I think the same goes for philosophers, except maybe writers don’t also have an innate need to be unpleasant to people.
I’ve had the COVID for the last 4 days and let me tell you that as a foodie the very worst aspect is the total loss of taste! Death comes a close second, but I’ve never experienced this before. I’ve had a muted sense of taste during colds etc, but this is complete loss… I mean this is a ‘blindfold me and you could feed me pig shit’ level of taste loss!
I tried to get into the special Econ class (the one for "student-athletes") but they wouldn't let me Spoiler There was a trick question on the entrance exam that I failed by counting past ten without undoing any of my clothing.
Philosophers and writers ask the same sorts of questions about life and humanity, but writers give their answers in stories.
I was required to take Agricultural Economics. If I ever took a more completely stupefying course than AgEcon I must've slept through it, because I surely do not recall it.
I took a Ukrainian Culture course in college. 15 week diatribe against the Russians by an elderly Ukrainian expat who had fled the Soviet Union. The only thing I remember is that Jack Palance was Ukrainian.
Most mammals get around 1 billion heartbeats in their lifetimes. Animals with faster heart rates live short, bright lives, while the slower ones hang around longer, but the number of beats is largely the same. Modern humans are the outlier, with around 3 billion lub-dubs. We may already be about as immortal as we're likely to get.
I think it's looking at the greatest recorded age. But there is indeed a flaw there - human lifespans are very easily recorded, us being humans. How many century+ old whales have died at sea over the eons, right? I know this was about mammals, but I wonder how the heartrate stats work for fish, or maybe reptiles like old Jonathan here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_(tortoise)
Jonathan was hatched before Queen Victoria was crowned! Thinking about the human heart.....why is strong emotion felt in it?
Emotion is actually felt in the brain. European culture attributed it to the heart. Some native American cultures attributed it to the liver.
Oddly, European cultures (Ancient Greeks especially) thought that thinking also took place in the heart. It makes sense, in as much as it’s the organ you can see/hear/feel actually living.
So do some philosophers (Sartre, Camus, Rousseau, Voltaire, even Plato if you want to count the dramatic bits of the dialogues). There’s a crossover in questions but they’re not identical. I’m sure writers will ask some questions that philosophers wouldn’t ask. I know philosophers ask ones writers wouldn’t. A novel on whether synthetic a priori knowledge is possible, or on whether there are such things as speech acts, would be reeeeeeeeeally dull. As dull as the philosophy papers on it. Maybe that’s what they were missing - a good arc.
maybe this is not such a useless thought, but as I am watching Mr Beast's videos on youtube, which I only click because I see millions of views and wonder why, I become inevitably disappointed with humanity. His videos are just the replay of the same content in different dressings and salsas, over and over and over. One of his great successes has been realizing that giving away free money in a variety of extremely-low-skilled human challenges--like how much money can you grab? or can you guess what happens next in the video? or do you choose this crate or the other one (one filled with money and the other empty)?--really gets you a humongous audience.
According to some sources, the name of the British new wave group Spandau Ballet could point to two possible meanings: one refers to the jerky movements of Nazi war prisoners as they were hanged at Spandau prison, or according to others, it refers to enemy soldiers being shot down by a German World War II machine gun MG42 Spandau.
There's the old Germanic fairy tale of some faerie folk (called Wichtelmänner "watch-men" in German) rewarding the hardworking shoemaker by finishing off his unmade shoes. This was collected in a book of Grimm's Fairy Tales with two other similar stories. Does that mean it's an elf-help book?
I did learn another British group of that era, UB40, was named after the form you must fill out in the UK to collect Unemployment Benefits.
Mmm. Speaking of economics, I took beginning micro-economics at university. I attended 1 lecture, and got something like 60% on the exam, since I had already got an A in A-level (high school) economics. I wanted to take the more advanced course, but since that was scheduled for 9AM, there was no chance. The beginning lecture was scheduled for 5PM, and I still bunked most of them.