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Humans are naturally inquisitive beings. So are cats. The difference is that from very young ages, we tend to seek out answers to our questions either from trial and error or through the expert advice of a parent, older sibling or some other person who has the knowledge and experience to satisfy our curiosity. Cats pretty much just stick their paws into it, and then get bored and take a nap on the window sill. As we get older and more experienced ourselves, our interests often tend to align in specific arenas. The more time we spend in these areas of interest the more we learn. Before long, we become the people that others come to for answers to their questions. At some point during this journey to seek knowledge and answers, the chances of running into a road block are usually pretty high. Regardless of what you might like to believe, we simply cannot know EVERYTHING about a specific concept, topic or area of knowledge. There is always something new to learn. Even if the topic is not being actively developed with new things being discovered, like learning about the history of a civilization, there is virtually no chance of knowing it all. The most preeminent scholars are constantly reading, researching and learning new and different aspects about their areas of expertise. This is what makes folks experts in their fields. They know enough to know they don't know what they don't know! Which means that while they may be the person to give expert advice, eventually there will come a time when they simply have not learned what the answer to a specific question might be. Before the age of the Internet, if you were such a person who provided advice and answers to inquisitive souls, when you came up against a question you were unable to answer you might have made a trip to your personal reference shelf. Depending upon the query, you might have to take a trip to the local library. Or the nearby university research center. Or all of the above. But we are in the Internet age and if you know where to look, you can easily find expert advice online. But you have to be sure you're searching in the right place and in the right way. Some search engines are a good place to start your journey. The challenge with most search engines, however, is just how do you ask the question in the best way to get focused, directly related answers. Most of the engines are just computers. And while they can be amazingly powerful and can tell you the value of Pi to the billionth decimal point, they tend to have much tougher time answering a real world question. Sites like Wikipedia and other related crowd sourced communities tend to be a step in the right direction. If you were curious to how Pi was discovered and why it's important, getting the quality, historical information is relatively easy with websites like these. But if you're interested in how to teach your cat to calculate Pi with paw scratching, you might be hard pressed. Your best bet is to seek out one of the newest types of search sites known as a personal answer engine. Basically these are sites that have real bonafide experts who can answer your questions either in real time, or pretty near to it. The best part of an answer engine is even if you ask a silly question about feline mathematics chances are the expert advice you'll receive back will be true, correct and worth the time you took to ask it in the first place. Sandy Winslow is a writer on many topics, such as advice on where to get advice. Are you the person in your sphere of influence that provides most of the expert advice for one or more topics? What do you do when you're stumped for an answer?
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