I have already written more than once about the extraordinary musical wit Victor Borg, who invented the “inflationary language”. (See the note “Inflatable bread”).

But I could not even imagine that the brains of physicists could also undergo “inflation”, and a THOUSANDFOLD!

How is pressure measured everywhere nowadays?

In what units?

In Pascals!

Blaise Pascal was an outstanding French physicist who discovered Pascal’s well-known law: Pressure in liquids that are only under external forces (this means in zero gravity!) It is isotropic (that is, it is transmitted in all directions equally) and homogeneous (that is, it is the same at all points of the volume).

The great law. Clever Pascal!

But, what is this same unit of pressure equal to? It turns out that it is equal to the pressure of a column of water.

one millimeter high..

The pressure is NEGLIGIBLE!

For example, the pressure of a ten-meter-high column of water (that is, the force of the weight of such a column per square centimeter) is equal to one kilogram! Approximately atmospheric.

Let’s ask the following question: When was this unit introduced into the system of physical weights and measures?

In the time of Pascal, the seventeenth century?

No!

In the eighteenth century?

No!

In the nineteenth century?

No!

In the twentieth?

Yes, in the second half of the last century?

BY WHOM and why?

In 1961, an international congress of physical measures and standards was held in France, and this pressure unit was proposed there. Why?

At that time, General Charles de Gaulle was the President of France, filled with megalomania like a swollen bladder. He quickly forgot that it was the Anglo-American troops who landed in Normandy that liberated France and Paris from the Nazis, when he himself was sitting in a comfortable bunker in London and ON the RADIO, this “Hero of the Resistance”, called on ordinary French people to sacrifice themselves more for the liberation of France!

And then, IN a WHITE AMERICAN JEEP, he triumphantly drove into Paris, liberated by British and American soldiers.

So, having quickly and successfully forgotten WHO liberated France, de Gaulle pursued a vile anti-American and anti-British policy, obsequiously licking the ass of the Soviet Union! Which, of course, earned him all the compliments of Soviet propaganda!

One night, late at night, I decided to take a walk through Paris at almost night. I walked through the deserted streets, absorbing the atmosphere of a quiet Parisian night. I reached the Paris Stock Exchange building and then I met a dog leading an elderly Frenchman on a leash.

The dog immediately reached out to me. I asked foster parent’s permission and started зуеештп her, and she put her nose in a plastic bag, where, among other things, there was a disc of La vache qui rit cheese I had bought earlier. I asked an elderly Frenchman if I could give the dog this cheese. He told me: Just one slice. I unwrapped it and gave it to her. A conversation ensued that immediately became friendly. Obviously, he saw me as an animal lover too. Later, I gave the dog another slice, she wagged her tail too friendly and looked at me with affection.

A Catholic Frenchman, a war veteran. He sailed to America via Portugal during the occupation of France, immediately enlisted in the American Army and participated in the famous Normandy landing. I said something about my chagrin at seeing the weak-willed and weak French government and did not speak very favorably of de Gaulle.

In response, he laughed and said that the French were not such idiots. As an example, he told me a very popular anecdote about de Gaulle’s megalomania that went around France during his presidency.

“De Gaulle and his wife are going to a diplomatic reception.

The wife is ready, but de Gaulle still does not come out of his bedroom.

She enters the room and sees de Gaulle standing completely naked in front of the mirror and looking at his “household.”

Mon Dieu! She exclaimed in utter dismay. -“Oh my God!”

De Gaulle turned to her and said condescendingly, “You can address me as MY GENERAL!”

It is painful to see France, which for centuries has been one of the most culturally and scientifically developed countries in the world, along with Germany and Great Britain, so easily and willingly surrendered to one megalomaniac!

Although, whether the same thing did not happen to Germany, which unanimously swore allegiance to Hitler, or to the Soviet Union, which was terrorized for twenty-nine years by the maniac villain Stalin.

And England, which in July 1945 meanly pushed its great leader Winston Churchill from the post of Prime Minister, handing him over to the worthless Clement Attlee.

(About whom Churchill himself responded as follows: “This is a modest little man who has every reason to feel himself modest” – A damning characteristic!)

Obviously, the tendency to mass insanity is a genetic disease of the descendants of cannibals.

“There are follies that spread like contagious diseases,” Duke Francois de la Rochefoucauld remarked melancholically back in the seventeenth century.

But megalomania consumed de Gaulle day and night, and one of his “inventions” was the introduction of the FRENCH unit of pressure into the international system of weights and measures.

The unit is absolutely meaningless!

In what units is the area of any room measured? Usually in square meters.

The field area is in acres, hectares.

The area of forests, seas, and states? In square kilometers.

And, here, de Gaulle’s France suggested, let’s measure it all in square microns, or nanometers, or Angstroms!

Any sane person would mistake such a suggestion for the schizophrenic ravings of a completely deranged megalomaniac.
NOT PHYSICS!!!

They voted FOR it together, and now the pressure, ANY pressure, is measured not in millimeters of mercury, nor centimeters of water, nor in bars, torrs, atmospheres, but in Pascals!

So what if the normal atmospheric pressure is NOT one bar or one atmosphere, but ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND PASCALS!

ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND!!! This is not some kind of dull unit, ONE atmosphere!

We immediately smoothly move on to MEGAPASCALS, which are only a dozen atmospheres. And above that, there must be billions and trillions! GigaPascals!!! Therapascali!

Sounds PROUD!

MAGNIFICENT!

IT’S MEGADEGAULLIC!!!

The area of the apartment is, say, seventy square meters. That means it’s seventy MILLION square millimeters, or seventy TRILLION square microns!

You can see how much the area of your apartment has increased just by switching to the analogy of French Pascals! There ARE trillions of PLACES WHERE overblown self-reliance CAN UNFOLD! Not that it’s just a few meters away!

The more the bubble of self-conceit swells, the closer the value of a single thought in it gets to zero!

By analogy, physicists should no longer be called primitively: PHYSICISTS, but MEGALOCEPHALIANS!

If I’m wrong, let my seniors correct me.

6 II 2025