Ghyll:Bureau of Recovered Knowledge

You have by now noticed that an alarming number of articles in this publication contain the phrase "Nothing is known ..." or variants thereof. This is, of course, more than simply a coincidence. Between the Bureau of Forgotten Knowledge and the Bureau of Recovered Knowledge, an enormous amount of information is officially unknown, even though, technically, it's not actually unknown, you know? No, officially, of course, you don't. As per tradition, very little is known of the BORK, but this article will reveal all that is known, and considerably more.

History

The Bureau of Recovered (sometimes "Regained"; in its history, the Bureau has forgotten its own name twice, and the BOFK has occasionally recovered it incorrectly) Knowledge was founded as a solution to Supetupheraraphes's Paradox which states that "once Forgotten Knowledge is uncovered by a researcher, it is no longer Forgotten and hence cannot be written down."

Under the executive privilege of Meldersen, the second president of the Bureau of Forgotten Knowledge, it was decided that there should be a subdivision known as the Bureau of Regained Knowledge. Since that time, the two Bureaus have existed in a very healthy tension. Indeed, there are those who think they are symbiotic to the point of fraud. By trading knowledge back and forth - finding and then unfinding it - they have been able to create the appearance of useful progress for generations.

Frequently, either the BOFK or the BORK will declare a certain thing to be unknown, and this statement is blindly accepted by even the most careful of historians. This, more than any other factor, explains the fact that many articles stating that the history of a particular thing is unknown, may be roundly contradicted by information given in another article, presumably by someone who did not read the relevant edict, or who was just too pig-headed to care.

To quote one particular historian, who asked not to be named:

I know you know I know I don't know what I know I know, but I know that you know that I know what I know, and I know that you know what you know you don't know. You know?

This, of course, is officially heresy.

Function

Officially, the function of the BORK is simply to maintain the existence of the BOFK. That is, when Forgotten Knowledge is discovered, it is transferred to the BORK, so that it can be retained. In reality, the Odlucian Library does a fine job of holding on to the body of Ghyllian knowledge, thank you very much, and this leaves the BORK largely without function. So, they dedicate themselves to re-losing and re-forgetting knowledge, so that they may perpetuate their symbiotic relationship with the BOFK. Thus, they declare a particular area of knowledge to be unknown and, with this declaration, branches of knowledge are returned to the purvue of the BOFK, so that they can, at a later date, be handed back to the BORK.

Large bribes are likely involved. Although it is not actually known how large these bribes are, I can report that I was paid a fairly significant amount to say that.

The Underground

There is a large underground movement dedicated to ignoring the proclamations of the BORK. They have adopted the name most frequently applied to them - The Uninformed - as an ironic admission of their ignorance of the official reality.

Citations: Bureau of Forgotten Knowledge, Supetupheraraphes, The Uninformed.

--DrBacchus 17:31, 22 May 2005 (EDT)