Yeah, once upon a time I dated a serious math geek (well, technically, engineer, which is an entirely different animal, but he had hobbies). And I had just enough math at the time for him to get me through big picture quantum mechanics and relativity by my fingertips and a prayer with that sense of ah, yes, now I see. Could never duplicate it now, I'm sure. But whenever I read pop science now, I keep reaching for that feeling again, and when all I've got is the author's pretty metaphors, I don't feel it, you know?

I like seeing behind the curtain, how things work. At work, we have these massive collated charts we've developed over decades of practice, with distilled technical knowledge. But 90% of the time I skip past them and look at the actual law, because that's just how my brain has to do it. Same thing, I think.