March 24, 2008

Useful Things To Know

Amidst a great essay on how to write essays, some handy things to remember:

... I found the best way to get information out of them was to ask what surprised them. How was the place different from what they expected? This is an extremely useful question. You can ask it of the most unobservant people, and it will extract information they didn't even know they were recording.

... The more anomalies you've seen, the more easily you'll notice new ones. Which means, oddly enough, that as you grow older, life should become more and more surprising. When I was a kid, I used to think adults had it all figured out. I had it backwards. Kids are the ones who have it all figured out. They're just mistaken. ...

Posted by natasha at March 24, 2008 01:14 AM | Philosophy | Technorati links |
Comments

This is precisely correct, and very worthy of further investigation, if you can find the time.

The human genome has surprised everyone with its extensive baggage chain of the past, every gene is still there from eons ago, they're just not turned on.

We've found 327 new planets in the last four years. Damn.

Look at the Democratic/Republican participation ratios in the primaries this year. Holy shit, Americans can go on the march.

This post represents an old paradox, by the way:

The more you learn, the less you will know.

Posted by: paradox at March 24, 2008 05:19 AM

ccokzblog

A sober moment

Another fuck-up by Bush when commenting at least 61 deaths during eastern in Iraq

Posted by: ccoaler at March 24, 2008 10:01 PM