Alright, so I wanted to share a little thing I got into the other day. Just a small personal “investigation,” if you will, that turned into my practice session of information hunting for the day.
My Quest for Brian Skinner’s Height
I was looking into this physicist, Brian Skinner. Smart fella, deals with some pretty heavy topics in his field. You read enough about someone, and sometimes, out of nowhere, these really random questions pop into your head.
Mine was, “Okay, how tall is this Brian Skinner guy?” Yeah, I know. Completely out of the blue. Has absolutely zero to do with his actual work in physics. But the thought lodged itself in my brain, and, well, I just had to try and find out. It’s that itch, you know?
So, off to the internet I went. Standard procedure these days, right? You open your favorite search engine. You type in what you’re looking for. In my case: “Brian Skinner height.” Hit enter. I sort of expected a quick answer, like you often get for public figures, actors, or athletes.
But nope. It wasn’t going to be that simple at all. What I mostly got was a whole load of links to his academic research. His university profile page. Videos of his lectures and talks. All really good stuff, mind you, very impressive, seriously. But his actual physical height? Nowhere. Not a peep.
I figured I needed to switch up my search terms a bit. I tried a few different approaches:
- Brian Skinner physicist actual height
- Professor Brian Skinner how tall
- Brian Skinner measurements
I scrolled through pages of results. I clicked on various links. I even skimmed a few online discussion boards where academics and scientists sometimes get mentioned, thinking maybe, just maybe, someone had noted it down in passing.
Still nothing. Zilch. Nada. It became pretty clear, pretty quickly, that this particular piece of information wasn’t just floating around out there for easy public consumption. Unlike many celebrities, I guess most academics don’t typically have their vital statistics plastered all over the web for everyone to see.
And after a decent bit of trying, I just kind of stopped my search. I figured it’s either not meant to be widely known, or at least, not information that’s considered important enough by anyone to list publicly. And honestly, that’s perfectly fair, isn’t it? It’s a personal detail, at the end of the day. His real contribution is his brain, his scientific work, not how many inches or centimeters tall he happens to stand.
This whole little exercise was my “practice” for the day, I suppose. The practice of digging for something very specific online. Even though I ultimately came up empty-handed on the height question itself, it was a good reminder of a few things. The internet, for all its vastness, doesn’t actually have everything. And sometimes, the process of the search, the digging around, is the interesting part, not just the final answer. Plus, I ended up learning a bit more about his physics work along the way, so it wasn’t a total loss! Some things, perhaps they’re just not for us to know, and that’s probably okay.
