I wish I had more Friendly Scientists in my world. At this moment I only have two or three people who I know will respond if I send them an e-mail. However, they may not always reply, or might reply two weeks or a month later, or might reply in cryptic, clever remarks that leave me bewildered. Among my Friendly Scientists are two physicists, one laser micro-engineer, one retired professor of physics and chemistry, two or three astrophysicists, and one pathologist (the only biologist among the lot). I also have two Friendly Mathematicians whose help is almost always available. I have more computer consultants than I could possibly count, who have helped me at times from their own science backgrounds. Their names are all withheld to protect their identities and reputations.

Contact with any one of these people is irregular and rare. I almost never see these people face to face; some I have never met, only e-mailed. I have been told for so long that I am a pest, that I take up people's precious time and "bother" them with trivial questions and inane comments, that I crave too much attention; so I hesitate to make contact unless I am really stuck on some problem or concept. But what I would like, if I had the social skills to maintain it, would be a regular contact (once or twice a month) with a Friendly Physicist, to discuss what I am currently working on, what my concerns are, how much progress I am making, and where I am going next.

Now the obvious answer is, why don't I just take a course in physics at my local community college (which in my case is not so local and needs a long fight through heavy traffic to get there) and ask the professor those things. Well, other than the time and expense involved, I have discussed earlier how I have had so many bad experiences in class that I just don't want to bring back those awful memories of being left further and further behind, failing exams, and being humiliated. I am happy to do the work myself out of books. I don't need a lot of help, either. What I need is more like "moral support," or an encouraging word from some Real Live Physicist somewhere, who could remember that I am doing this work. But that gets back to the "why should you bother someone when they are so busy doing more important work?" thing.

These days I am really making progress. Last August I complained that I had studied no physics. I was wasting my time attempting to do logarithms with archaic methods of tables, interpolation, and a low-accuracy slide rule. This August I am now tracking the trajectories of objects launched at an angle, and have done some basic calculus. I hardly flinch at equations about initial velocity x sine or cosine of the initial angle, or about the parabolic trajectory of the object, when a year ago my eyes would have glazed over in a combination of bewilderment and terror. I don't know whether I will remember these trajectory equations in a week or two, but by the time I have been through them three times, I will be ready to launch my artillery shells against the enemy, whoever the enemy is.

I read a lot of science blogs, especially those about physics. My favorite these days is the group blog, Cosmic Variance. This is written by a constellation of five physicists, all of them young and attractive, and there are even two women among them! It is relentlessly cheerful, even when they talk about string theory. They make the scientist's life sound like that of a movie star or jet-setting celebrity, dashing off to China or Aspen or Geneva (don't any of them go to Parsippany, New Jersey or Neosho, Missouri?) and they never, ever talk about anything tedious or depressing. I often think about contacting one or two of them by e-mail and trying to add them to my collection of Friendly Scientists, but then I stop myself. They don't need you, I remind myself. Don't make them waste time on your trivial concerns. They are busy calculating the great questions of the Universe, not the trajectory of some hypothetical football. So the blog-physicists remain uncontacted. But someday, perhaps soon, I will give in to my craving, and some poor soul of a physicist whose e-mail is available on a Website will be hit by the Electron Blue beam.

Posted at 2:48 am | link