JMH@32, I have to admit I have had numerous disturbing epiphanies throughout my life — now nigh onta six decades of it. Many times I abruptly awake to the humbling realization that I’ve been overlooking some enormous obvious feature of the landscape through which I’d been stumbling.

When I was teaching for a few years in a school that offered an excellent program in Industrial Design was the first time it ever really struck me that EVERY SINGLE ITEM we buy as consumers has gone through an extended process of conceptualization, research of how humans use similar products, investigation of materials and manufacturing processes for possible designs for the product, analysis of market potential, pricing, et cetera.

I mean, it’s something you know at some deep level, but it was never conscious before I actually saw students grappling with the process.

And I’ve re-read Niven & Pournelle’s “Lucifer’s Hammer” about six times since it came out.

Jeez.

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p.s. to Josh – GREAT. I will honor your phrase by stealing it… with slight twisting…

“Obambus the potentially and contingently Magnificent Maybe.”