Y�know how an annoying question sneaks into your brain and nags at your mind? And no matter how much you reach around in there to probe and grasp and pull at the answer, you just can�t remember it?

Maybe it�s the state bird of New York (bluebird). Or the capital of Canada (Ottawa). Whatever it is, you knew it once but now it�s not there. It�s buried somewhere in the quagmire of other facts�useless, useful and otherwise�cluttering up your mental hard drive.

This past weekend I went through one of those mental needle-in-a-haystack searches that makes you want to hit yourself over the head with an encyclopedia. All I wanted to know was the name of the dog on The Jetsons. Not exactly an important life-or-death fact, I�ll admit, but I was frustrated because it�s a piece of pop culture trivia I thought should be easier to access from my brain than it was.

I tried to sing the theme song. I went through the alphabet hoping the first letter would jog my memory. I pictured the mangy mutt in my mind, and heard how he talked, but still nothing clicked. The closest I could guess was "Gizmo." In the end I finally had to give up a day later and ask my husband, who had already confirmed the answer on the Internet.

(If you don�t already know it, stick around and I�ll tell you later.)

That�s one type of question we ask ourselves and each other every day. A "just the facts, ma�am" question with easily verified answers. How many feet are in a mile? 5,280. What�s the capital of Idaho? Boise. When was the Civil War? April 1861 - May 1865. These are things I learned at one time but, with time and disuse, slide farther and farther to the back of the junk drawer that is my mind.

A few weeks ago my inquisitive 10-year-old daughter asked quite another sort of question. It was one of those deep and complex questions that parents can never quite be prepared for. "How do we learn?" she mused as we walked through the woods along the Hudson Pointe trail in Queensbury.

Obviously, she wasn�t asking about the different pedagogical methods that teachers use. Rather, I think she was wrapping her mind around a piece of the picture that�s much larger than she can yet comprehend: how each generation learns from the previous one, then takes that information to create new knowledge.

Take the case of Thomas Edison. I think it�s pretty amazing that created the light bulb, the phonograph and held over 1,000 patents, but he couldn�t have done any of it without knowing the basics of electricity, chemistry and other sciences. He had to first learn what other people knew and wrote about in textbooks, then he could say those magic words, "What if?" and go on to invent new things.

If he hadn�t, today�s students wouldn�t be sitting in front of computer screens under fluorescent lights accessing the Internet and to learn more about Edison and his inventions.

We live in a marvelous time of technological breakthroughs and historical investigation. Unfortunately, no one person in this day can know everything about everything. There�s simply too much knowledge of the past and daily news adding up to information overload. No one can remember everything that they ever knew, especially not while constantly adding to the database.

So why do we even bother to keep trying?

Some people don�t. Some people reach their limit and their comfort level and decide enough�s enough. They figure that whatever they know is all they�ll need to know for the rest of their lives.

Then again, there are retirees who go back to college for master�s degrees and 90 year olds who learn to surf the Internet.

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but when we stop asking questions, we stop getting answers. This makes us mentally dull and intellectually dead.

When we think we know it all, or know enough, we really show how little we�ve learned.

In the 1990s, Radio Shack took up the slogan "You�ve got questions, we�ve got answers" while Agent Mulder went around proclaiming, "The answers are out there." For much, much longer than that, the Bible has advised, "Seek and ye shall find."

My favorite adage is: "You learn something new every day." You might learn the name of Madonna�s newest child, or you might learn about da Vinci�s "Madonna and Child." It all depends on the questions you ask and where you go for information.

For the record, Astro was the name of the Jetson�s dog, Rocco is the name of Madonna�s second child, and da Vinci�s painting is currently housed at The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Any further questions?

Kay Hafner can be reached via email at [email protected].