(no subject)
I have rediscovered the complete and utter joy of learning... just figuring out why things are the way they are. I was reading this book called Napoleon's Buttons about the role of chemistry (actually, 17 molecules) in history, and I learned why cotton wicks. It's so simple, something that you should learn in the first semester of chem2 when you start memorizing chemical charges, and before you lose your sense of awe at long repetitive chains of carbon and hydrogen. But it makes so much sense... and when you realize that, you go on to learn why on earth cotton works in the first place. And why we can't eat straw, but cows can (we lack an enzyme and they have a special stomach with bacteria that is utterly lethal to humans.)
And in other learning arenas, I learned that you can have 24 hour amnesia that comes on with no warning/impetuous and completely restores you to your former self a day later (with the only possible side effect that you won't remember the day where you had a short term memory of three minutes and kept asking where you were and how you got there).
You forget when you go to college to learn that sometimes facts should be learned for the sheer pleasure of knowing things. And when I'm sweating and unhappy in acting class tomorrow, a little diagram will pop into my head and tell me that these infintesimal specks are doing something I can see and touch. It's a lovely thought. Much more heady than those stereotypical "butterfly causing a tsunami" deals, and so delicously real.
Now bed, then a quiz in the am and cramming writing.
And in other learning arenas, I learned that you can have 24 hour amnesia that comes on with no warning/impetuous and completely restores you to your former self a day later (with the only possible side effect that you won't remember the day where you had a short term memory of three minutes and kept asking where you were and how you got there).
You forget when you go to college to learn that sometimes facts should be learned for the sheer pleasure of knowing things. And when I'm sweating and unhappy in acting class tomorrow, a little diagram will pop into my head and tell me that these infintesimal specks are doing something I can see and touch. It's a lovely thought. Much more heady than those stereotypical "butterfly causing a tsunami" deals, and so delicously real.
Now bed, then a quiz in the am and cramming writing.