: DADDIO: You have no use for electric motors? Do you live on some island paradise? : Shaun:…. I have remembered many useless things taught that I am interested in. Otherwise, I'd rather forget it.
If I may be so bold, Shaun was probably saying that although electric motors are useful (there are several of them in your PC), they are boring to him, and it was unnecessary for him to bore himself learning about them because there will always be someone else to deal with them. It made me imagine a Frenchman appearing at my doorstep. When I greeted the Frenchman, he shoved an electric drill in my hand and began ranting in French, gesticulating with his hands trying to make me understand. Getting nowhere fast, I'd be comforted in the knowedge that I could contact Daddio, Shaun, or another person who understood him. The response would be something like, "He says his drill is busted, and he needs to use the bathroom."
I might say to the translator: "Tell my guest that the crapper is downstairs in the cellar next to the water heater, and to watch out for objects hanging from the floor joists above." The Frenchman understands the translation and heads downstairs. As he sits there flexing away, I'd go to work on the electric drill. If its brushes are accessible from the outside, that's where I'd start, otherwise, I'd have to disassemble the drill, remove the stator, remove any sawdust and other crap inside, oil the bearings, replace the brushes, and put the whole mess back together. As he leaves, repaired drill in hand, I might give him some torn-out pages from the telephone directory, listing restaurants that serve snails.
I'm sorry to bore you with such a stupid scenario, but my point is this: Most people would rather be wealthy than educated, so they learn the subjects that interest them, or those that might be useful in the job market, while the other subjects are merely a waste of time. Personally, I think a monkey could understand an electric motor well enough to repair it, but it takes some amount of practice, and few people will want to be bothered with it, and will contact someone else if the need arises. I have nothing to say to the French, so I only know a few French words, though I imagine I'm quite capable of learning the language if I had to.
In my own life, I've certainly saved quite a lot of money by not calling in someone else to fix my electrical/mechanical appliances. But, I certainly can't do it all. I still need someone else to restore the electrical service to my home whenever a storm knocks it out, to cook my Big Macs in such a way they don't poison me, to refine crude oil into gasoline (petrol) so that I may burn it in my engine, to mount new tires on the rims of my car when the old tires (tyres) are worn, and to shake the farts out of the bed linens in my hotel rooms. I could do each of these, after varying amounts of training, but let's face it; the more time I spend doing these, the less time I have to earn a paycheck.
In case the question comes up, my knowledge of motors and appliances didn't come courtesy of my publicly-funded education; it's just something I taught myself.
Tell Him To Take A Bath While He's Down There,
Hugh Morris
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