It’s a blustery day here in New York City, a real miserable ‘get out the rain quick’ type of day.  When I fired up my car this morning, I had to do a double take - it said it was 12 degrees outside.  I was ready to run back in the house and get a warmer coat.

Of course it’s not really 12 degrees outside here - my car had a battery replaced and the temperature settings were accidentally reset to celsius instead of fahrenheit.  As I drove the car I spent the good portion of 20 minutes trying to remember the math associated with converting the C to an F number.  Let’s see, 32 degress F equals 0 C - and then it gets a little sticky from there.  That little information nugget was used sometime around 7th grade, but seems to have been misplaced since.

The combination of this little mess and this interesting test by blogger Clinton Forbes (Quick: What is 78 x 23?) got me thinking - what do we really know or not know anymore?  How much of our lives are really controlled by the technology gods and does it matter whether we know what we know?

I feel smarter than I did as a 7th grader though — should I consider some refresher courses or just let the internets do their magic?