Friday, February 03, 2012
The Semblance of Wisdom
In fact, I was in a Google "Hangout" with 5 other middle-aged people and someone said "Well, who could possibly remember the quadratic equation" and I rattled it off from memory. They asked me if I am a math teacher. The quadratic formula was just something that stuck in my head from high school.
One day, at a certain job I held for two years, I was in the restroom with a medical doctor, a CPA controller and several other employees. The CPA, an Orthodox Jew, was washing his hands at the sink and the soap dispenser was empty. He mused aloud to all of us "did you ever notice how water seems WETTER when there is soap." Well, I used to work in a detergent factory so I know a lot about "surfactants" (surface active agents) which lower the waters natural property of surface tension. I explained how if you go to a pond and see water bugs walking upon the surface tension of the water that if you were to add a detergent then the bugs would sink. Water seems WETTER precisely because the surfactant action of soap lessens the water's tendency to repel things with surface tension. Well, this room full of professionals looked at me like I was a prophet or a genius or a wonder-worker. But it was only coincidence that I worked in a place where surfactants were discussed and that someone happened to pose the question. Had no one posed the question and had I started to explain to a bathroom full of men what surfactants do they would have thought me quite strange. The semblance of wisdom has something to do with the serendipity of being at the right place and the right time and possessing some knowledge or information that is not commonly known.
