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Ok I am ADD, ADHD, and many others. But now to my question, how do you all normal people do it? And what I mean by that is everyday in my life my mind has always been thinking of more than one thing at a time on avg about 8 different things, on varying subjects. But let me start from the beginning. Last night it rained and just sat there in the rain for about an hour. And just looked at the sky and had no thoughts about any thing. I felt neither good nor bad.
I felt the same scenes then, but that not the problem. I am not used to having nothing going on in my head. It feels weird, how do most of you all deal with the complete silence.
So say what you want
(You know I'm wasting all my time)
You've gotta mean it when you say what you want
(You're only safe when you're alone)
And everybody's on your mind
Saying anything to get you by
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13801
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How do you know we are normal?
I like silence. I relax into it and let whatever thoughts come to wash over me. Like rain.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Jason said,
>I am not used to having nothing going on in my head. It feels weird, how do most of you all deal with the complete silence.
Well, I, for one, am completely incapable of thinking of nothing. If I don't have something to think about, I either invent something (start working through a story or an essay in my head) or I go and do something physical (read a book, or watch a film, or do something outdoors, or write replies on this board). If I'm forced into doing nothing (like used to happen sometimes in childhood, when I didn't have a book at hand; or when I'm stuck on a train without a book) I find it almost palpably painful.
I also have a short attention span. (However, this only seems to apply if I am not absolutely absorbed by a subject -- if I am, I can do it for hours on end without becoming bored.) For this reason, I am best at watching long films late at night, as my mind slows down a bit and my boredom threshold increases. Likewise some of the best ideas occur to me late at night because I am able to consider the implications of a subject without becoming impatient so quickly.
I do not think I have ever been in the situation you describe. I would not have any idea whether my own pattern of thoughts is considered "normal". I suspect I have an unusually logical and pedantic mind; I also tend to be extremely disorganised. These (among other things) are supposedly compatible with a diagnosis of mild Asperger's Syndrome; however, I tend to reject labels where they serve no useful purpose, in my case. I wonder if ADHD is not a similar label.
David
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That final "in my case" should not be there. How tedious.
As you can see, I spent altogether too much time worrying about insignificant details.
David
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I have tried the movie thing did not work, can't even remember the movie. I am short for time Going to the mall a friend, she going to help me buy some cloths. She says if it was not for her I would look like a homeless guy that has been wearing the same thing for over two years. This will be the fourth year she has picked out my cloths.
So say what you want
(You know I'm wasting all my time)
You've gotta mean it when you say what you want
(You're only safe when you're alone)
And everybody's on your mind
Saying anything to get you by
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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One can have one thought after another but no one can isolate multiple thoughts simultaneously.....
It is liken to a row of ducks crossing the street....... each one in turn.....
Also it is impossible to think about nothing because if you are thinking about nothing then you are thinking about the nothing you are not thinking about.......
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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If your thinking of nothing, then your dead. I think what your doing is letting your mind wander, seeking its own place. I have a special place I go to and I can just rest and swim and be away from family and friends. Sometimes I just let my mind go, not really paying attention to what Im thinking about. Yes, guys I skinny dip there.
I believe in Karma....what you give is what you get returned........
Affirmation........Savage Garden
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Skinny dipping alone ..
What a pity!
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Most of my clothes still have name tags in them with my name and a laundry code, from when I was at boarding school. I guess that means they must be at least five years old. That is, come to think of it, frightening. I'm even less trendy than I thought.
On the whole, I wear jeans and t-shirts.
David
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I dont know about there but here jeans and t shirts are the in thing. Thats all I ever wear. Ive got t shirts in every color you can imagine and 501 jeans (Levi), Cargo pants (Levi) Black button fly and white button fly jeans (polo and Calvin Kline).
I believe in Karma....what you give is what you get returned........
Affirmation........Savage Garden
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Ive taken my best bud Kol there and we have skinny dipped together (crying shame he is str8t)
I believe in Karma....what you give is what you get returned........
Affirmation........Savage Garden
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Yup, the reason I wear jeans and t-shirts is that I don't think you can go wrong with them.
Luckily, no-one in the film industry ever, ever wears anything but casual clothes. Except perhaps producers sucking up to investors.
That said, I have quite a nice collection of ties. It's a pity I get so few chances to wear them. I was lucky enough to go to a school with a dress code but no actual uniform: the only stipulation was that students should wear a shirt and tie. My brother, on the other hand: ha!
David
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Well, there's always something, or some several things, going on in my head: I don't really understand the concept of being bored or vacant.
I'm not sure that I entirely agree with Marc that "One can have one thought after another but no one can isolate multiple thoughts simultaneously.". It's true that I can only have one train of conscious verbal thought going at a time ... but I can certainly simultaneously have either polyphonic audio stuff or polychromic colour stuff going on (in a quiet or dark room) - these are also some kind of thinking, just not verbal.
But this may just be the result of an excessive consumption of illegal herbs during my teens ....
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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thinking about music or a picture is just one thought.....
Try thinking about two pieces of music at one time....
You just can not do it..... you think of a piece of one then a piece of the other....
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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Marc said,
>thinking about music or a picture is just one thought....
Well --
Is music a single thought?
A piece of music is made up of a lot of elements. You can listen to them separately or together. But even when heard together, lyrics, melody, harmony and rhythm are distinct. They do not meld together totally into a single thought, otherwise you would not be able to pick them out independently. In fact, you can do that without too much effort, even after hearing a piece only once.
On a technical level, the brain is "designed" to be capable of massive parallel processing. It has many different areas designed to cope with different things simultaneously, and of course the neurons, which do the "processing", are massively redundant. You can walk around, talk, think, drive a car simultaneously. While some are little more than reflexes, others constantly intrude on the consciousness. A single-processor computer system can't -- it simply switches between different tasks hundreds or thousands of times a second -- but that would be an apples and oranges comparison as the architecture is so different.
David
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Brian, you're just being a little tart now, and I love you for it.
Hugs
Nigel
I dream of boys with big bulges in their trousers,
Never of girls with big bulges in their blouses.
…and look forward to meeting you in Cóito.
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Watch the 'gators don't get you.
Hugs
N
I dream of boys with big bulges in their trousers,
Never of girls with big bulges in their blouses.
…and look forward to meeting you in Cóito.
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Marc wrote:
> One can have one thought after another but no one can isolate multiple thoughts simultaneously.....
on that you can you can watch a movie and think about what you are going to do tomorrow. thus doing two things at once.
>
> It is liken to a row of ducks crossing the street....... each one in turn.....
But there is me and there is anothers thinking so fast changing so many times not realy talking but there none the less! Like watching tv and the channel is changing so fast that they all are on at the same time. but i have no control over the channels
So say what you want
(You know I'm wasting all my time)
You've gotta mean it when you say what you want
(You're only safe when you're alone)
And everybody's on your mind
Saying anything to get you by
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Dont have gators here, just snapping turtles
I believe in Karma....what you give is what you get returned........
Affirmation........Savage Garden
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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You miss the point.......
A piece of music is an amalgum of noises....... one of anything os only one.....
but........
Try to think of one piece of music and then while thinking of the first... think of a second entirely different piece of music without letting the first slip from your thoughts.......
It is impossible.....
Look at two pictures with a black piece of cardboard cutting your vision into two distinct fields of vision, one for each eye.....
it is impossible to think about them at the same time.... you can consider one then the other and back at lightning speed but you can not do both at the same instant.
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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Jason wrote:
> Marc wrote:
> > One can have one thought after another but no one can isolate multiple thoughts simultaneously.....
>
> on that you can you can watch a movie and think about what you are going to do tomorrow. thus doing two things at once.
No. You can think about what to do tomorow but only at the expense of your concentration on the movie to some degree.......
>
> >
> > It is liken to a row of ducks crossing the street....... each one in turn.....
>
> But there is me and there is anothers thinking so fast changing so many times not realy talking but there none the less! Like watching tv and the channel is changing so fast that they all are on at the same time. but i have no control over the channels
HUH...........
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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Aussie
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Really getting into it |
Registered: August 2006
Messages: 475
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Jason you have come up with an interesting thread here.
If your mind is normally racing with many different thoughts at the same time (almost)it would be very good for you to be able to sit in the rain for an hour and let your mind go really quiet or still. This is a great form of meditation. Trying to get the mind into nothingness is what the Buddhist monks do in their many years of practising meditation. I am not sure if they ever know if they achieve it because if they knew they had then they would be thinking about it.
I did a Google on mind+nothingness and in the first few results I found this which I thought was interesting. It may interest you too.
http://www.art.uiuc.edu/galleries/japanhouse/oldsite/tea/3_2_3.html
PS don't try for nothingness when you are driving.
Aussie
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Marc wrote:
Try thinking about two pieces of music at one time.... You just can not do it
Hmm. What about counterpoint, where two distinct melodies are placed in juxtaposition? If Marc was referring to the impossibility of one person singing (or whistling) two melodies in counterpoint then I must agree with him. But it is certainly possible to listen to two melodies in counterpoint and to hear each one separately and distinctly (if the composer has done his job properly).
I had an uncle who challenged me to whistle (or vocalize) the slow movement in Beethoven's 7th symphony with its two intertwining melodies: it's impossible, but it's glorious to listen to!
The paradox has often been noted that the United States, founded in secularism, is now the most religiose country in Christendom, while England, with an established church headed by its constitutional monarch, is among the least. (Richard Dawkins, 2006)
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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receiving multiple sensory stimulation is nothing more than the melding of several components one atop the other.....
But I am talking about something entirely different.....
Learn two songs until you can hear them in your mind.....
Then try to sing them both at the same time.....
It can not be done.....
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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saben
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On fire! |
Registered: May 2003
Messages: 1537
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Yeah, from what I studied in psychology attention is pretty interesting. The brain is capable of not consciously recognising different events if its attention is placed elsewhere. If two pieces of music are playing in the background, unless they overlap and coincide you will hear both and register both, but you will consciously only listen to one. One of the limitations of the human brain.
I sometimes try to put myself in a meditative state where I can perceive multiple phenomena at once, or at least perceive that at equal levels of important, but I find it very hard to give equal attention to both, and if I do try and split my attention it is more like BOTH things become peripherary rather than both being within my attention span. It's really interesting.
Look at this tree. I cannot make it blossom when it suits me nor make it bear fruit before its time [...] No matter what you do, that seed will grow to be a peach tree. You may wish for an apple or an orange, but you will get a peach.
Master Oogway
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Singing a song to yourself, and perceiving a song, is entirely different. When you hum a song, you can only recreate the barest minimum of the music -- usually the melody. But when you listen to it -- multiple melodies, multiple rhythms, sometimes even multiple harmonies -- you have no problem perceiving them as different and separate.
Marc said:
>Learn two songs until you can hear them in your mind.....
>Then try to sing them both at the same time.....
It is true that it is impossible to sing them (because the vocal chords can only cope with one note at a time). I accept it is also virtually impossible to synthesise such an amalgamation in your mind -- I assume this is likely a limitation in the speech centre of the brain, to prevent you from trying to send two different words/notes to your vocal chords simultaneously, as it cannot be done physically.
However, speech is not the only outlet for one's musical ability. I can play two melodies at the same time on the piano, one with each hand. They do not even have to be in the same key, though inevitably it sounds pretty discordant if they are not. It is not a case of "hit and miss" -- I know perfectly well what I will get when I hit the keys. I see no reason why this should not count as being able to comprehend two distinct pieces of music simultaneously.
David
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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I did not mean to audibly sing two songs....
I meant to sing them in your mind....... both at the same time.......
it can not be done.....
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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Did you read my response? I agreed that it cannot be done. That was not the point of my post.
The point of my post is that it is perfectly possible to "think" about two separate pieces of music at the same time when another outlet is used, such as playing the piano.
David
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.. and no snapping pikes either, I hope!
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In which case I must probably take the prize for non-trendiness: a lot of the T-shirts I wear regularly are between ten and fifteen years old. Mind you, working on gigs and events I did tend to accumulate a fair number of freebie t-shirts ... I can't actually ever rememember buying one.
A quick look through the laundry bag - of shirts I've actually worn within the past week - includes a "Dinamation" (animatronic dinosaur exhibition - 1996), one from a former company of my Ex.'s (1992), and a polo shirt from a venue I used to work for dating from around 1990. Oh, and the "Steward" shirt from Europride 2006 - not everything I own is ancient!
I admit that I occasionally toy with the idea of constructing a kind-of-biography based around my t-shirts.
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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Come to think of it (and I'm surprised I didn't think of it in my first reply) the one way I have of relaxing that seems (mostly) to blank out everything in my head is to improvise on the piano. Not to try to play anything in particular, just to hit keys in a pseudo-random way (but a harmonic way -- sometimes I try playing atonally too, but that is more difficult and not as relaxing) and see what comes out.
If I'm in the right mood the music sounds pleasant enough and it has the added bonus of being something that no-one has ever heard before (and, because I generally forget it very quickly, no-one ever will again). I can do it when I am almost asleep -- it doesn't tire me out. I assume it must use a different part of the brain from usual.
If you're looking for a way to relax, I do recommend learning the piano. Not necessarily learning to read music, or even to play existing pieces -- just to work out how to play chords and melodies that work together.
David
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:-[ (Sorry! I forgot to type ....)
>I admit that I occasionally toy with the idea of constructing a kind-of-biography based around my t-shirts.
Fascinating idea! Please do!
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NW said,
>I admit that I occasionally toy with the idea of constructing a kind-of-biography based around my t-shirts.
The first thing I thought of when reading that was, "What an interesting short film that would make!" And I almost posted to say that.
Then I thought, "How on earth could you possibly make a film based around someone's t-shirts?" And I still haven't any idea.
If you could pitch the idea to me, though, NW, I would be very interested... 
David
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Then how can a write a program and sing along with a song on the radio. that would be two things. Driving and singing. Talking to some one while typeing an e-mail. the list gose on but thats not what I am sating theres my voice the one I think with and there is another mine but not mine. Just in the backgroung of my head thinking about every thing and nothing just random things. But of late there is no other voice just my own. That has never happend before.
Jay.
So say what you want
(You know I'm wasting all my time)
You've gotta mean it when you say what you want
(You're only safe when you're alone)
And everybody's on your mind
Saying anything to get you by
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cossie
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On fire! |
Location: Exiled in North East Engl...
Registered: July 2003
Messages: 1699
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On the whole, I agree with Marc - but with one or two reservations.
First off, I'm an avid reader, and I know from experience that I can read and listen to radio or television simultaneously. I accept that this must have some dampening effect upon my appreciation of what I read or hear, but I can recollect both auditory and visual experiences with a high degree of accuracy. I've always assumed that this was because I was using two different senses, but I haven't researched any deeper.
Secondly, there are reports of remarkable feats of parallel thinking by those who suffer from Asperger's Syndrome - but as it's a syndrome we don't yet understand the mechanisms involved.
These exceptions apart, I can't fault Marc's thinking.
For a' that an' a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That man tae man, the worrld o'er
Shall brithers be, for a' that.
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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Now I will try again to explain.......
I am not talking about sensory input..... I am not talking about reading and listening at the same time....
I am talking about thought and the process of recolection of previously learned information.
No person can think about two things simultaneously....
Try memorizing two short musical pieces.......
Once they are firmly committed to MEMORY... Try to recite them both in your minds eye simultaneously.... It can not be done.....
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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Yes you and anyone for that matter can multitask....
But it is happening in sequence not simultaneously.....
As for another voice not your own..... Well there are diagnosises for that I am sure.....
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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Marc said,
>I am talking about thought and the process of recolection of previously learned information.
>No person can think about two things simultaneously....
>Try memorizing two short musical pieces.......
>Once they are firmly committed to MEMORY... Try to recite them both in your minds eye simultaneously.... It can not be done.....
I think you are getting rather dogmatic here, Marc. If you get very specific in your definitions, then I have no doubt that you will be able to find circumstances under which no-one (or at least virtually no-one -- I don't think you can assume to know everything about how everyone else's mind works on the basis of yours alone) can do two particular things at the same time. However, I thought we had already established that you can't imagine two pieces of music simultaneously, and that therefore the conversation had gone beyond that. (Incidentally, you didn't respond to my post about playing two tunes simultaneously, one with each hand, which is not quite the same thing, but close enough to be worthy of consideration, I would have thought.)
There is more to multitasking that simply doing lots of things in sequence. For one thing, you have to keep the other activity at the back of your mind while doing the first, so you can switch to it quickly at an appropriate moment. A computer -- a single-processored computer -- can give a very, very convincing illusion of doing several things at the same time, even though technically the processor is only ever dealing with one operation at any particular moment. In fact, it is so convincing that no-one these days would pretend that modern operating systems are not capable of multi-tasking, except at a very pedantic level.
As for reading and listening simultaneously: just because you, Marc, are not talking about it, does not mean that it's not worth talking about. I was interested to read Cossie's point of view.
David
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