# post obscure facts about your profession!

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-obscure-facts-about-your-profession/525859>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [January 21, 2010, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-obscure-facts-about-your-profession/525859 "2010-01-21T16:51:46Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 5

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**Author:** ![Evil\_Economist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c89c15/32.png) [@Evil\_Economist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Economist)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2010, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-obscure-facts-about-your-profession/525859/81 "2010-01-29T18:20:36Z")

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I work in a field of tax consulting that employees thousands of highly-educated people across the U.S. We have lawyers, economists and accountants working together to provide these tax consulting services.

Our specialty is a section of the tax code that’s two sentences long.

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**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2010, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-obscure-facts-about-your-profession/525859/82 "2010-01-29T18:55:16Z")

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> [@Evil\_Economist](#):
>
> I work in a field of tax consulting that employees thousands of highly-educated people across the U.S. We have lawyers, economists and accountants working together to provide these tax consulting services.
> 
> Our specialty is a section of the tax code that’s two sentences long.

LOL! If they had explained it thoroughly, we wouldn’t need a bunch of experts to track the resultant regulations, now would we?

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**Author:** ![Jamaika\_a\_jamaikaiake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7993a0/32.png) [@Jamaika\_a\_jamaikaiake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jamaika_a_jamaikaiake)\
**Post date:** [January 31, 2010, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-obscure-facts-about-your-profession/525859/83 "2010-01-31T01:43:27Z")

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> [@MsWhatsit](#):
>
> I index books. The most obscure fact about my profession is apparently that it exists at all. Most people seem to think that indexes are somehow automatically created by a piece of software.

I like to use the index of a book as an example of an astonishingly useful and cheap piece of technology that’s obvious once you know what it is, but we actually went centuries without anybody inventing it.

There’s a book that’s the encyclopedia of my field (Set Theory by Jech) and the edition I own has a terrible index. The next edition has a really useful one. So I know by contrast the value of a good index.

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**Author:** ![eleanorigby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@eleanorigby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eleanorigby)\
**Post date:** [January 31, 2010, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-obscure-facts-about-your-profession/525859/84 "2010-01-31T01:52:27Z")

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The first flight attendants back in the day were required to be Registered Nurses.

I’m not a flight attendant, but I am an RN. I used to have this cool quote from an old nursing text re who was qualified to use a thermometer, but I lost it.  
I got nothing.

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