How women on Broadway can dance in high heels and not break their ankles. I tried to play tennis with jogging shoes and was constantly twisting my ankle.
(It’s possible to argue that it’s not all that simple, but …)
The view of the earth from an airliner flying at 36,000’. It’s a flat-out miracle to be able to see this. Rich folks from 150 years ago would have given the equivalent of $10 million to witness such a thing.
Almost equally amazing: that 90% of the people on board a typical flight have their window shade drawn, blocking all view of this.
How so many people are utterly ignorant of recent history.
Being ignorant of ancient history I can understand. (Although that’s undesirable, too.) But recent events–defined as “less than 100 years ago”–that’s something else. For one thing, recent history is vastly-better documented (for various reasons). Also, many people have living friends or relatives who have at least second-hand knowledge, and sometimes first-hand knowledge, of such things.
How my cat can act perfectly normal – playful, affectionate, great appetite – even though he has advanced cancer in several organs, starting with his pancreas. He has no idea that he’s sick.
Magnets. Even scientists cannot fully explain how the can be used to stick elematerary school art to my refrigerator.
Zippers. Who thought this idea up? “Oh, let’s join our clothes together by, hm, well we can have some teeth on one side, and then we’ll use this magic little doohickey to lock them together with the teeth on the other side…”
Last summer, I flew on a crystal-clear day over the southeast coast of Greenland, and saw a miles-long glacier calving stadium-sized icebergs. The most totally awesome thing I’ve ever seen. I think I was the only person on the plane who saw it, everyone else had their window blind down so they could sleep or watch videos.
Frost on the lawn of a (dog) park, first thing in the morning- looks like a field of diamonds.
Velcro! The inventor was picking burr s out of his dog’s fur and had a eureka moment.
And sticky notes! 3M made a bad batch of weak adhesive and some guy thought “hmmm…”
TV and radio communication.
When I was a very young lad (5 years old?) I was absolutely amazed that an invisible signal could be transmitted through space and end up on our TV screen. It seemed like magic. “How can a movie, full of movement and color and sound, be transmitted through the air?” I wanted to know how it was done. When I asked “big people” (adults) how it worked, I never got a good answer; they would just mumble something about “antennas” and “broadcasting.”
I later learned how it works.
Even then, it still amazes me.
I have long thought that Marconi was the most truly ingenious of all the well-known inventors. He was able to wrap his mind around a concept that was not sitting out there in the real world readily apparent to everyone. Nor even seeing an accidental effect triggering a quest for an explanation. Most inventions were just visible physical objects responding to obvious forms of energy, and then a lot of trial and error until there was a prototype that worked. But Marconi visualized something completely invisible, acting in a way that could produce an effect few people could even imagine, but yet was miraculously useful.
Antenna design. I’m amazed how different designs pick up different signals or range of signals.
Training, being in shape for what you are physically doing also helps.
Bread.
“Let’s take these seeds. We can grind them into powder. Then we can add water. And why not set it aside for awhile and see if it gets light and fluffy? We can work out our agression by punching it and pressing on it hard for a few minutes. Then we let it sit and get fluffy again. Then we can bake it. And it’s even better if we slice it and cook the slices.”
Hot Water, from the tap.
Marvelous!
Clean is wonderful.
And I work at an airport, & still stare at planes taking off & landing. Part of me is waiting for somebody to pull back the curtain & say :“HA-HA! Fooled you! Just a trick!”
Simple indoor plumbing. It wasn’t that long ago, historically, when people had to just go wherever they could find a spot, even in horrible weather. And without toilet paper! Think of what major cities must have smelled like … especially with horses.
When I’m on a plane that is taking off… the moment the wheels lift off the runway…
Every time it is a surreal experience for me. “How can something weighing many tons fly through the air with ease?”
It just seems unbelievable.
Dogs can tell time. They know! But HOW?
I’m so sorry.
My mom and dad had a humorous little sampler with a picture of an outhouse, and the couplet “On a cold dard night in a sleepy haze/ Be glad these ain’t the good old days.”
I’m also amazed at the sources of some of our medications. There’s that drug they advertise on tv that comes from jellyfish, and a diabetes med that comes from the saliva of the gila monster. How on earth do they discover things like this? “Hey, let’s take some gila monster saliva and inject it into someone who’s diabetic, and see what happens.”
On the negative side, how many people don’t know jackshit about their spouses’ or relatives’ jobs.
“blahblah wife… job… blahblah”
“what’s her job?”
“oh, she works in an office”
“o… k… doing what?”
“oh, dunnow, office stuff”
Really? You’ve got a college degree, it’s not as if “office stuff” is an alien language to you, and yet all you appear to know about your wife’s job is that she does office stuff?
On the positive side, how good most little kids are at making themselves understood.
The way I’ve heard it, it was some gal. The receptionist liked leaving little notes to herself, but both tape and regular glue would leave a residue. The “bad glue” didn’t!