Donald Pittenger writes:

Dear Blowhards --

Whether it's a general male trait or simply my normal sloth, it seems that most of the guys I meet and socialize with nowadays are husbands of friends of my wife. And of those husbands of my wife's friends, the ones I tend to get along with best and for the longest visits are guys who Know Stuff.

Now, everybody of sound mind knows a lot of things by the time teen years are nicely underway. So my Know Stuff criterion is really something to the effect of knowing stuff about subjects I too am familiar with. That is, a guy deep into bricklaying, hot-rodding and pre-1970 baseball statistics clearly knows a lot of stuff, but I would have trouble carrying on a long conversation with him about those subjects because my knowledge about them is pretty scanty.

On the other hand there are a few people who know things, but at a superficial level across nearly all the board. And there are those who know things, but aren't able to organize or present them in an interesting way.

Do you get the idea that the subject of this post is highly subjective?

Even so, I think there are people whose knowledge and ability to communicate it are above average. Further, I suggest that these traits make for blogging success as well as conversational compatibility.

A prime example is Dave Burge who blogs as Iowahawk. Burge is widely recognized in the righty side of the blogosphere as an especially keen satirist. I believe that the strength of his satires is largely due to knowing a lot of stuff -- the way people of different backgrounds phrase things, details of society now and even 70 or 80 years ago, details about other countries, and so on. If the details are wrong, the satire fails.

Burge's blog persona is that of a Iowa hayseed hot rod freak who (for a while on the blog) purportedly lived in a trailer park. Yet not long ago Burge dropped his mask and wrote this post in which he created a downloadable spreadsheet model that mimicked the well-known global warming "hockey stick" graph. (It seems Burge works with statistical modeling on his day job). The punch line of the piece is that that hockey stick appears only if data are manipulated just so.

So, while the criteria for the honor of Knowing Stuff are subjective, in certain circumstances there can be a payoff for one who Knows Stuff.

Later,

Donald

Trading facts is pretty much how most guys communicate when they either don't know each other well or don't have much in common.

Posted by: JV on February 1, 2010 11:11 AM






Post a comment

Name:


Email Address:


URL:


Comments:


Remember your info?