Gee, Thanks for the Information

Eric Hanson, in the Atlantic Monthly, has just released a list of ages and what people accomplished at that age. For instance, Spanky McFarland, of Our Gang, retired at age 13.

Mr. Hanson should call his list "Look Up Your Age and Feel Bad About Yourself."

I'm 36. Let's check. At age 36, Albert Einstein completed his General Theory of Relativity. That's great. I'd be happy if by age 72 I understood what the General Theory of Relativity was. But I doubt that's going to happen. Before I can take physics, I need to take calculus. And trigonometry is a pre-requisite to calculus.

Now I actually took trigonometry in high school, but the sum total of all I remember is the word "cosecant." Hmmm. Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm not so sure Cosecant wasn't the 16th president of the United States.

If you, too, want to feel bad about yourself, check out Mr. Hanson's list at here.

Comments

[MarcW]

"It is interesting to note that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years."

-- Tom Lehrer