I confess an untested bias, and ask your help in a little unscientific effort to quantify it a bit.
It is my impression that being observant and analytic, once a generally esteemed combination, is now passé, even 'unkewl,' in the era of hyper-specialization. ("I mean, like, why should we even worry about stuff that is, like, already taken care of for us?")
Would you take a minute to briefly comment on this post, answering these questions?
1) Have you ever consciously noted that manhole covers are always round?
2) Have you tried to figure out why, or to find out why?
3) What year were you born?
4) Are you male?
NOTE: Please do not actually answer the question of why manhole covers are round! It is interesting and not trivial, but besides the point I am pressing here. I will come back to it later.
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2 comments:
1) Have you ever consciously noted that manhole covers are always round?
no, not really...
2) Have you tried to figure out why, or to find out why?
not really...
3) What year were you born?
classified information
4) Are you male?
no
Well, Brian, while I have noticed that manhole covers are always round (even in Texas), I have not given as much thought to why as you have. I am not male and since I am female, I am allowed not to tell my age.
Not being entirely sure why male or female was important to you, I will say that when I was in high school, my mother had me tested. The results were that I scored 99th percentile (meaning 99% of the people would score below me) in something they called mechanical skill that was tested primarily by diagrams such as viewing a shape from one angle and picking out the same shape from 3 other diagrams where the correct shape was viewed from a different angle than the stimulus diagram. In spelling and something they called clerical skill, my score was at the 15th percentile (meaning that only 15% of people would score below me and 84% of people would score above me. Fortunately, most of my other scores clustered closer around the 75th percentile. Even so, I was told not to go to college as I would have a very difficult time. They did not really know what to tell me to do because I was a girl. Apparently, had I been a boy, I would not have been such a problem to them.
I have already read your explanation of why the manhole covers are round and found it quite enlightening. I do wonder about other things.
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