My Unitarian pastor once remarked on the extravagance of a God who puts beautiful colors on the inside of a seashell, where the odds are infitesimal anyone will ever see them.
A few years ago my friend Bill the drumming guy was showing me a new djembe harness (something like this one) that he had just gotten – but he lamented that he was having the hardest time trying to figure out how to put it on. I asked to have a go and had it on me in about 10 seconds. He was amazed. “Well, Bill,” I said, “it’s pretty much just like a bra.” He just about peed his pants laughing. “No wonder I can’t do it . . .”
Ever watch a parent with a baby?
They repeat the sounds the baby makes; then they make different sounds. Sometimes they make the same sounds around the same object; the baby catches on. Then they make the same sound when the same action is involved; the baby catches on.
Then they say, “No!” and the baby’s got it wrapped.
What amazed me is that nobody thinks this through, but everybody does it!
But not just that everybody does it, but that parents do it better!
Parents are just great at using language at just the outer edge of the child’s comprehension, constantly improving the child’s language skills. No one teaches this.
The baby just … inspires it.
The human body facinates me. All of the systems and hardware it takes to make a human body is clearly incomprehensible to modern man. Awesome.
I really like this sentiment. While not necessarily a believer in God, it’s facinating to me that there are creatures at the bottom of the sea who never see light but when light is shone upon them, they are beautifully and wildly colored. Whoda thunk?
Aircraft. Especially passenger planes (for some reason, that’s what really fascinates me, not little 2-seater single engine ones, or helicopters, or even cargo versions of passenger planes).
There is just something awesome about watching a plane go by, knowing it’s full of people, who don’t know a damn thing about it, but trust it to get them where they want to go. And for the most part, they DO! It’s a giant tin can with wings, and somehow it gets off the ground and travels at hundreds of miles an hour and gets emptied out of all it’s people, and then loads up and does it all over again. It’s like there’s no reason it should work, except it does.
I’m studying to be an aeronautical engineer, and although there are a lot of things I don’t know yet, I’m slowly learning it. But I think there will always be some level of magic to it.
Nanotubes, and pretty much everything that comes out of Neil DeGrass Tyson’s mouth. Except when he’s sick.
Harley-Davidson survived past 1972. And Jeep past 1976. And yet, Fiat went tits-up in America in the early 80’s!
Actually, I’m amazed almost every day, and yet, when I stumble across the opportunity to share these wonders, only come up with the feeble offerings above. :rolleyes:
Another vote for the internet – esp. the really “human” uses of it, like me in Philly playing Scrabble with some woman from South Africa who’s in Australia visiting her daughter. Or, yanno, the Dope.
Yes, definitely modern jet aircraft. I think of them, though, as flying tanks. Damn near impossible to bring down. But the most amazing thing to me about them is the “time warping” aspect. I get on a plane in California, and by the time I’ve finished dinner, I’m home in Florida before midnight. It makes my head dizzy sometimes.
Other stuff:
Cell phones. When I was a teenager, they had these things called car phones. They were actually a specialized form of 2-way radios and they cost as much per month as trailer rent. Look at what we have now.
On phones, I would also say long distance calling. Back in the sixties, you had to go thru an operator and it was expensive. Today, most folk hardly bother to think about calling long distance. And, you can just…you know…**dial ** it.
TV channels. Dad put a tall antenna up once, with a rotator to position the beam antenna. Took him a and an uncle all weekend. And our horizons were expanded to the infinite! 8 channels we could now get. Eight! (before, 3)
Wash and wear, no wrinkle clothes. Honest, without this one, I’d be in a different profesion.
Internet and email. My wife “talks” every day to her sisters, when we were married, that would be sending letters. Migawsh.
Computers in general. This is where I live and work every day, and I still can not get completely over the fact that the machine I’m using right now has something like 32 times more memory, 100 times more disk storage, and is x times fater than the IBM 4341 I started my career on.
I’m amazed that I’ve been on this planet for almost 63 years without anything killing me.
I am surrounded by potentially lethal amounts of electricity. I drive a car. I walk across streets in traffic. I fly in airplanes. I use power tools. I had a ruptured appendix. I don’t really know what’s in most of the food I eat. I’m exposed to people who cough or sneeze or exhale god-knows-what germs and viruses and bacteria.
I’m just totally amazed that anybody can be in so many potentially deadly circumstances. and remain alive for many decades. And not just me . . . ***most ***people.
I do this all the time. I click on related links, end up reading for ages, and have to stop and remember what I originally came there for.
Now I have to go look up Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Guess I’ll be back in a few hours…
As for the OP, canals and boat locks amaze me. They’re so simple, but I’m amazed at the thought process that went into developing them, and at how they work.
I’m amazed I could buy a new Dell laptop last month for less than my electric bill.
I’m also amazed Obama hired the lady Hillary fired, to fill the role of “Chief of Staff to Whomever the VP Candidate Turns Out to Be”. This is one of the goddam funniest things I’ve heard this year.
Falling asleep still amazes me. I’m lying in bed thinking about it, and next thing I know, it’s daytime and I’m awake. How does that happen ???
Same thing about anasthesia at hospital. Talking to the cute OR guys one minute, next minute it’s an hour later and I’ve had parts removed and all sewed up! Dang.
The Internet and the general Computer Revolution - A quiet revolution, but oh so profound, and so great a change from how we used to do things. We let it happen, this instantaneous sharing of every potentially revolutionary and wonderful idea.
The geeks, the nerds, the outcasts won, and they really do run everything.
Modern eye surgery - (More of) the blind can SEE.
So tomorrow, they could announce the solution of some other major problem - that they’ve figured how to make cold fusion work, or whatever - and us, we’ve seen so many other miracles that we’d probably just say, “Huh. About time.” When miracles become ordinary - why, that’s pretty amazing, too.
Sneezing amazes me. How can my body expel air at such force that it feels like my head is going to explode? Also, it’s like an orgasm at times, and like torture at others. Amazing stuff. I could say the human body in general, but sneezes in particular are pretty neat.
Lost a wallet (or had it taken). Within 15 minutes of confirming this, we had all the credit cards blocked and, after pulling $200 from an ATM, all the bank accounts frozen. Yay, cell phones! Within two days, all the cards and the driver’s license were replaced and everything else passworded. Awesome.
Oh great. Thanks bunches. Next time I’m in the city, all I’ll be able to think about is pee traveling around in tubes all throughout the buildings.
Or if my Mum and my Dad had married different people, half of me would be somewhere and the other half of me would be somewhere else, too… Or maybe I AM one of those halves right now…
I used to go round and round and round with that one at about 12 years old. Still boggles me when I think about it!
What amazes me is the fact I can use my cell phone from bed to ring my husband’s cell phone (he, who is next to me.) and the signal goes all the way to the tower or satellite and bounces down to his and wakes him up.
He wakes up for the phone. Me, not so much.
Pepper Mill does this all the time, to my utter amazement.
There’s no reason I should be amazed. This is just another version of the old topology demomnstration about taking off your vest without removing your coat. There are even detailed pictures of that procedure in the old Time/Life Book of Mathematics from the early 1960s.
But for some reason, using a bra and a blouse instead of a vest and a jacket makes me sit up and take notice.
I have a small plastic stick in my pocket that has no moving parts and has the capacity to hold as much music as some radio stations have in the record vaults.
Then I have another small plasic stick in my pocket that has just a few moving parts that allows me to make telephone calls, send email, text message people, cruise the internet and has a GPS chip so that I can’t ever get really lost again.
I have things in my pockets that at an earlier point in my life would have needed a small suburban home to accomodate.