I went to dinner at the house of a friend, and it was him, a computer prodigy; his brother, a roguish dyslexic adhd mechanical genius with a new project and new girl every month (thanks to his Red October Alec Baldwin face); their dad, an optical phenom with a novel method of building massive parabolic mirrors and collapsing telescopes with almost only the gear available in the standard home workshop. Their basement was a mishmash of engines in disrepair, computer stuff in various states of assembly, and plateglass stacks and a torch to heat it up. Their mom was a nurse, and that makes sense.

The dinner-table conversation was a rolling topic that moved from focus to focus, and was part knowledge-sharing, part discussion on methodology, part 'this is how I almost died' and part 'eat your vegetables and keep that injury clean'. I could barely keep up, but it was absolutely fascinating.