{"id":2221,"date":"2013-01-25T03:00:43","date_gmt":"2013-01-25T08:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/?p=2221"},"modified":"2014-02-09T15:08:29","modified_gmt":"2014-02-09T20:08:29","slug":"the-pursuit-of-knowledge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/2013\/01\/25\/the-pursuit-of-knowledge\/","title":{"rendered":"The pursuit of knowledge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Useful or not.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

I am one of those people who has a head full of basically useless information.\u00a0 Now, that means I’m fairly good at Trivial Pursuit<\/a>, especially if we’re playing in teams and you, yourself, are good at sports trivia.\u00a0 We’d be fairly unbeatable\u2014given ordinary luck with the dice and assuming it was a classic version of the game.\u00a0 (I kind of lost interest in pop culture the last few years, so the more recent versions…I make no promises.)<\/p>\n

I’d be fairly good at Jeopardy<\/a>, too, except for the wagering and the Final Jeopardy question.\u00a0 I always lose Final Jeopardy.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure where this fascination with minutiae originated, except that my family does tend to acquire books like Why Do We Say It? <\/em>and The Book of Lists<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So, imagine what a find a website is like the one I’m going to point you toward today!<\/p>\n

Imagine, too, what a total time sink it is, and be warned.<\/p>\n

Now, that you’ve been warned, check out The Straight Dope.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Straight Dope <\/em>is a syndicated newspaper column in which, as far as I can tell, readers write in to ask odd questions about anything and everything, and Cecil Adams, the columnist, answers them.<\/p>\n

Some of the interesting things you can learn from perusing The Straight Dope <\/em>are:<\/p>\n