That we are still using petroleum based engines. I mean we should have invented a new type of engine in a hundred years.
The intelligence of animals amazes me. A squirrel will spend hours until they figure out how to get into the bird feeder. The octopus can open jars by unscrewing the lids.
Farms and gardens. I love to watch stuff grow in the garden. I think nature is wonderful and very calming.
That the lowest-level workings of the computer I am now using consists not much more than NAND gates, loads of them. It’s just the clever way they are piled together that makes everything happen.
Nematodes are the most numerous animal on the planet. If every solid structure in the world suddenly disappeared, you would be able know where they were based on the absence of nematodes.
Throwing a baseball -
how do I know how much arc to give it to reach my target? How the brain processes that information so quickly amazes me.
The roles people play in the world that have nothing to do with me:
Cardboard boxes-
it’s someone’s job to design them, that’s amazing to me.
Pens-
There are numerous designs for the retractable pen. It must be someone’s job to come up with this stuff.
Do people like sit in a board room and pitch ideas for their design and argue the merits of one over another? I wonder how competitive this field is.
Mostly just amazing that to someone in the world, this stuff is important. I don’t mean that in a preachy way, I mean it’s really far from where my head is on a daily basis, very different, seems trivial to me, but fun to think about.
The fact that 2 liters of soda cost the same as 20 ounces. That sometimes it’s even cheaper to buy a 2 liter bottle, but I end up buying a 20 ounce cause that’s all I want.
And computers, the universe and all that stuff too.
That not too long ago, people typed directly onto a piece of paper with a typewriter, yet somehow managed to complete whatever they were working on. I cannot type without making a mistake, and it is utterly mind-boggling that at one time, making a mistake would mean starting all over again.
Basketball; I don’t think I’ve ever made a basket, even in practice. It’s amazing that players can score so many points.
I’d second greck’s thoughts about people who design things.
Great thread, cainxinth.
Big old trees… giant sequoias and bristlecone pines, I still get chills running down my spine thinking back on the first time I travelled to California and touched one with my own hands. Trying to grasp that some of these still living things have been around practically throughout mankind’s entire civilized history. That I rested my palm against a living thing that was 3000 years old when the vikings reigned… 2000 years when Jesus walked the earth… that had been here doing its tree thing since the pyramids were being constructed.
I saw a show on PBS about conception and what sperm have to go through to fertilize an egg, then the egg needs to implant, the cells divide, etc. The fact that we as a race have not died out amazes me.
Emotions astound me, too. That we are somehow wired to feel joy or sadness or envy or even boredom. It really is amazing to think about.
And fax machines totally blow my mind.
There used to be living, breathing pissed off flesh wrapped around those huge dinosaur skeletons at the museum.
The fact that everything is just made of of atoms of elements. I am just a bunch of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and a bunch of other crap. Somehow, those simple elements make me me.
The ear piece invention that cures people who studder. Put it in, speak normally, take it out you studder. Amazing.
the fact that the inside of a record (ya know, those big cd’s that your parents have) is moving slower than the outside. Even though they are making the same rpm.
I’ve spent many sleepless nights trying to figure that one out. So far no luck.
In a thread welby started last week, I saw that there is now a LEGO Imperial Star Destroyer consisting of more than 3,000 peices.
Absolutely amazing.
Traveling at fast (85mph) speeds in the car sometimes blows my mind. Especially when you are surrounded by other people traveling that fast. Look up at any given time and see an airplane full of people travelling at 600mph. Mentally evaporate the metal - blows my mind!
Along the lines of what Zarja said. I toured some of the Mayan ruins in Mexico a few years back. The fact that I was standing in the exact spot that a Mayan citizen had stood years before! Same with touching an antique, especially one owned by a famous person. I am such a history geek!
Speaking of history, I still sometimes think it amazing that in 2003, some of the biggest names are people that were born two to three thousand years ago. It boggles my mind that someone could have that big of an impact on the world.
[list=1]
[li]Looking up at the stars at night.[/li][li]A Lunar eclipse.[/li][li]Airplanes. There’s nothing underneath them! I keep waiting for somebody to pop out & say “Nyah-Nyah! It’s a trick!”[/li][li]That I have never known war on my own country’s soil, nor famine, nor pandemic plague.[/li][/list=1]
[Homer] Mmmmmm…Penguin in a Can…[/Homer]
Women.
I would have to add my baby to my list. Not only is she this nifty little person who is getting bigger and more advanced every day, but she came out of me—that’s the part that really blows my mind.
The fact that I can send a package to my mother a continent away, and it will arrive within two to three days.
As was stated earlier, the overabundance of supermarkets. I truly do live like a queen.
The ease of travel. I woke up yesterday morning in Venice. By noon, I was back in England. Freaks me out.
The kindness and thoughtfulness of many teenagers.
The horrific shit that happens to some teenagers before the age of 14. (I found out just the other day that one of my students was sexually molested by her father for years and is now in hiding from him. Makes. Me. Sick.)
My parents and how amazing they are.