There are shows on television which are entertaining and there are shows on television which are educational. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can find a show that’s both entertaining and educational at the same time. MythBusters is one of those shows.

After watching the show for a few years I’ve come to realize that MythBusters does more than just entertain and educate — it also has taught me some valuable lessons about life itself. Here, then, are the things I’ve learned about life by watching MythBusters:

1. If you want to make your life more exciting you should befriend a retired FBI agent.
2. Everyone on MythBusters has a chance to get promoted. Even Buster, through years of hard work and self-sacrifice without complaint, was somehow able to rise through the ranks from a lowly “crash test dummy” to a much more impressive-sounding “human analogue”.
3. Never trust Adam to give you the odds on anything.
4. The easiest way to sell an old car that nobody wants is to invent a myth about it and wait for the show to buy it from you.
5. The MythBusters can control anything using a remote control except, ironically, a remote-controlled helicopter, which they simply crash.
6. Grant really doesn’t want anyone to take his calculator.
7. If you can’t reproduce the myth try to reproduce the results. If you can’t reproduce the results just blow something up.
8. The word “MythTern” really means “menial task person”.
9. If you ever lose control of your car try to make sure that it doesn’t plunge into a raging river — instead, in order to improve your odds of survival, lose control of it in such a way that it gets gently lowered into a shallow swimming pool.
10. Even the most mundane tasks can become more exciting if you say the magic words “In 3… 2… 1…” before you do them.

Well, I suppose that’s not completely true. I can cook a bit, but only if I can follow a set of simple directions or a basic recipe. If I have to somehow deviate because I have a 9″x13″ casserole dish instead of an 8″x12″ casserole dish or because I can’t find the oregano I’m in trouble.

My wife, on the other hand, knows how to cook. She uses a recipe as more of a vague suggestion rather than as a detailed set of instructions. If she can’t find a specific ingredient she can simply substitute something else using logic like “It’s in the same family” or “It’ll work — they’re both red”.

When my wife looks into the pantry she sees a hundred different meals just waiting to be made. When I look into the pantry I see a bunch of ingredients without knowing how they could possibly combined to make anything.

I find this ironic because, when it comes to technology, I’m the cook. I can look at all of the “ingredients” that I have (hardware, software, network) and have no problem coming up with ways to combine them to make a technological meal. Sometimes I can even make a meal and a dessert.

When my wife looks at the technology around the house she sees a computer in the basement and an XBox hooked up to the TV. I see a content-delivery system that lets us watch YouTube videos on our television by using the computer to transcode the video on-the-fly from .flv to .wmv codecs and streaming the result to our XBox.

My wife knows that adding salt to water will lower its boiling point. I know that UDP is a more efficient protocol than TCP for streaming video. She can make Chicken Cacciatore. I can turn on the Christmas tree lights with the TV’s remote control.

You could assume that if I spent as much time learning about all of the nuances of the hundred spices in our spice rack as I do reading about the latest in high-definition delivery systems I’d know how to make Chicken Cacciatore, too. I’m not sure that’s the case, though I don’t know why. I’ve tried — over and over and over again — to learn how to make the most basic dishes. I can fumble, bumble, and stumble my way through a recipe but it never seems to turn out quite right. When the remote control suddenly is unable to turn on the Christmas tree lights I can immediately come up with a list of possible reasons and solutions. When my Chicken Cacciatore taste like cardboard I have no idea how to tell what went wrong.

I think that cooking in the kitchen and cooking with technology have one thing in common — they’re both as much art as they are science. And, like most things that have an artistic component, you have to possess at least a basic aptitude for something before you can become proficient at it. When it comes to understanding technology I have at least a bit of that aptitude. When it comes to cooking, not so much. But that’s OK — I still get a chance to do my own type of cooking.

Well, it’s time for me to grab something to eat. Now where’s that can of Spam?