Wednesday, September 10, 2008

End of the world? The Fuck I Care....

The world is very excited about this fancy experiment which attempts to recreate the Big Bang and perhaps answer the one big question that has been bothering us ever since homo sapiens figured out he was intelligent - how the hell did the universe begin??

And then there is this another set of people who think that conducting such experiments is lying playing with nature and it may even lead to the end of the world!!

Physics apart, I sometimes think that world has too much time and money on its hand!! Some buggers have all the money in the world to spend on pointless exercises like this one? I mean what the hell would change if we were able to find out how the Big Fuckin' Bang happened? Will that take care of AIDS, Malaria or Osama Bin Laden? Will it solve the Indo-Pak conflict or end the perpetual Mid East Crisis?

Come on people... there is lots more in the world that needs the money that we waste on experiments like this or pointless missions to Mars & Pluto! For chrissake, I have no interest in knowing if Pluto's atmosphere contains Benzene or not, nor do I care if there are any Martians for real. If Hollywood can kill them, then anything can! I'd rather spend money on improving the crop yield in Africa or eradication of Polio & Malaria.

And for the End Of The World Theoricians - I reserve a bigger Fuck You !! Go find something more meaningful to do.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

lol! dats exactly how my IR prof reacted today in the morning! lmao!

Sriram said...

The answer for everything was found years ago.. its 42.
That book is simply awesome :)

Sidhusaaheb said...

I beg to differ, your excellency!

Most of the science books that you and I read at school were written on the basis of what might have been considered pointless experiments when those were carried out for the first time.

:)

nomad said...

* anon - glad to know that more ppl are out there ;-)

* sriram - what book, which author?

* SS - I do see your point, but then how many of those things in the school book are immediately relevant to us? I once read somewhere that the cost of 2 aircraft carriers of the US Navy is enough to fund the entire malaria research for a couple of years. It's a question of priorities sir.

Sriram said...

The book in question: Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy by Douglas Adams :D

The Wanderer said...

A question sir- if Mr Bill Gates and associates had thought a couple of decades ago that what's the bloody use of wasting a whole lot of money fiddling with worthless Silicon (sand) just to make some chip, would you have had this computer on which you are writing the blog and reading this comment?

It's only because they did spend their time and money on something that looked useless back then, that Mr Gates has managed to pile up billions of dollars in his backyard (which thankfully he is using now to eradicate AIDS and Malaria.. the stuff you talked about.)

nomad said...

* blue indian : wish you'd understood my point in its real sense rather than the literal sense. the question is about prioritizing. you only have a finite supply of resources. one needs to decide what you can best use them for. while i am no authority on such things, i can safely claim that there are far bigger problems on earth that need to be addressed first, before we think of launching missions to pluto or something. we may agree to disagree on it.

and by the way, it wasn't bill gates and associates who spent money on sand to develop microprocessors. his name doesn't even figure in the history of microchip development. to know more, you may like to read 'a history of modern computing' published by the MIT press.

The Wanderer said...

I only meant to suggest that asking to curb scientific experiments only because they do not result in instant results is myopic. Money is invested in huge scientific experiments with the hope that the results of the research would eventually make the world a better place to live in.. and it has happened that way in the past too..hasn't it? Only because money was invested in scientific research, we have everything from computers and mobile phones to all the gadgets that you can think of... let's hope the LHC also helps in the development of something we yet do not know but will change the way we live.

And abt Bill Gates, I wish you'd understood my point in its real sense rather than the literal sense. I used his name as a metaphor for all the unknown souls who did research over a technology that was considered useless in their times. Remember when the first PC was made, a well-known scientist commented "I can see a market for at most four of these machines in the world".. now if he was right, I am wondering where are the remaining two machines?

nomad said...

Well its pointless trying to make you see my point of view, because if you nitpick it is fair.

And if do that (for the sake of stressing my point) it gets your goat.

any way, i said we can agree to disagree, you do not have to subscribe to my view anyway. i'm thankful for you to have taken the time out to read and comment it.

Vaibhav said...

Err... just to put a little bit of a context in here - here's the best video I have seen on why the hadron collider is where it is: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/brian_cox_on_cern_s_supercollider.html

Anonymous said...

I agree with Blue Indian to an extent...
Maybe they are spending a lot of money on something that doesn't seem to return any tangible, immediate results. Maybe the Higg's Boson is a white elephant...

Read this post though: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24556999/page/2/

Let's not look at the humongous amounts of money spent in Science with such a jaundiced perspective. I do agree about the prioritization part...but seriously...this is a bit of extreme thinking.

I guess it's creating way too much hype than required.

- Serendipity