"...I'm interested in things."

[aliothsan]

(Woo Dr. Worm)

It really strikes me as strange when people aren't interested in things. Even at MIT this happens -- people go into engineering because they have an aptitude for it, and because they can make money at it, not because they love it. Ditto (and possibly even more so) for premeds

Comments

[timprov]

I like to play the drums.

[aliothsan]

When I get into it, I can't tell if you are watching me twirling the stick

[arujei]

I'm not gonna lie, the Byzantine Empire was pretty sweet.

[aliothsan]

...Yeah, that was a bad example. I have to admit that I analogue-empathize more with physicists than historians, but that doesn't mean I fundamentally don't understand where y'all are coming from.

Plus, the word `byzantine' is just fun to say. Byzantine, byzantine, byzantine, byzantine, byzantine. Hee.

[rivenwanderer]

"Makeup in the Byzantine Empire" sounds much cooler than either makeup or the Byzantine Empire on their own.

I wonder if the same is true for any two not-particularly-interesting, sufficiently unrelated things...

[aliothsan]

This sounds like a game for Wikipedia Random Page.

...

"Peniculid" and "Ditch Trilogy". Doesn't really work that well. Probably the two items need to be sort of broad, or one has to be very broad and the other can be specific, or one is a thing and the other is a location / time period. Perhaps using a frame like "The Hitherto Ignored Relationship between X and Y" or "Conceptualizations of X in Y" can improve things.

[aliothsan]

Interesting. I don't really have a sharp dividing line between My Chosen Field and other interesting fields, but the line seems a little sharper between interesting things and enh things.

[aliothsan]

I'm not really sure how to characterize interesting vs. enh -- nothing obvious pops out, although there are certain categories of things (eg most things having to do with one's physical appearance) that fall squarely in one category or the other.

[gorgeouslywrong]

So, I know, right? Except that lately I've been interested in EVERYTHING. Even utterly idiotic things, like People magazine, if only because it's fascinating to watch what fame does to people. (Or is it wealth?) But lately I've also been allowing myself to immediatly follow trains of interest, at that moment, questioning Franch grammer randomly or spending an entire afternoon 'learning' the drums from a friend. This feeling is BRILLIANT. Do you know what I mean?

Anyway, you and I are v. similar. We should hang this summer, if you're about the Bay.

[aliothsan]

Aaaa, yes, I know that feeling. I love that feeling. Where do you get off having enough spare time to indulge that feeling? (I miss January term...)