forgetful

To paraphrase Heraclitus, no man may read the same article twice, for although it is the same article, he is not the same man. This is my thought as I discover that, once again, I have re-read a journal article without even recognizing it or considering it familiar. About every six months I read a paper, think "oh, that was quite interesting, I learned a lot", then go to enter in into my bibliography database only to find it already there. And since I note the date that I add entries to the database, and I write a paragraph of comments about each paper, I can look and see that, lo, I last read this seemingly novel paper just eight months ago, and had rather a different point of view then. I think the alternatives are either that (a) I'm kinda dumb, or (b) my extensive experiences in the past eight months have changed me so much that identical 15-page papers don't register as familiar. I've got a vested interest in voting "b", supported by mangling the words of a pre-Socratic philosopher, but you may draw your own conclusions...