Friday, May 14, 2010

Remember Rome...

Trust me, this really happens, take and give a few words,

-- Thus, we numerically calculate the...
-- Wait, but the Hamiltonian has as constant of motion the excitation number.
-- No, it doesn't.
-- Uhm, really? But if we do this and this, you see the total excitation number and this commutes as far as I remember.

(one month later)

-- Hey, I can show you our calculation that proves it doesn't commute.
-- Oh, really? Please do so, I might be completely wrong about something fundamental(...) Ok, it is not possible to use this map in this way, so let us do it together(...) You see, three lines. I suggest you read Dicke's and Tavis and Cumming's 70s paper on the topic.
-- I don't read old papers. What's the main idea?
-- The main idea is that this and this commutes...

As our guy walked to the next wall to bang his head, he remembers the film "A serious man" from the Coen brothers...

The Korean student: I didn't know the mathematics were to be evaluated.
The Jewish professor: ...
The Korean student: I know about the cat, I understand the cat.

Another step towards the wall, he remembers Rome where something similar to this probably happened a few thousand years ago...

-- You see, the rock found in the side of the...
-- But why do I need to know where to find the rock? We always get our supply from the southern guy. I came here to learn to build arches, not about amalgams.

Thus the knowledge of concrete and underwater construction was lost for a good one and something millennia...

One more step towards the wall and he thinks about the Slovak joke,

Once there was a guy, he wanted to become a writer. He travels to Bratislava and enrolls into the University. So he comes into his first class and the professor assigns classical masterpieces for the students to read through the semester. Suddenly the guy stands up and starts to leave the class quite angry. The professor asks him what is wrong. The guy answers: I came here to become a writer, not a reader!

Well, such is life... Sometimes I wish I could see how's the world doing in 500 years, sometimes, most of the times, almost all the time I am really thankful I'm not able to do that.

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