suzanne's journal :: physicists

2.21.02
Me: I think you are the smartest person I've ever met. Although my boss is also a physics person, and I also think he's the smartest person I've ever met. I think that my regard for someone's brain rises in direct inverse proportion to their field of study's similarity to my own, with physicists at the top of the food chain. I never think English majors are the smartest people I've ever met. But let somebody start talking about fulcrums or F=ma or whatever, and I get all dizzy. I scared my boss off with my blatant idol worship. Poor guy.

Henry: Well, I don't think there is any great genius behind the physicist's work, it's all just a bunch of simple tricks and nonsense. You probably won't scare your boss off with idol worship, but he could easily be frightened by a few encounters with a real wordsmith like Suzie. Believe me - literature is every bit the dark forest to me that physics is to you. Did you do anything fun yesterday?

Me: Literature just happens when a bunch of people agree that some books are better than other books. Very subjective and not at all impressive. You don't see physicists sitting around just all agreeing that perpetual motion can happen and then it suddenly does. You guys have actual rules. You're all geniuses and demigods, I tell you. We had a peaceful weekend amongst the Amish. The biggest family in Lancaster County right now has 23 kids. But the average is 7.5. I found a farm I liked and wanted to stay and marry a guy named Gunter Lapp and make quilts and milk cows and have 7.5 children, but Bob wouldn't let me. He is very unreasonable sometimes.

Henry: Yes, but the people involved have to render a scholarly defense of what makes one book better than another. All the physicist knows is which book has more pictures. Actually, with regard to quantum physics, relativity, some wave-particle phenomena and the Unified Field Theory, there is a fair amount of coin tossing and arm wrestling in deciding the "rules." If Bob really loved you, he'd let you go. Maybe you could name the .5 kid after him.