Marc D. Hauser gets it pretty close to how I feel about myself with this quote:
"I'm intellectually promiscuous - and proud of it!"
Unlike some people who find one topic or another boring, or a whole bunch of topics boring - or conversely have one area of interest - I'm interested in just about anything factual about anything. I can get interested in just about any sport, even if I can't play it, any topic, even if I could never fully grasp it. Thus, though I love chess, I don't play nearly as much as I'd like, because I frequently find myself diverted to other activities. On the bright side, TV is never boring, because inevitably there is something on that I haven't seen.
I've always been interested in ideas, and facts, really, of any kind. Thus I couldn't settle on a single topic for this blog and it became 1000 & 1 Things. The other good thing: I can strike up a conversation with just about anyone, because the chances of what they have to say being boring to me is a scintilla.
But the main thing that got a post percolating was this sentence from Ray Kurzweil:
"To this day, I continue to be convinced of that fundamental philosophy: No matter what quandaries we face - business problems, health issues, relationship difficulties - there is an idea that can enable us to prevail. Furthermore, we can find that idea. And when we find it, we need to implement it."
I'm convinced too, Ray. This all sounds somewhat familiar. This meshes well with my belief - "borrowed" heavily from Ayn Rand - that all life on earth has certain courses of action that it must take to survive. Man's is intellectual/rational. Thus we can (indeed, to survive we must) perceive the hard evidence and facts around us and act accordingly. If we act properly in line with what is objectively best for us, good results occur. If we act contrary to our nature and the factual world, bad results occur. The very concept that there is an idea that can solve our problems, we just have to find it (but we are able to do that!) is pretty optimistic and somewhat contrary to the current worldview. Being that Kurzweil is a tech guy, he might have been talking about "ideas" as more of a concrete phenomenon than I am, but I think the point is the same.
PUSH UP UPDATE - I'm going to stop posting after every day, there's just not enough interesting stuff to post on about the challenge and trying to time the posts to not push out the other posts is a challenge unto itself.
Having said that, Day 2 went very well, and I thought I might complete the whole set. As it was, I got 25 after taking 1:30 off, resting 30 more second and then doing the final 20.
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