[extropy-chat] effing

[gts]

It occurs to me that we already have a sort primitive effing technology.  
We call it art.

Music, poetry, literature, painting... these are attempts by the artist to  
evoke experience in others.

I receive a classic poem each day in my e-mail, from about.com. I was  
struck by this poem by Emily Dickinson. To me it seems to capture "what it  
is like" to watch a bird, if not also what it's like to be one.

A Bird Came Down
by Emily Dickinson.

A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.

And then he drank a dew
 From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass.

He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad,--
They looked like frightened beads, I thought;
He stirred his velvet head

Like one in danger; cautious,
I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home

Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, splashless, as they swim.