Tuesday, June 17, 2008

F a t M e n R u n n i n g

Imagine a fat man running with a certain velocity. You watch him from aside, and notice that there is a sharp drop ahead of him. If he keeps running, the fat man will fall off into an abyss. You shout at him , asking him to change direction.

He replies, "I cannot do it now. According to Newton's first law of motion, I have to keep moving ahead with a constant velocity".

You say, "But you should change direction. You will die otherwise".

He replies, "You see. I am a body with a large mass, so I contain a lot of inertia."

You exclaim, "You have enough control in your muscles. Please force yourself to turn a bit. If you keep running forward, you will fall off the cliff in a couple of minutes."

He replies, " My eyes are clogged due to exertion. I cannot see anything beyond the next few metres. Since I don't believe in what I don't see, I will not listen to you."

You tell him. "You are getting tired. May be you should slow down."

He huffs and puffs, looks at you in anger, and retorts "You tell me I cannot keep running. I have enough energy within me to keep running for atleast 10 minutes".

You tell him, "But you are right about to fall off the.. "

There we end the story. The fat man dies.

It is immaterial if he fell off the cliff or if he suffered a heart attack due to over-exertion. What matters is that he has experimentally validated Newton's first law of motion, and that he prove himself to be a large object with a respectable mass and a strong inertia. May his soul rest in peace.

Let me tell you a frightening peace of information. The economic levers of the world are held by such fat men running (FMR). When they kill themselves, these FMRs take you down as well.

Most problems in the world have already their solutions discovered. If the problem persists, it is because of an FMR.

For example, we can solve the world's energy crisis by switching to nuclear power run on molten salt reactors. Some of the several FMRs behind the problem : oil industry, motor car industry, environmental protest for the sake of protest industry, nuclear fuel fabrication industry, strategic nuclear deterrent aka nuclear bomb industry.. All these FMRs have a mixed bag of joint investments ranging from media to retail, and from politics to toilet paper fabrication.

In fact, the FMRs care about nothing but their own momentum (momentum = mass * velocity). To keep their momentum going, these FMRs engage in noble duties such as looting, murder and the tough job of throwing bullshit around.

I present a few morsels of such bullshit for your examination

a) There is no energy crisis. You don't have to change your habits. We will increase oil production. Please stop entertaining silly ideas such as renewable energy.

b) We don't have enough resources in the world. Some population should necessarily starve or die from preventable diseases. We can't keep worrying about all and sundry. After all, what is the value of a human life ?

c) There are all kinds of bad guys out to get you. These include aliens, mutant cockroaches, ninja turtles, komodo dragons, chinese people and religious fundamentalists. So believe in us, and we will keep fighting a noble war against all these miscellaneous bad people.

I implore all you nice and goodlooking people to stop believing things as they come by.

2 comments:

Sukesh Kumar said...

Tragically true...

Nitin Reddy Katkam said...

The story doesn't explicitly say that the fat man fell off the cliff or had a cardiac arrest - he may have been killed by aliens, mutant cockroaches, ninja turtles, komodo dragons, ... :-)