make a list of 43 things i know very little about, and then learn at least 3 things about each of them

I learned a lot about learning and about 43 things in this goal. Mainly, don’t do something just to do it. I was bored at work one day and made my list, and I wish I would have waited to think of things I really did want to learn about, not just random things I thought maybe I should learn about. While I’m glad I took the time to learn something about the Korean War and Tiananmen square, the things that were most fascinating to me were Seahorses, Blackbeard, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the Dark Ages. There is way more Dark Ages learning in my future…that was so cool.

I would say to others do this to really challenge themselves to find information in new venues, not just on the net. I really enjoyed finding a compelling video or educational program or, of course, children non fiction books, to help me absorb the information in a different way, not just scanning a website. Of course, you can’t do that for everything, but challenge yourself to check out your local library and peruse magazines and newspapers to get more focused information on a small aspect of a larger broader subject.

Best of luck to all of you plugging away!

1) Believed to have driven the snakes out of Ireland. March 17th is the anniversary of his death

2) The holiday became a major thing in political campaigns… they were often portrayed as a wild drunken people, but they (the irish) soon realized that their numbers gave them considerable power. President Truman attended the NY parade in 1948.

3) In Ireland, up until the mid 90s, it’s been celebrated as a religious holiday. Businesses used to be forced to close, even. Ireland soon realized they were cutting off tourism dollars by closing their businesses on the holiday they were best known for.

source: www.history.com

1) Only female Judge of Israel, equivalent to a King. That made her leader of the Israeli army, as well. Her rise to power is not recorded in the Bible.

2) She ruled while the Israelites were under Canaanite rule for 20 years and then defeated them.

3) There is a grave near Tel Kadesh that is attributed to her or Barak, a general that was instructed by God he could not win against the Canannites alone.

source: wikipedia, http://caca.essortment.com/deborahjudge_rsui.htm

1) Beer is categorized by color, and because it changes based on the kind of vessel holding it (in a larger container, it looks darker as it’s harder for light to penetrate that much fluid), there is a “standard reference method” that scientifically decides what is a gold beer, a pale yellow, an amber, etc.

2) Bitterness is also scientifically measured with IBUs, International Bitterness Units. Generally, bland american beer has 5-15 IBUs.

3) Could be up to 20,000 unique kinds of beer in the world, but all of them can be smooshed down into 40 styles (and more substyles). This is why these three things aren’t really on different kinds of beer, like I once declared, because how would I ever choose?

source: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Beer, Stuart Kallen

1) Here’s the thing, I kept thinking “bail” and “bond” were two different things. It appears they are not. In the federal courts, we never say bail, we always say “bond,” so I thought it was different, as on tv they always talk about “bail.” What it appears it mean is that you either “pay bail,” which is the full amount ordered by the court, or you “make bond,” which is convincing a bail bond company that you will show up in court, so will they guarantee the court $10,000? In that case, you would owe the bond guy $1000, or whatever his commission is, for letting you be out of jail before your plea hearing.

2) It’s almost exclusively in the US. Apparently bail is usually lower in other countries, and they don’t allow bounty hunting.

3) In the case the the defendant does not show up in court, the bondsman is allowed to go chase his ass down! Hence, shows like “Dog: The Bounty Hunter.” “Dog” (or, say, Stephanie Plum in the Janet Evanovich novels) go out and find the people who ran from court. If they find them and get them back to court, the Bond company is given back the money they lost when that person did not show.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bail_bondsman

Diamond cutting:

1) The reason Amsterdam and Antwerp are strongholds in the diamond world (or at least, the cities you often hear about visits to in jewelry store commercials) is because diamond cutting was a pretty crude process back in the day, and that’s where the few craftsmen who knew how to do it were located. Back then, if they hit the diamond in exactly the right spot with a chisel and mallet, it would crack in such a way that they could roughly shape it. They were limited to where those natural locations of weakness were, and if they hit the wrong spot or the wrong direction, the diamond would just shatter. After that, they would try to blunt force trama the imperfections out with another diamond (I mean, isn’t that the whole reason I wanted to learn about this? How do you cut a diamond if nothing can cut a diamond?)

2) End of the 15th century, a Jewish diamond cutter in Antwerp (Lodewyk van Berken) invented the scaif: a polishing wheel that used olive oil and diamond dust and worked kind of like a lathe to polish them. That really solidified Antwerp as diamond central, as then all sorts of folks came in to learn from him and study his methods.

3) Then, the diamond saw was invented in the 20th century. But another major development was discovering the math that could optimize a diamond’s most brilliant cut, each and every diamond pretty much needed the same ones to sparkle just so. Once they had that formula, they were able to start polishing them in a more automatic way on semi-automatic machines.

Source: http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/diamond/chap11.htm

1) Always played with 4 people and a normal deck of cards, no jokers. Cards are ranked in a natural order (by natural, I mean, what you would assume, not like pinochle, where it goes A10KQJ, they put the 10 below the J, followed by 9-2)

2) Like pinochle, after the deal, you bid for tricks, and you earn points collectively, not on your own.

3) Unlike pinochle, you need to take 9 or more tricks to get any points. If you take less than 9 of the tricks, you’re penalized (which apparently would mean that if you split the tricks, you would both be penalized, as there are only 13 tricks in each round)

Source: Bridge for Dummies, by Eddie Kantar

1) Knots don’t actually strengthen rope. I guess it makes sense, but I wouldn’t have thought it myself until i read it. Knots can effect rope strength anywhere from 10 to 55% percent, depending on what kind of knot is made.

2) Not everything is a “knot.” They say “let’s learn about knots” to describe them all, but they are called different things depending on their function. Knots put a loop or lump in a rope or at the end of the rope. Bends attach to lines together. Hitches attach lines to an object, and splice is a special “knot” that keeps an end from unraveling.

3) Sequence is the most important thing in tying knots. You have to not only move the line in such an order, but you need to tighten things correctly. Most knots are tightened one piece at a time as you go, but there are some knots where a part is tightened after it is initially placed loosely. Obviously, if you move the rope in the wrong order, you’ll have a different knot, but also, if you tighten things in the wrong order, you could have a completely different knot as well.

source: Knots, Bends, and Hitches for Mariners, by The United States Power Squadrons

1) considered to be the longest and greatesat anglo-saxon poem that has survived the years. Some think it’s a fantastic re-writing of christianity. Others think it’s just about heroes, either praising them or condemning them.

2) It was written in Old English around 1100.

3) It is possible to be an english major and never have to read beowulf. I know, because I was an english major and managed to escape really knowing anything about it. There’s a movie coming out in 2007, supposedly. the story line lends itself to a blockbuster film, I guess, as it’s filled with giant monsters and heroic battles and such.

source: www.dummies.com, personal experience, Introduction lines for websites on a google search

I’m within ten…the end is in site!

1) Woofers are the part the speaker that help create low frequency sounds, the cone part, to the lay person.

2) Subwoofers are the part of the speaker that work to create sweet car rocking BASS. The picture looks similar to a woofer to me (the cone part)

3) Tweeters work to create high frequencies. These do not look like a cone. They just look like a round disc.

source: wikipedia.org
why: see, that’s the problem I have no idea WHY I chose some of these when I made the list, which makes it hard for me to want to research anything about that, or if I do research it and it’s kind of hard to understand research, I don’t work extremely hard to interpret what the text really means if it’s written above my head. But I’m nearly done and I’m starting class, so instead of beating myself up about it, I’m just finishing up my list, still complying with only two a day, and learning a little something off wikipedia is still fulfilling my goal.