One of my biggest pet peeves is when I'm walking in a crowded area, and as I follow someone through a doorway or other transition space, they stop and look around.
The doorway or (whatever) is already a natural traffic bottleneck. And these people are making it worse by stopping right in the middle of it.
I suspect it's because of this psychological effect. But it's so annoying that many people's response seems to be to stop in their tracks. Okay maybe you've forgotten why you went through this doorway. But have you also suddenly forgotten that you're in the middle of a crowd of people trying to move around? Apparently so.
The Klutz Book of Knots was one of my favorites as a kid, and cited Ashley throughout. Here's what it had to say about the square knot:
"But Which Knot Is Really The Best Knot?
A true landlubber's question, but one that is inevitably raised. The correct answer should be the responsible—albeit boring—"It depends." Are you knotting together sheets for an open-air exit from a burning hotel? Or are you tying up your hair?
But let's say you've really only got room for two or three knots in your long-term memory files. If such were the case, I could be forced to recommend the bowline, the sheet bend, and the clove hitch. The three of them are the class of the three primary knot categories—loop knots, rope-to-rope knots (bends), and rope-to-something-else knots (hitches). Between them, they should get you into most binds.
Incidentally, the opposite question, "Which is really the worst knot?" is far simpler to answer. As disillusioning as this sounds, it's the square knot, the most over-hyped, under-strength knot in creation. Clifford Ashley, the author of the definitive encylopedia on the subject of knotting, states that the square knot "...has probably been responsible for more deaths and injuries than all other knots combined."
The reason is that the square knot capsizes, i.e. it unties itself. A couple of quick tugs on the rope, or an inadvertant bump, and the honest square knot turns into thin air, an unhappy result that demonstrates the difference between a "strong" knot, one that weakens the rope least, and a "secure" knot, one that resists unraveling."
This was disillusioning when I first read it as an avid Boy Scout. Now I can't think of a more apt symbol for the Scouting program.
I read a hard copy that was passed around my high school in the early 90s.
The only chapter I remember was the one about tamping explosives in order to concentrate the force of the blast in the direction you want. That was really interesting to me for some reason.
First computer at home: my dad brought home an IBM clone circa 1986. He had a buddy at work (he was an insurance agent) that was really into pirating games, who gave him one bankers box full of floppies, and another full of photocopied manuals.
I was just telling my wife the other day about a book I read a couple of years ago that I've completely forgotten.
Most of the time I can remember at least the broad strokes. I can tell you that Guns, Germs and Steel is about how physical geography matters in the development of civilizations. (That book also introduced me to cargo cults, a concept I think about a lot.)
But gun to my head, I couldn't tell you what Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve is about. Not even the title—I don't know what "the swerve" is referring to at all. My degree is in Humanities so it was right up my alley but I've completely forgotten that whole book.
I have the college dreams fairly regularly. Usually they are about forgetting to attend class for a whole semester.
But my other recurring dream is about being an LDS missionary again. I think that experience in real life was even more stressful than college—definitely more guilt-inducing. In the dream I'm my current self—mid-40s, married, kids, career, atheist—and yet somehow the church has managed to coerce me back into the mission field alongside the 19-year-old true believers.
Almost every other former Mormon missionary I've asked about it reports having similar recurring dreams.
In life insurance, you pay the company a small periodic payment in exchange for a large lump sum payment if you die while the coverage is in force. If you die after paying just one premium, you win! If you live so long that you paid more in premium than the lump sum, you lose!
With an annuity, you pay the company a large lump sum in exchange for a small periodic payment for the rest of your life. If you die after receiving just one payment, you lose! If you live so long that the company pays you more than your initial lump sum payment, you win!
Because the King James Version (KJV) was so dominant for so long among English speakers that archaic language came to be associated with Holy Writ. Generations have been conditioned to think that scripture is supposed to sound old.
Now, lots of Christian denominations do favor more modern translations, but the KJV refuses to go away.
Fun fact from the church I grew up in (Mormonism): aside from the Bible and the Book of Mormon, Mormons have a book of scripture called Doctrine and Covenants, which contains revelations from God directly to Joseph Smith. But what's funny is that this book is also written in faux-Jacobean English. Smith didn't think it through!
The KJV was so dominant in 19th Century America that Smith (like most people probably) just assumed that if God spoke directly to us, he would use language that sounded like the Bible. So when he purported to write down the words of God, that's exactly what he made them sound like. He didn't think about the fact that the the KJV is written in Jacobean English because it was written in the Jacobean era, and that scripture only sounds old to our ears now because that translation has persisted for so long.
So today, lots of Christian churches are adopting newer translations of the Bible. But the Mormon church is stuck with the KJV forever because Joseph Smith established the tradition that that's how God sounds when he talks to us. We can't just produce a modern translation of the D&C because it's supposedly the primary source!
Also, it seems like just knowing some of the dead ends would be a huge step up.
Like maybe we don't waste a ton of time and resources trying to turn lead into gold, or teaching left-handed kids to be right-handed, or trying to figure out which ritual to perform to which deity to make the crops grow.
The doorway or (whatever) is already a natural traffic bottleneck. And these people are making it worse by stopping right in the middle of it.
I suspect it's because of this psychological effect. But it's so annoying that many people's response seems to be to stop in their tracks. Okay maybe you've forgotten why you went through this doorway. But have you also suddenly forgotten that you're in the middle of a crowd of people trying to move around? Apparently so.