To say that human beings are interesting is an understatement. We’re freaks of nature! We’re blobs of matter that fall in love with each other. We’re mammals with the child-rearing patterns of birds. We’re mortal beings that, alone among the animals, know that we’re going to die one day and flee in terror from this knowledge. We’re bald apes that can think each other’s thoughts simply by making noises at each other. We’re creatures designed by a cruel, amoral process which invent moral codes for ourselves and sometimes even live up to them. We’re carnivores that sympathize with our food. We’re biological mechanisms designed to pass on our genes, but which fritter away our time playing games and weaving a web of fantasy around ourselves. We’re clusters of chemical reactions that contemplate deep truths about the nature of reality. And we’re little pieces of the Earth that can get outside our mother planet and venture to other worlds.