{"id":1583,"date":"2014-01-09T01:51:17","date_gmt":"2014-01-09T06:51:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/?p=1583"},"modified":"2013-12-29T14:54:11","modified_gmt":"2013-12-29T19:54:11","slug":"the-impossible-and-those-pesky-second-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/2014\/01\/the-impossible-and-those-pesky-second-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"The Impossible and those Pesky Second Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n<p><strong>How we describe the impossible helps us answer the second question. And the second question is about or imperfections.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Question: Can we land persons on the moon and have them live there for a year before January 1st, 2015?<br \/>\nThink about the answer a moment.\u00a0 Time is up.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>One answer: That is impossible.<\/li>\n<li>Another answer: I don&#8217;t know how.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I prefer the second answer. Here are some examples:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Build a car that runs solely on solar power and has a range of 500 miles in 24 hours.<\/li>\n<li>Build a nuclear fusion reactor.<\/li>\n<li>Build a lighter-than-air ship that can stay aloft for 1,000 days while supporting the lives of ten people.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>One answer to these challenges is, &#8220;that&#8217;s impossible.&#8221; Another answer is, &#8220;I don&#8217;t know how to do that (yet).&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Most people respond with, &#8220;that&#8217;s impossible.&#8221; That answer absolves me of personal responsibility. If I respond with, &#8220;I don&#8217;t know how (yet),&#8221; a second question can come. Here are a few second questions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Why don&#8217;t you know how? (Are you stupid?)<\/li>\n<li>When will you know how? (How slow to you learn?)<\/li>\n<li>Why am I talking to you? (You obviously aren&#8217;t worth my while.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I hate those second questions. Most people I know also hate those questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Dwayne Phillips How we describe the impossible helps us answer the second question. And the second question is about or imperfections. Question: Can we land persons on the moon and have them live there for a year before January 1st, 2015? Think about the answer a moment.\u00a0 Time is up. One answer: That is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[154],"class_list":["post-1583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communication","tag-communication"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1583"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1585,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1583\/revisions\/1585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}