Carnivorous Cow shook her head sympathetically. She kept her keys on separate bunches, so that if she lost keys it was *only* car keys, or office keys, or house keys... never _all_ at once. Unlike socks and teaspoons, though, keys did usually turn up eventually - often in the fridge, behind the filing cabinet or in the laundry basket. Mostly, once one had cut new ones, or replaced the locks.
"Do you think that's a valid construct?" enquired Gramsci the spider tentatively. The Cow looked up. "Academic Amnesia - sort of llike the 'absent-minded professor' stereotype?" he explained. "Or do you think they're just so used to having departmental slaves to look after the mundane practicalities that they're just out of practice?"
The Cow shrugged. She had her own pesonal theory, that the memory was like a filing cabinet - you could never find what you wanted in it, though you knew you *ought* to be able to, despite the stuff you used most gravitating towards the front... Interesting rather than relevant things always caught your attention when you searched for something... and ultimately, it reached saturation. You simply couldn't cram another thing in, without first taking something else out. Of course, that model wasn't supported by Real Research, but it resonated with almost everyone's experience that she'd ever spoken to. At least, those whose heads weren't entirely empty anyway.
"The trouble is," she said to Gramsci, "all these passwords we have to remember. Network passwords. SAP passwords. Cellphone passwords. ATM passwords for bank cards, credit cards, cash passports. Aleph passwords. Online banking passwords. Kalahari.net and Amazon.co.uk passwords. Hotmail, GMail, ISP and other email passwords. Bulletin board passwords. Passwords for secure access to medical aid websites, cellular network websites, ezpay websites, rewards programmes websites. And all of these have different usernames, which also have to be remembered. And don't even *think* of using a single identity or password across systems - they're all out of alignment with each other, forcing password changes and requiring unique passwords of different formats with alarming frequency so that even if it were possible at the start, things would soon be more out of synch than the robots along Main Road during rush hour." She rolled her eyes dramatically.
Which gave Gramsci an idea. "What about retinal scans, for secure logon, rather than passwords?" he suggested.
"Excellent idea!" agreed the Cow. "I'll bet even Mr Timberland wouldn't misplace his eyeballs that easily!