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So, how do you "trace" the angle? I've been stuck looking at where my shed ramp should go for a year.

 What I have noticed after grad school in history, which in today's world is highly beholden to "theory," is that people have forgotten, or never learned, that models are not reality. Models are ways for our minds to reduce the infinite "details" of reality to a manageable shape or figure that we can turn over in our minds and talk to each other about, but they are not reality. We all know what the model of an atom or of the solar system looks like. But those models are real as models with their own bucket of details, but they are neither the atom nor the solar system. That we are ready to go to war to defend our models is a form of blindness. It's like the old question of the screen door. You can look at the screen, or you can look through it.

Ours is an age conspicuous for its lack of humility. You see it everywhere. Are we collecting details as evidence from which to draw a conclusion, or are we assembling data to support the conclusion to which we are drawn?

The Devil is in the details, and God is in the details are both true at the same time.

Excellent piece. When I was a teen and went to work in construction my uncle Bob made the memorable comment, "twelve years in the f+*#ing school and you can't dig a hole straight."