# Perfectly ordinary things that strike you as marvelous when you think about them **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 24, 2009, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588 "2009-03-24T15:20:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2009, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/41 "2009-03-24T19:01:12Z")
The idea of how many people’s labors you encounter in one day. Everything you come in contact with had to be designed, created and shipped to a warehouse and then a store so you could buy it. You encounter the work of over a million people each day, probably before lunch. ---
**Author:** ![Zeldar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/b77776/32.png) [@Zeldar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeldar)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2009, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/42 "2009-03-24T19:01:53Z")
> [@Sigmagirl](#): > > Photography. We can look at our loved one, and put light on a piece of paper and it will look like our loved one forever. And we can see what our ancestors looked like even if they died before we were born. Going one step further: art. When whoever does/did it has/had the intention of making it look as real as possible. Greek statues, for instance. Won’t it be awful 200-300 years down the road when our descendants look at a Picasso and say, “Jesus shit! I’m glad we don’t look like that any more”? ---
**Author:** ![cjepson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a9adbd/32.png) [@cjepson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cjepson)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2009, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/43 "2009-03-24T19:03:42Z")
Clouds. When I was a kid I used to look at those paintings of landscapes on other worlds by Chesley Bonestell and be pissed off because Earth’s sky was so boring. But imagine if you were from, say, Mars… the incredible ever-changing displays of color and form that take place in Earth’s sky would be mind-boggling. ---
**Author:** ![corkboard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9bcb4/32.png) [@corkboard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/corkboard)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2009, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/44 "2009-03-24T19:08:04Z")
The human body and the myriad things people can do with it. We use it to run marathons, spin on one foot, build a house, sit, stand, kneel, lie down, roll over, stand on our hands, do splits, jump, ski, play a piano, chop wood, caress, punch, our skin can feel something as soft as a single hair on our cheek, yet can withstand subzero winds, extreme heat… it’s a pretty unbelieveably adaptable machine. ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2009, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/45 "2009-03-24T19:08:17Z")
Simply that we have built our entire society, built these ridoculously complex and massive things, with our opposable thumbs. This usually manifests itself to me when I’m walking across the Golden Gate Bridge. Our opposable thumbs invented all the steel, cabling, concrete, etc, then we invented a way to conceive, design and builde such a thing so we can get our machines across a body of water - a thing that’s 9,000 feet long and 750 feet above the water. The engineering involved with all possible aspects of creating such a thing, and having completed its construction in **NINTEEN THIRTY-SEVEN** , is simply staggering to me. ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2009, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/46 "2009-03-24T19:15:04Z")
> [@Aesiron](#): > > Pets. Specifically dogs. We tamed wolves, and they sleep with us in our beds at night. I actually marvel at this the other way–here we are civilized people, but a furry replica of a wild animal prowls around our home. Kind of bizarre. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2009, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/47 "2009-03-24T19:17:14Z")
Birds… fly! They move about in the air, in 3D. Never ceases to amaze me. ---
**Author:** ![Rufus\_Xavier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/eada6e/32.png) [@Rufus\_Xavier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rufus_Xavier)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2009, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/48 "2009-03-24T19:24:29Z")
I love this thread. Mine: The fact that Mathematics is a language built organically over time by people and is understood the world over, and that its function is to describe the mechanics of reality as we commonly know it. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2009, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/49 "2009-03-24T19:33:21Z")
The fact that we are living in the most astonishing time in human history. People will look back and wonder how we survived the late 1900’s and early 2000’s. ---
**Author:** ![Mahna\_Mahna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e47c2d/32.png) [@Mahna\_Mahna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahna_Mahna)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2009, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/50 "2009-03-24T19:36:02Z")
> [@Zeldar](#): > > Going one step further: art. When whoever does/did it has/had the intention of making it look as real as possible. Greek statues, for instance. > > Won’t it be awful 200-300 years down the road when our descendants look at a Picasso and say, “Jesus shit! I’m glad we don’t look like that any more”? I’m not so sure about this one. For one, I’d be awfully surprised if the cubism was a totally foreign concept 200-300 years from now, considering it was a major influence on 20th C art.\* Even the average high school art student of today can usually rhyme off a few of the major Western art movements from the last 1000 years without much trouble. It’s not like artists only just started stylising the human form… I don’t think you’d find anyone who assumes that all cavewomen looked like [this](http://www.geocities.com/reginheim/willendorfidol.jpg), or that the Egyptians all stood in contorted positions like [this](http://inlinethumb37.webshots.com/42212/2369407580102237573S425x425Q85.jpg), or that hindu women used to have blue skin and four arms like [this](http://www.ancientweb.org/images/india/hindu-gods-kali.jpg) one. - well, technically, in 200-300 years I’ll probably be too dead to be surprised by much… but you get the point ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2009, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/51 "2009-03-24T19:52:00Z")
Simply that there are so many other people out there, having their very own experiences, and that there’s just so much going on in the world that nobody could ever understand it, and more and more things are happening all the time. (Also, I’m getting the feeling that a certain percentage of the posters to this thread are high right now.) ---
**Author:** ![PatriotGrrrl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9dc877/32.png) [@PatriotGrrrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotGrrrl)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2009, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/52 "2009-03-24T20:12:03Z")
> [@Zeldar](#): > > Everything we eat and cook and enjoy raw off the tree or vine or pull up out of the ground. I often wonder how many people had to die trying other things before we were able to settle on what’s good to eat and what isn’t. I can imagine myself out in the woods or the desert trying first this plant then the other to keep myself alive, wondering which one is going to kill me. > > But go to a Farmer’s Market and there must be hundreds of things they’ve decided won’t kill me. It’s worth a small prayer or at least some gratitude. Did you know that until fairly modern times (the mid 1700’s) some people thought tomatos were poisonous? The stems and leaves are, and the tomato is related to other poisonous plants, so I guess they never tried the fruit. ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2009, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/53 "2009-03-24T21:16:43Z")
You want ordinary? I got ordinary. Nails. Screws. Nuts and bolts. Utterly commonplace, trivial things that anyone can buy for pennies. But without them modern civilization would figuratively and literally collapse. ---
**Author:** ![Caveat\_lector\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ea5d25/32.png) [@Caveat\_lector\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caveat_lector_1)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2009, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/54 "2009-03-24T22:28:36Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > (Also, I’m getting the feeling that a certain percentage of the posters to this thread are high right now.) Ha! Thats how feel when I think about this stuff. Or how I imagine I feel as I’ve never been high. However, I am sure I _look_ high as I sit here looking at my hand opening and closing and laughing. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2009, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/55 "2009-03-25T02:38:10Z")
Touch typing always seems like magic to me. When I start typing, words just appear on the screen and I don’t even have to think about it. It kind of feels like witchcraft to be able to do something that cool that quickly. Everything related to travel trips me out. That all these places we see in National Geographic are real, and _we can actually go there_! You are really only a thousand dollars and a couple days away from nearly every place on Earth. Even the most remote places you can think of- high in the Himalayas, deep in the Congo rain forest, smack in the middle of the Sahara whatever- are only maybe a week of travel away. Next Tuesday you could be in Timbuktu. Really, really think about that. ---
**Author:** ![Equipoise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/equipoise/32/151_2.png) [@Equipoise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Equipoise)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2009, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/56 "2009-03-25T04:29:31Z")
I love this thread too. I wholeheartedly agree with everything mentioned already, and will add heating and air conditioning. You can be warm in the dead of winter without building a fire, and when it’s sweltering outside you can turn on the air conditioning or go someplace air conditioned and feel cool almost instantly. It’s also great having a refrigerator. I can keep food cool without constantly buying a big block of ice. Having a stove and oven is nice too, because I suck at building fires. Oh, and indoor toilets. I’m old enough to have gone to a country school that had an outdoor john. It was horrible. Showers are good. I don’t have to haul water or heat it up before I can wash off and wash my hair. People lived for thousands of years without all those comforts and they’re among the millions of reasons why I like living in modern times. All that, music, movies, and the internet too? Wow. What a grand time to be living. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2009, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/57 "2009-03-25T04:38:54Z")
Another vote for the magic, talking internet box. Ask it any question it knows the answer. You can watch TV on it. You can talk to people on it. Most amazing of all, it can bring you endless porn of whatever variety your evil, broken mind can imagine. The internet is the greatest invention of all time. Thank you, Vice President Gore. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Carrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@Captain\_Carrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Carrot)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2009, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/58 "2009-03-25T05:07:45Z")
> [@rowrrbazzle](#): > > You want ordinary? I got ordinary. > > Nails. Screws. Nuts and bolts. Utterly commonplace, trivial things that anyone can buy for pennies. But without them modern civilization would figuratively and literally collapse. That’s because we’ve been making them for decades through mass production and we know the process well. They didn’t use to be that cheap. > [@Shark\_Sandwich](#): > > I’ve always marveled at the human brain’s ability to do quick calculations though we don’t know we’re doing it. Like throwing a baseball to a friend. Your brain has to calculate the distance, angle, direction, and strength all in a fraction of a second for a successful throw, and that’s for a target that’s not moving. I don’t think that’s calculation so much as knowing how ballistic motion tends to work, from years of practice. Mine: yeah, the internet. I can keep in touch with my family regularly while I’m at college, though some of them are hundreds of miles away. I can chat with friends on the other side of the world. Virtually any question I ask, there’s something about it, somewhere. ---
**Author:** ![FlyingRat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/59ef9b/32.png) [@FlyingRat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlyingRat)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2009, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/59 "2009-03-25T06:13:41Z")
Forgive me, but I’ve been rereading _Watchmen_ (after loving the movie) and this came to mind: [QUOTE=Dr. Manhattan] Thermo-dynamic miracles…events with odds against so astronomical they’re effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing. And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring \*\*this \*\*precise son; \*\*that \*\*exact daughter…and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was **you** , only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold… **that** is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle. [/quote] [QUOTE=Laurie] But…if me, my birth, if **that’s** a thermodynamic miracle…I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world! [/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Dr. Manhattan] Yes. Anybody in the world. …But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget… **I** forget. …Come, dry your eyes, for you are **life** , rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly. Dry your eyes…and let’s go home. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![Alan\_Smithee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/2acd7d/32.png) [@Alan\_Smithee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alan_Smithee)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2009, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/60 "2009-03-25T07:00:53Z")
Telepathy. I can think of something - anything from a simple shape or object to something as abstract as the taste of coffee or the feeling of love - and I can project that thought into the air and cause another person to share that thought. It doesn’t matter how private or complex my thought is, I can project it in such a way that you will understand the ideas, emotions, and sensations that I’m experiencing. Oh, wait…that’s not telepathy, it’s language. Same thing, though, really. Also, in a totally different vein, rain. Think about it. Water falls from the sky. FROM THE SKY! How weird would that be if you weren’t used to it? Imagine if you lived somewhere without precipitation and someone tried to convince you that where they are from, water just pours out of the sky - gallons of it! Enough to soak everything! Enough sometimes to flood the streets! Would you believe them? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588.md?page=4)