion

Makes it kind of clear though how pointless our desire of being remembered might be.

all our endeavours are pointless. we don't even know what we are, where we start or end. that is my point. his life remains in both memory and in his physical remains. in that sense otzi is with us still, or never was at all. which you choose reflects only your attitude and not anything 'real'