I’ve been thinking about gaps in my education lately. These are some things I should know more about:
- The war in Afghanistan.
- Science.
- Financial markets and the principles of basic investing.
- Japanese grammar.
- The human body.
- China.
- Church history.
- Divisions and functions of the branches of the U.S. military.
- How to make things grow.
- Russian history.
- Fertility.
- Cholesterol.
- The Federal Reserve.
- How to fix a spare tire.
- Insurance policies.
- How to read music.
- Global warming.
- Michele Bachmann.
- Interest rates.
- Calculus (and by “know more about” I mean “learn anything about”).
- Currency exchange rates.
- How to drive a manual transmission.
- The Supreme Court.
- Canadian provinces.
- Latin and Greek roots.
- The difference between Central and Latin America.
The reason why I don’t know more about these things is because, I suppose, I don’t find them fundamentally interesting. Even though I feel like I should. Do you know about these things? If so, enlighten me. I want to know.
Little Stories 
try googling “the provences of canada song” and see what you come up with. i worked with a few canadians at camp for a few summers, and we wove this song into our summer repertoire. i now know the provences (and territories!) of canada by heart.
as far as russian history, i could send you a number of book titles as i have a secret desire to be a sovietologist. good luck with the federal reserve and exchange rates. i wanted to be an arbitrageur for a long time, until i realized that economics (particularly those of the international/ international political variety) are far too complicated for my simple mind to grasp. 🙂
Taking Charge of Your Fertility. Read it. It’s amazing. I’m reading it right now.
I will totally help you conquer the car challenges. I don’t have a manual transmission, but I know how. And I’ve learned how to change a spare. And I will not condescend – I will only giggle – when you find these things difficult.
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-01-single-variable-calculus-fall-2006/video-lectures/
There are plenty of other fascinating fields of mathematics apart from calculus too, though!
http://prezi.com/aww2hjfyil0u/math-is-not-linear/
See?
i can help in the science department… and as far as “global warming” is concerned, people generally like to call it “climate change” because the temperature is rising, but it will only really globally rise 1 degree C (which is actually a lot), but the scary part is it will shift climate patterns around, making some places warmer/cooler, wetter/drier, intensify hurricanes, etc. this website does a good job of presenting common global warming arguments and debunking them or supporting them with science!! http://www.skepticalscience.com/
So, I was going to recommend “Taking Charge of Your Fertility”…but someone beat me to it! = ) So I second that recommendation. I think every woman should read it.
Do you read/subscribe to the New Yorker? If so, there’s an article this week re: Michele Bachmann. There’ve also been articles in the past on Supreme Court justices that I’ve found supremely (pun intended) enlightening. I’ll print you up some before the next meeting — like how I’m already researching on your blog and it’s been about 10 minutes since we met? Awesome.
Thanks for all of the knowledge, friends! I’m grateful and impressed.
[…] is a companion list to my recent post, Things I Should Know. These are the few things that I do know and could plausibly teach […]
it’s not on your list, but today i’m going to learn how to change out an old car battery (aka how not to get hosed into paying someone for labor to do something simple, yet supposedly mysterious as it’s under the hood of a car…)
[…] Evolution of God, by Robert Wright. I am trying to learn more things and so I’ve decided that I need to read more nonfiction–particularly nonfiction that I […]