What boggles your mind?

When the media reports on Bush’s overall job approval, they always make a point of saying how low it is. It’s always boggled my mind that anyone at all approves of the job he is doing. Just who are these 3 out of 10 people and just what have they been smoking?

The idea of time travel pardoxes. I know it’s only theoritcal, but you see so much time travel in movies, and I can never wrap my head around it! For example, the 1st Terminator movie. The man from the future comes to keep Sarah Connor safe, so she can later have a child, John Connor, of great importance in the future. Sarah sleeps with “future man” and becomes pregnant with John. So, John wouldn’t have existed in the first place without “future man’s” visit! I’m so confused.

Gravity.

So many things….
Airplanes: I get the gist of aerodynamics, but how it’s enough to keep several tons of metal in the air still baffles me.
Work-ethics: People who get out of bed and go to a job, not intending to do that job well….
Quantum-physics: ???
Religion: How we can be created in god’s image, yet have to change our nature to be more like him and how he can be all-loving and forgiving, yet send you to hell and eternal damnation if you don’t do as you’re told (even when what you’re told to do is against your nature – and you’re supposedly created in the image of the ideal…....) – this one isn’t scientific I know, but people buying in to this makes my mind boggle

the infinitness of our universe

The fact that wheresgeorge.com is still active. I just got a bill with a confederate stamp on it and the URL as change from a chinese restaurant. I said “Look, a confederate bill!” someone nearby (my SO) thought I said counterfeit and told me to turn it in to the police, ha ha!!

Of course I went to the site to see if it was still active, and tracked this paticular bill. The couple who entered my bill has 17,630 dollar bills they are watching. They must have some exciting life, huh?

Rubix Cube.

Never could figure it out.

September 6, 2008, 2:33 PM EDT

How JackAdams still insists on putting a time and date stamp on every one of his postings.

@wildflower, I know what you mean about the aerodynamics thing. For me it made much more tangible sense one of the first few times that I flew in a small plane, because I could “feel” the lift.

I find what scientists can work out about things as small as atoms or as far away as stars mind boggling.

Some aspects of probability, especially the Monty Hall Problem and the Beagle Problem

Makes my neurons turn against each other in bloody civil war

The fact that the LHC will destroy us all, in the name of science. joking

Quantum physics, as wildflower said. The movie Mindwalk was really interesting, but parts of it literally gave me a headache as I tried to get to my brain around the concepts.

Great question, kevbo.

Death.

Anyone who would vote for McCain.

Anyone who thinks their vote REALLY matters.

Most elections in ths country are RIGGED.

I am working on a movie script, about that very thing.

September 6, 2008, 4:20 PM EDT

That I’m a parent. How’d that happen?

only 10% of the cells in my body are human, the rest are bacteria

That people discovered and constructed buildings on this continent I happen to be sitting on right now. I find it very hard to believe that anyone would survive a trip to this place, let alone build stations and have entire communities. Geez.

Are you in Antarctica?

Yes. McMurdo Station. Excellent guess. ;-)

You’re right. It was.

Thunk it up, all by my lonesome.

@Les, not to put you on the spot, but what’s the deal with all the condoms?

They have to have SOME kind of housing!

The idea that Sarah Palin could actually be President in four months and twenty-something days boggles my mind! That’s what will happen if McCain wins the election. He could die mysteriously (Kevbo knows, wink wink) and she would be sworn in as another puppet to the shadowy figures who actually control our country.

@rob: We heard about that at our arrival briefing. The marshall in town said something to the effect of: “You may have heard on the Tonight Show or something that the NSF ordered us 13,000 condoms for the winter. Well, we still have some left.”

I think it is all part of their effort to protect us from getting sick. The people that stay here over winter (winter-overs) are basically stranded without any other human contact from like April through two days ago. So when we all come in, we bring a lot of diseases, and colds and flus travel like wild fire. I think they (the people in charge) also want to make sure there is no “other” diseases that may travel, if you know what I mean. So they have a plethora of condoms so there is no excuse not to use them.

@Les: I would imagine (and please PUBLICLY correct me, if I am in error, of course) that the continent of Antarctica is the only one on Earth where the birth of a baby has never occurred.

I have also been told that The Vatican is the only independent/autonomous nation on Earth, where the birth of a baby has never happened.

@jack: I think you are correct. I am not sure about the age of exploration (wait… I am. There were no women who were allowed to come on those expeditions.), but in modern times, you cannot have a baby on US operated land. I don’t know what the other nations’ standard is for this, but I can be pretty sure that they also don’t allow it. McMurdo is one of (if not the biggest) biggest stations on the continent, and our Med facility is very minimal. It would put the mother and baby at too much risk to have a baby here.

@Les: Forgive me, please, but you are in error when you note that, “you cannot have a baby on US operated land,” because babies have been born on US military bases and on Native American (“Indian”) reservations, all of which are “US operated land.”

I’m cursed with being technically accurate, at times…

@JA: Are you sure you’re not a bureaucrat?

Bureaucrat Conrad, you are technically correct – the best kind of correct. I hereby promote you to grade 37

@jack: sigh. I just thought it was implied in my response that I was talking about US operated Antarctic land. Considering we were talking about Antarctica. But sorry for the inaccuracy. It is midnight, and I am sleepy.

@Wildflower: I used to be a part of the US bureaucracy, but in the early 1990s, I got “cured.”

@Les: You are 5-given, because I am certain that, at some previous point in your life, you were 4-given. LOL

That does explain a few things…...still get the occasional flashbacks, I guess?

Yes.

You are guessing.

Do you get flashbacks?

Yes indeed.

Particularly from my service in South Vietnam, during the early 1970s.

I knew it! I don’t believe there’s a successful cure for the regimented bureaucrat….

Well, I’m still in therapy…

my mind is boggled by the ocean, and that it is so huge, it seems infinite.

my mind is also boggled by the fact that dinosaurs once roamed on the same land we all live on.

these two things may seem simplistic, but are mind boggling, if you think about them.

How convienent. Wired compiled a list of videos. That’s my answer.

the mystery of the universe

Has no one thought to mention Boggle?

when you think about it, something we all take for granted is computers. what is mind boggling (and we take for granted) is that someone can type something in the united states and it’s read pretty instantly in china or australia or wherever. when i was a kid desktop computers didn’t exist (I don’t think they did or if they did, nobody had them) companies’ records were all kept on paper, index cards, stuff like that. when you think about all the information in a computer, it’s mind boggling. we take them for granted but as little as 30 or 40 years ago, most places didn’t have them, and most people didn’t have them.

The caveman insurance commercials.

the amount of plastics and plastic items that exist. when you think about every store having most everything in it in plastic bottles or containers. shampoo and hair products, detergents, soda bottles, salad dressings, cookies and crackers in plastic trays, bakery section of the store has cakes and pies in plastic containers, vegetables come in bags, shopping bags, children’s toys, appliances, fast food places: the containers that hold salads, drink cups, the furniture in the places, the countertops. sports stadiums: thousands of people drinking out of plastic cups. Home Depot: plastic tools, vinyl tile flooring, decks are now often made out of plastic, containers that have grout, caulk, 10 gallon pails of paint and other stuff. lighters, CD cases, cheap shoes, i could go on and on. it’s all plastic, and not all of it gets recycled. in fact, probably most does not get recycled. fast food places have one garbage and all the plastics go into the garbage. on construction sites, the plastic containers that held the grout, paint and other stuff just gets taken by the waste management company and taken who knows where.

Computer related stuff, and most science for that matter. Oh – and space. Really.

Stupidity. Especially ^^^.