Marc and Angel Hack Life

This is a guest post written by Penny, a regular reader of our blog.  Inspired by a recent article my father wrote entitled “What I Know at 64 that I Didn’t Know at 24”, Penny decided to write a list of her own.  Here are 25 things she has learned over the last 30 years.

I am learning all the time. The tombstone will be my diploma.
- Eartha Kitt

1. Competition against individuals is really competition against the teams that support them.
2. People become brainwashed by the media in the most basic ways.  For instance, think about gender roles.
3. Having good credit is crucial, because otherwise you will be bled to death by lenders when you need to borrow money.
4. Medical doctors can be ill-informed, incompetent morons.  They are just people.
5. I get better scientific research done when I sleep more, calm down, and think less about social “motivators” and more about having fun.
6. Adults are just older children.
7. A great deal of history is eventually proven to be inaccurate.
8. Many self-proclaimed experts are not experts.
9. Any quick-fix scheme for relationship and social utopia is a scam.  True happiness involves the long-term.
10. Trusting your emotions can be dangerous.
11. Life is not a video game, a play by Euripides, a short story, a TV episode or movie.  It’s what YOU make of it.
12. Gilding the lily leads to insanity.
13. I may never be a great chess player, but I love it, so I should never stop playing.
14. Bad schooling is a root cause of adult social problems.  Misguided minds alter social reality.
15. There are many times when popular science gets it wrong.
16. If a book on physics doesn’t have more equations than text, throw it out!
17. Common sense is baloney.  What you really need is uncommon sense, often the product of uncommon experiences, ideas, or interacting with uncommon intellect.
18. Many inventions and discoveries are credited to the wrong people.  For example, Telsa didn’t invent the “Tesla`Coil”.
19. Linux beats the sox off of Windows… and yes, Virginia–sometimes there really is a free lunch.
20. Even if you can read it at 2000 wpm, you shouldn’t.  Your mind cannot effectively absorb information at that pace.
21. Discrimination is pervasive, insidious and real.  Having an open mind and an open heart is vital to the progression of humanity.
22. Beware of being seduced by overly “sensible” and “reasonable” sounding ideas or solutions.  All angles must be evaluated first.
23. Logic and arithmetic do not commute before breakfast.
24. Doomsday never comes.  Nor does absolute Utopia.
25. I still haven’t a clue.

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