Specialization is for insects
Robert Heinlein’s Time Enough For Love has its lead character Lazarus Long* spouting:
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently and die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
Which is well in sync with my List Of Skills To Acquire Before I Grow Old. Well, all except for butchering hogs, which only a post-apocalyptic barren Earth might require me to engage in. And even then, with caution: Mutant hogs don’t make for ideal breakfast.
A few more specific additions to my LOSTABIGO, in no particular order:
- Hang a painting on a concrete wall.
- Analyze the Henon attractor.
- Paint: Both the painting, and three coats on the said wall.
- Map a city block. (Cartography is underrated.)
- Simulate a random walk. [DONE]
- Operate an eighteen wheeler.
- Pull myself onto ledges and overhangs.
- Compute a path integral. [DONE?]
- Cook at least three kinds of cuisine.
- Design a 4-bit CPU.
- Milk a member of the bovine species. [DONE]
- Solve the Euler equations for a thrown skittle.
- Run six miles in under an hour.
- Solve the other Euler equation. [DONE]
- Do the mayurasana.
- Listen to every Bach composition.
- Snap a long exposure photograph.
- Woo a member of the opposite sex.
- Make an 8-bit PC game.
I’m running out of time.
*via kottke.org
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