Cheerful Monk has a rather intriguing blog post with the same title as this one and I urge my readers to read it in full.
As she always does, CM asks this question at the end of the post.
“Do you agree with James at all? Do you ever think in terms of skill development?”
I could not resist the temptation to be a little facetious and responded – “What is skill development? I have got two left hands and two right legs. I have a sound box that faithfully echoes a frog.”
And came the totally unexpected googly as we would call it in cricketeese or the curve ball as the Americans would call it in baseballeese from Ursula. This is of course to thank her for coming to my rescue like a knightess, (is that the word or is it baroness?) in shining armour riding a white horse with these comments.
“Don’t make me laugh, Ramana. Stop it right now. Two left hands, two right feet? Think about it. If you were left handed (which, admittedly, I don’t believe you are) you’d be laughing. Two for the price of one. Productivity going through the roof.
Feet don’t care whether they are left or right. The poor sausages and their intricate network of fine bones are occupied enough to carry us and our body weight through life without going all philosophical. In fact, I sometimes think feet (and mine don’t even hurt) must be looking forward to finally being put up (to rest).
On this cheerful note,
U”.
Okay. I will give you something to really laugh about Ursula. In my misspent youth I did go through a period of intense training to develop mathematical skills. So, here is something that I will give you as a skill that I developed. Learning useless information and sharing it with others to impress them with my skills and or knowledge.
6 and 28 are the only perfect numbers before one reaches three digits (100). It is so because they are equal to the sum of their factors. 6 is divisible by 1,2 and 3 and 1+2+3 = 6; and 28 is divisible by 14,7,4,2 and 1 and 14+7+4+2+1 = 28. You will have to do a lot of summing before you hit the next perfect number 496.
Have I impressed you Ursula?