The selective vision thing is so true, both for `dig` and for `man` pages. I can't count the number of times have I `man <cmd>` and just felt overwhelmed by the seemingly endless pages of configuration options and command line flags. One tip I use for `man` is use vim style search functions triggered with `/`. For example, if I want to find how to output the line number of each match in grep and I can't remember how - I'll just `man grep` then type `/line` and hit enter and it will search for any occurrence of the word "line" in the man page. Next match is just `/<enter>`.
I'm also a bit sad to hear that Strange Loop is now finished? I only found them last year or so and it seemed like so many of the talks were exceptional quality.