On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 03:01:03PM -0400, Kris Coward wrote: > > Funny, but as a side-effect of all this conversation about dying in a > sealed environment, I ended up seeing/reading a whole bunch of material > on scuba diving and gear. I have this strange feeling that the knowledge > I'll put that knowledge to some use before I die. > > Knowledge is a funny thing to go around collecting since, unlike nearly > everything else you could collect, the more you have, the easier it > seems to be to store it all.. (and if collecting things without > requiring a whole bunch of space to store the collection isn't relevant > to a liveaboard list...)
As somebody said once, "it all gets easier once you get the basic idea that branches are homeomorphic endofunctors mapping submanifolds of a Hilbert space." :) I do agree with you, though: once you have a certain "minimal load", things become much easier to cross-reference. Also, your ability to check a variety of things for accuracy on the fly improves, sometimes by startling amounts. You also tend to learn about good information sources (my latest find is http://www.snpedia.com/. Genetic SNiPs, what fun! Got there via Manu Sporny... oh dear, infinite backtracking. Never mind.) One of the major things you have to watch out for, though, is observer bias. I'm actually a bit paranoid about that kind of thing, and go to some lengths to make sure that I'm not just collecting stuff that supports what I already know, and rejecting things that don't match the set. To misquote the Bishop of Gloucester, orthodoxy is *not* my doxy. Ben -- OKOPNIK CONSULTING Custom Computing Solutions For Your Business Expert-led Training | Dynamic, vital websites | Custom programming 443-250-7895 http://okopnik.com http://twitter.com/okopnik _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list Liveaboard@liveaboardonline.com To adjust your membership settings over the web http://liveaboardonline.com/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to liveaboard-j...@liveaboardonline.com To unsubscribe send an email to liveaboard-le...@liveaboardonline.com The archives are at http://www.liveaboardonline.com/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/liveaboard@liveaboardnow.org The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
