Re: CHAT: John Cowan's Spare Brain (was: Ferochromon)

John Cowan wrote:
>Tristan McLeay scripsit:
>
>> John, how do you know everything? Is there some magic or medicine that
>> gives you all the knowledge in the world? If so, you couldn't perchance
>> forward any to me, could you?
>(snip interesting discussion; I'm sometimes accused of this -- though
compared to our JC I'm a piker -- but, having come late to computers, I tend
not to think of google.........

>And Rosta (I think) once described me and others on this list (I'm not
>unique, just far out on the curve) as "knowing at least something about
>almost everything", which I think is a fair enough statement.
A dear departed friend of mine, when queried, would simply answer rather
snippily, "One just knows these things."

The reverse of the coin-- in senior year of HS, a friend (who thought he was
Hemingway or Fitzgerald reincarnated) wrote a truly dreadful play, which
nonetheless won a prize and was performed, that included this line:
"Yet I dislike to think that a mind, trained to hurdle intellectual hoops,
should amount to this...."

Even at age 18, that line resonated and seemed to foreshadow the course of
my own life.  I encounted the author at our 50th reunion 2 months ago and
reminded him of it; he turned beet red and grumbled "Oh fergodsake."