MetaChat - List stuff you could spend years studying, if you had the ducats.

MetaChat is an informal place for MeFites to touch base and post, discuss and chatter about topics that may not belong on MetaFilter. Questions? Check the FAQ. Please note: This is important.

15 March 2007

List stuff you could spend years studying, if you had the ducats. Unrelated link: Bug Porn. (sfw)→[More:]
1) Arab Youth On The Internets, the Development of Subcultures, and the Political Implications of This: a snazzy website
2) Developing a pilot project of that tagging system, except make the reader into a radio receiver in these and make the tags little transmitters stuck on the door of the chemist or library or what have you. This allows the blind person to navigate the last few feet, below the resolution the GPS can provide. Get local authority to fund this and a big forum to make a 'folksonomy' of it.
3) Marxism And The Internet: a long windy treatise
4)Get truly fluent in the Spanish, enough to translate it. Become translator. Profit, and have nice quiet solitary job.

post by: By the Grace of God at: 11:17 | 30 comments

1)human porn
2)rock and roll (and all other popular music)
3)pop culture history
4)the great public toilets of the five boroughs

(I'm doing a fair job studying all of these even without the ducats)

posted by jonmc 15 March | 11:24

hm, better link for "these" in #2.

posted by By the Grace of God 15 March | 11:24

Folklore. (I'm working on it).

Anthropology.

posted by Miko 15 March | 11:54

1. Art history - probably medieval although I have a serious weakness for Barbizon school landscapes and the abstract expressionists.
1a) Actually, I could do medieval history period.
2. Design. I really wish I knew more and hadn't so totally blown off my design classes in college with my arrogant I-am-a-Painter-not-a-commercial-artist attitude.
3. Folklore & mythology. Love it.

posted by mygothlaundry 15 March | 12:02

Medieval History
Mythology
Horticulture
Botany

posted by iconomy 15 March | 12:04

Horticulture
Landscape design
Art History

posted by LoriFLA 15 March | 12:05

Botany. I always regret dropping my botany classes to make way for extra psych that I didn't need.
Linguistics
Chemistry

Yes, I'm a soulless nerd.

posted by gaspode 15 March | 12:11

The synthesis of some of the random little paths I've gone about four steps down before moving on to the next pretty butterfly.

Possible monographs:

Ruskin's View of the Lord and Subject Relationship in the Works of Sir Walter Scott as it Relates to Satyajit Ray's Jalsaghar

Human Balance in Three Ball Juggling and William Blake's Figure Drawing

The Mathematics of Beekeeping and 17th Century Pornography

What Canadian Humorists Can Tell Us About Anime

Hmm, yeah, maybe we're all better off.

(I actually have a partial outline of one of the above tucked away in my brain. Not telling which one.)

posted by Lentrohamsanin 15 March | 12:24

My navel
The wall
Minutiae of all kinds

Seriously, though:

Languages
Linguistics
[The above two being my majors from back in the day and degrees I plan to attain so that I can return to bartending and waiting tables with, you know, a sense of empowerment.]
Anthropology
Geology
Astronomy
Meteorolgy

Apparently, I'd need unlimited years as well...but if you're going to dream, dream big, so says I.

posted by Frisbee Girl 15 March | 12:24

People
Ethics
Criminal Law
Juvenile Law
Art in Germany between the Great Wars
Social Networking in the post-wired world.

posted by crush-onastick 15 March | 12:34

welding

posted by Hugh Janus 15 March | 12:35

I'd love to have the freedom of a Victorian Gentleman Scientist. I'd like to be able to study things as they come up and as they interest me. The dream is to be studying (say) deep sea vertebrates one month and then somehow to follow my studies through to thermoluminescence and Spanish Literature.

It's a shame that things are so complex now that people have to specialise.

posted by seanyboy 15 March | 12:45

Russian history
urban planning/city management
history of the occult

I'd say art history and film history, but kinda like jonmc with his various specialties, I already spend a heck of a lot of time reading and learning about these two subjects.

posted by BoringPostcards 15 March | 12:53

auto mechanics
marksmanship
shipmanship (harbor and deep-sea craft)
golf
ancient languages
luthiery
tracking

posted by Hugh Janus 15 March | 13:11

Engineering
Welding
Machining...

Basically anything involved with building robots.

Also, I second seanyboy's entire comment.

posted by drezdn 15 March | 13:13

It's a shame that things are so complex now that people have to specialise.

Absolutely. We were just talking at work today about the Enlightenment thinkers and U.S. founding fathers. I love the idea of living in a day when it was still possible for one human being to know everything. (At least, everything in a Western discipline, anyway).

I'd also go to culinary school for a while.

posted by Miko 15 March | 13:28

I love the idea of living in a day when it was still possible for one human being to know everything.

This must always be counterbalanced with the fact that we actually know nothing.

posted by jonmc 15 March | 13:35

As an undergrad, I loved topology, and I find visualizing manifold transformations mentally relaxing, although at times tedious. I'd definitely like the leisure and funding to study enough to be credible studying manifolds seriously.

posted by paulsc 15 March | 13:49

we actually know nothing

Please -- no Cartesian dualism before 5 PM! You need to have drinks with that.

posted by Miko 15 March | 14:06

You forget. I'm unemployed now and start drinking at 11am. And I'll freely admit that I have no idea what 'Cartesian dualism' even means.

posted by jonmc 15 March | 14:10

Good, at least of one of us is lickered up.

C. D. says that we can't be sure we know anything outside of our own minds. Descartes (the "cart" in cartesian) is the "I think, therefore I am" guy. He is most famous for his thought experiment of doubting everything, item by item, to try and determine whether anything was real. The only thing he could logically prove to himself as real, under his rules, was his own mind - since something was doing the doubting, something had to exist. He figured everything else was pretty debatable.

I actually believe in the reality of a reality. We don't know it perfectly, but we can have some knowledge of it, though limited by our senses.

But even more than that, I'm pragmatic, so I don't spend much time thinking about philosophy.

posted by Miko 15 March | 14:21

C. D. says that we can't be sure we know anything outside of our own minds.

Well, yeah. For all I really know, everything I'm experiencing right now is an acid flashback and I'm really in a padded cell on Mars. And ultimately, it dosen't matter anyways.

posted by jonmc 15 March | 14:27

I'd research and rewrite the concise 120 page (and 50 years old but still relevent) "How to Lie With Statistics" as a thousand page tome. Then I'd work on search engine technology to collect EVERY oxymoron on the internet.

jonmc, you are NOT in a padded cell on Mars. More likely in a hamster cage on Uranus. (I said ON, not IN)

posted by wendell 15 March | 15:07

*runs happily on little wheel*

posted by jonmc 15 March | 15:09

* cars that drive on their own, stay in their own lanes, don't cut other cars off, merge nicely, and accelerate at the same moment as the car ahead of you
* global warming
* bugs
* human anatomy, complete with cadavers and stuff

posted by youngergirl44 15 March | 15:26

More math, especially pure math, more physics, especially quantum mechanics, astrophysics.

Architecture, political science. Philosophy as in epistemology.

posted by carmina 15 March | 16:07

In fact, if I had the ducats, I would just do that: study.

posted by carmina 15 March | 16:11

- Archeology
- Archery
- Botany
- Carpentry (I'd love to learn how to make beautiful wood furniture)
- Hebrew
- Japanese
- Photography
- Pottery
- Religion (although I'm agnostic bordering on atheist I find religion endlessly fascinating)

And I'd have to learn at least some of it in Great Britain because I have a severe case of Anglophilia.

posted by deborah 15 March | 17:19

I was going to say botany before I read through the thread and discovered that the rest of you already filled the class. So I'll switch to Animal Behavior. It's fun too and it's in the same building, so we can all hang out at lunch.

There are a bunch more languages to learn, and a bunch more instruments to play, and I realized to my dismay that it's been years since I did any painting, except walls. But I'm also very much looking forward to continuing to get better at the things I already do.

posted by tangerine 15 March | 22:42

-The Bugis people, of Indonesia.

-Papua New Guinea and all of its tribes and peoples.

-I'd teach myself how to fly.

-Ancient Greek

-Chinese

-French

-Italian

-Train for a marathon

-Train for a triathlon (NOT the Ironman. Maybe Olympic length or sprint length.)

-Diving, either SCUBA or free-diving.

-The art of sex. (Maybe I could get a grant?)

Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. I have a lot of interests. I remember being bored at work one day and thinking "Wow, I am soooo not into this. What am I actually interested in?"

So I started writing up a list and came up with seventy things I thought were cool. And interesting. And worth learning more about. I'm still adding to that list. Maybe I'll post it to my vox blog some day.

Cool post, BTOG!

posted by jason's_planet 15 March | 22:45

← 50 Greatest/Worst Local TV Commercials || Please pray for me →

HOME || REGISTER || LOGIN