When else do you get to answer questions such as, "Daddy, did sabre-toothed tigers die out in Britain before or after you had to go out when it was dark and do a wee all alone at the end of the garden?" Armed with the internet and your own unreliable memories, you get to explore fascinating knowledge not directly related to your career, colour it in and paste it into a scrapbook.
"I started to interview opera buffs," Oleson explained of her exhibition to ArtForum, "because I love people who hold such a vast and fascinating knowledge on this subject and I'm interested in how it is driven by a personal set of concerns.
It's fascinating, and knowledge of a language is good per se, regardless of its immediate use.
You rarely see people hitch-hiking these days, but it's such a fantastic way to journey: you get to meet the most interesting characters, you reduce your carbon footprint, get lots of fascinating local knowledge the guidebooks will never divulge, and you don't have to spend a single penny on transport.
I recently attended a discussion on the economic study of innovation, at which one of the participants pointed to this fascinating paper:Are scientific knowledge flows embodied in individuals, or "in the air"?
But there were just as many wonderful things that I had gathered during those five months - new friendships, so many ideas, and so much information and knowledge from fascinating books that I actually had the time to read.
The successive publications over time told a fascinating story of unfolding knowledge of the determinants of grouse abundance.
"Bestiaries of the Middle Ages offer fascinating insight into the knowledge and beliefs of the time--a mixture, often, of dawning science and ancient folklore," writes Gregory McNamee in his collection The Serpent's Tale: Snakes in Folklore and Literature (University of Georgia Press, paperback, $17.95).
It is a fascinating lesson in how knowledge gleaned from one area of science -- in this case addiction science -- can inform our understanding of a global ecological crisis.
At its best, though, when we shoot these reveals (which can take as much as three or four hours, as I walk a guest up the various branches of her or his family tree), I feel as if I am Santa Claus delivering presents full of long-lost ancestors and their stories, giving the gifts of personal--and historical--insight to thirty fascinating people thirsting for knowledge about their ancestral roots.
Our results provide insight into the biology of this fascinating organism, expanding our knowledge of the set of proteins still functioning in its nonphotosynthetic plastid.
