education

Dirty Mythbusting Jobs Versus Nature With Bizarre Foods in The Wild

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I love Mythbusters.  That's a tame statement actually, but human vocabulary is limited.  Let's just say now and then when I fire up Netflix, the people I live with dread I'm going to watch some episode for the 3rd or 4th time.  Seriously though, how can you not watch a hot water tank take off like a rocket again and again?

In fact, I love shows like Mythbusters, though they're my prime love.  I love these oddball reality-esque shows that look at weird jobs, foods, areas, history, and more.  You know the formula – get the right host with a good personality, a subject, turn them loose, and film the fascinating results.  From blowing up toilets to eating tuna eyeballs, these shows are addictive to people like me.

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Go Farther: Fiction Needs Some Education

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It appears I'm on a roll of late with "Go Farthers" for our fiction/setting writing audiences.  I'm not done of course – I'm just noting.

I've talked about how creating a new setting – or working with an old one – can be improved by thinking about economic issues.  I've discussed the importance of food in a setting – an area often ignored despite the fact that food and culturally related elements are telling an important.  So what's next?

Education.

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Fandom Takes The Edge Off Of Learning

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I'm a big booster on the idea that you can use your hobbies to learn something – practice your accounting helping out a local con, practice your HTML making a website, practice your writing doing anime reviews.  Hobbies are a great way to gain and improve skills.

However there's another thing hobbies do for our skill improvement that makes them even more valuable – they provide a kind of mental and emotional buffer to the stress of learning.  This is very useful if you've got a lot of stress to deal with or had some negative experiences with training or education

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