I've always felt a bit cheated by college. What I recieved was a solid education in the major of my choice, Chemistry. What I wanted was everything else.

There's a 'game' I occasionally play that shows what I mean. The rules are simple: spot an object, mentally disassemble it, consider the construction methods and sources of each of the parts, mentally disassemble and consider one of the component parts. Repeat as far as I'm able.

As an example, driving along the road, I see a 65 mph freeway sign. The game begins. The sign consists of a squared off wooden post, a rectangular sheet of metal painted with white and black paint, a metal mounting bracket with screws/bolts, and a cement footing for the post. Picking at part more or less at random, dial in on the actual metal "sign" part. The metal is probably aluminum, but the paint I have no idea about. What are the other classes of paint besides Latex, oil, and acrylic anyways? Make a mental note to look up types of paint next time I'm bored. Go back to the aluminum, assuming that's what it really is. Aluminum is, like most metals, mined as an ore (specifically bauxite), and then refined (Bayer process) and smelted (Hall-Héroult method). I cheated a bit here, in that I looked up the exact names of the refining and smelting processes, but were I really playing the game on the road, I recall that aluminum is smelted by way of electrically reducing it -- removing the oxygen and hydroxy groups it's bound to. Takes a lot of electricity, so it tends to be done in areas with plentiful hydroelectric power availabe. From here I can either start considering the details of the power grid, specifics of hydroelectric power, or jump back up a level and consider some other aspect of aluminum or the sign.

It's purposefully getting lost in thought. It's exploring the bredth and depth of what I know, and reminding myself of things I don't know and could find out. And it's not really what I should be doing when behind the wheel, but that's a whole 'nother topic.

Going back to what I've learned (and not learned) in college, I've found myself playing the game in a whole new way lately. Instead of pondering the technological aspects of things, I've been exploring their sociolgical and political aspects. Taking the same road sign as an example, rather than considering it's composition, I'll consider it's function in civilization. Much like with composition, it's a pondering that can follow many different paths, all of which readily diverge. I can start by it's primary and immediate function, to inform the driver of the local speed limit. The speed limit itself can be thought of as a tool for public safety, or as a method of income generation, or as a national gas saving attempt, or as a way of reducing governmental liability in the case of an accident. Or some other way that I can't think of off the top of my head. Following the first, public safety, for a moment I can consider the sign's effectiveness at increasing safety, the necessity of enforcement to encourage compliace, the inherant problem of allowing people to operate vehicles capable of killing others, the role of insurance costs in encouraging compliace, or any of a thousand other things.

Again, it's purposefully getting lost in thought, though this time considering the societal purpose and rules for the object. It's still looking at the object systematically, breaking it down into subsystems, recognizing larger systems that its a component of, and otherwise considering it's position in the world as a whole. But now it's more interested in people. It's trying to understand the rules that people make and follow, rather than just the 'natural' rules that govern the physical sciences and technology.

I started with a point (I think), but now I've lost it. To be edited later.