1) Opposable thumbs. So much of what I value in the human experience is possible only because of them. Even small things, like reading a book, are much harder without thumbs.
2) Filk. Because I have never heard any filk that I found musically interesting, and that did not give me the uncomfortable impression that the creator was hiding from their own life by writing songs about Data, or Pern, or whatever. (NB, I have a long history of hiding from my own life in fiction, so part of this is just my own emotional reflection in the funhouse mirror.)
3) Herman Hesse. I wouldn't normally put him in the same list with Vernor Vinge and Larry Niven. Of course, I have not read widely in the work of any of those writers, so that may be simple ignorance.
4) Only ONE thing? Pity, there are a number of things that I'm pretty sure I don't understand, but to pick one: Grep. According to Dictionary.com, it's a Unix command for searching for patterns. If so, what does that mean, exactly, and what does it mean to you?
5) You should be interested in ancient technology. Check out Peter James's and Nick Thorpe's fun book: Ancient Inventions if you haven't already. Also, check out this website: http://www.smith.edu/hsc/museum/ancient_inventions/ Marjorie Senechal does a class at Smith every other year on this stuff, and these are recreations built by students as class projects. It's a really cool class, and I enjoyed it a lot.
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2) Filk. Because I have never heard any filk that I found musically interesting, and that did not give me the uncomfortable impression that the creator was hiding from their own life by writing songs about Data, or Pern, or whatever. (NB, I have a long history of hiding from my own life in fiction, so part of this is just my own emotional reflection in the funhouse mirror.)
3) Herman Hesse. I wouldn't normally put him in the same list with Vernor Vinge and Larry Niven. Of course, I have not read widely in the work of any of those writers, so that may be simple ignorance.
4) Only ONE thing? Pity, there are a number of things that I'm pretty sure I don't understand, but to pick one: Grep. According to Dictionary.com, it's a Unix command for searching for patterns. If so, what does that mean, exactly, and what does it mean to you?
5) You should be interested in ancient technology. Check out Peter James's and Nick Thorpe's fun book: Ancient Inventions if you haven't already. Also, check out this website: http://www.smith.edu/hsc/museum/ancient_inventions/ Marjorie Senechal does a class at Smith every other year on this stuff, and these are recreations built by students as class projects. It's a really cool class, and I enjoyed it a lot.