Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Protocall - 3

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"Mathematics is the Queen of all sciences and the Theory of Numbers is the Queen of Mathematics"

.......Gauss or somebody

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Well, Mathematics may or may not be the Queen of all sciences but Physics is certainly their Jack...of all trades.

Jack is also called Knave and, as you know, Knave means 'a tricky and deceitful fellow' according to Webster; and Webster should know...it is his 'business' to know, especially in his online version which has about 20 ads and 20 comments on this single page, mostly by cuties:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/knave

It all started with the wily Galileo who was the Father of Smuggling of Scientific Literature. And it continues unabated.

Physics trains her students in insidiousness...sorry for that long word but I have to hedge...which brings me to hedge-funds, more of which later.

Most of the skills in Physics are imparted in their labs. Cooking for example. Everyone knows that an egg is an egg is an egg; and is hideously unpalatable in its raw form, but look at how many tasty dishes you can cook with it! I myself know about a dozen, the best is what in Bengal is called the Devil Chop:






  http://bengalicuisine.net/2010/dimer-devil-or-deviled-eggs-recipe/


After 5 or more (if you do a Ph D) years, the Physicist is fit to cook anything and everything, from lectures to ledgers.

German Chemists discovered Nuclear Fission. And kept quiet. And look at what American Physicists did with it...they made the Bomb.

They were not happy with it and so smuggled it out a la Galileo to Russia. And so the US Army couldn't bomb the whole world "into the stone age" (except her stooges...like you know...)

So they learned software programming and entered Banking Industry. This time they almost succeeded in bombing the whole of World Economy by writing such gruesome programs that their Banking Honchos couldn't follow, and didn't want to, as long as they got filthy rich. 

Then the Housing Bubble burst and all those  physics programmers lost their cushy jobs...the Banking Honchos and clever Hedge Funders didn't lose a single dollar of their stinking high bonuses...it is a different matter that ONE retired physics guy with a nose for such matters got his Nile Valley Apartment at Hyderabad dirt cheap as soon as  the bubble got pricked ;-)

And now it is the Third Coming of Physics. I hear they are into Financial Services in a big way. I hereby advise all my readers to withdraw all their funds from their Banks, keeping only their bank-lockers, buy gold ferociously and hoard it in them before the next Bubble bursts..."Forewarned is Forearmed" as my Father used to say...he did say many good things in his long life, like, "Penny Foolish, Pound Foolish".

Meanwhile physicists entered medical sciences in a bigger way. Of course every instrument and technique medicos ever used was based on physics. Take, for instance, what my MD Uncle routinely used to do to me capriciously when I was ill. He would ask me to lie down (back and forth), keep his left middle finger on my chest and tap it repeatedly with his right middle finger. I came to know that this was called 'percussion':

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDhkerh6ZZk

This technique is as old as physics and bootlegging. I am told some physicists of yore used to hide the crates of their smuggled liquor underground and cover them up. And they would go out at midnight whenever they felt thirsty with a stick in their hands and tap it on the ground: 'tap..tap...tap' till they find a hollow resonant sound which they could figure out as where they hid their crates. I think dogs use this technique to find where they hid their favorite bones...I myself would have trained as a groundwater 'diviner':


  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6mJb_imQd0


Anyway, Roentgen, the discoverer of X-rays, didn't want to take a patent on his discovery saying that it would be useful in medicine for the common man.

Not the physicists of nowadays...

Go to any swank Cancer Center and you will find that all Radiation Oncology uses hard X-rays. But the manufacturers of these mega-instruments are no Roentgens...they make their fat living out of cancer patients. Not only X-rays, but Gamma Rays using isotopes, linear accelerators, positron-electron annihilation scanners (PETs), MRIs and every possible gizmo there uses physicists to develop them. And they call it: "Nuclear Medicine"

But as our Sid Mukherjee says it in 600 eloquent pages of close-print, Cancer is smarter than a bunch of physicists...genes tell...

With the result that once relapse occurs the norm is:

"3 months without treatment and 6 months with it"

The difference is in the moola that everyone makes down the line...except the patient.

I am not saying Physics is no good. It is good as far as it goes...but it goes only so far. 

Knowing that physicists never starve, my MD Uncle pushed me into Physics without my knowledge, and I am happy with it...it could have been worse...say Chemistry...it'smellodious...ask my son who got out of it as soon as he could...

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