Thread by @AoDespair

1) The great physicist Murray Gell-Mann died last week. This is occasion for a comic thread on personal limitations, journalism-storytelling as craft and no science, and the fact that even the best scribbler is an inch deep and a mile wide: To begin, let me be clear...

2) ...that this is in no way intended as a humblebrag about some prize for speciality I carry around in my back pocket; it is, in fact, intended as a precise undercutting of that status. A scribbler is a scribbler is a scribbler. And so let's go to the city of Chicago where...

3) ...along with several hundred other Big Thinkers, I was several years ago invited to attend a conclave of MacArthur grant winners. Mind you, I am a television writer. And before that a police reporter. I am good at both gigs, but I find myself in a ballroom surrounded...

4) ...by people who are battling for the world environment, or waging war for human dignities and civil liberties, or trying to save democracy, or composing masterworks of dance, music and literature. I am the happy hack in the room...

5)....and naturally, knowing my level and my comfort zone, I find myself, with drink in hand, collecting in the outer lobby of the dining room with the other hacks: David Finkel of the Washington Post and Adrian LeBlanc of "Random Family" fame. I mean no discredit to either...

6) ...but the fact remains that we are the ink-strained tricksters in a great big bag of Originators. We know how to stand around and watch and then write a clear, coherent story. That's our stock in trade. And so, naturally, we find each other...

7)...because what could be safer and more comfortable than staring at each other in wonder and cracking jokes about crashing this smart set party. And we are standing there, talking gerunds and adjectives and wondering when the bouncers will find us, when...

8) ...three physicists find us. Yes, physicists. The real deal. They just walk up like they're regular people and like we're regular people and they ask us friendly questions and we get to talking about television and journalism and whatever. And the three scribblers....

9)...we're almost carrying it until the physicists get to talking amongst themselves and their banter gets quite heated and one of them turns to us and explains, apologetically, that their conversation has turned to Murray Gell-Mann, one of the greats of their field, a man...

10)...who discovered and named the quark and also did, well, a lot of other stuff that they try to explain to me but I will admit now my eyes glazed and even reading the Wikipedia entry for Gell-Mann moments ago, I can't keep it in my head. But...

11) ...the guy has a Nobel, so he's legend. Anyway, one of Gell-Mann's later side-pursuits is linguistics and here, his fellow physicists are dubious and their consternation grows until one of them looks at us and says, and I quote....

"I mean, if Murray was going to be a complete bullshitter, why not stick to high-energy physics?" And then the three of them laugh uproariously. So we three scribblers look at each other and laugh just as hard because, hey, it sounds pretty funny. And then...

...the laughter subsides and they look at us and I look at Finkel and LeBlanc and I am overcome with the abject fear that they are going to make us explain the joke. Not only do we not understand high-energy physics, we don't understand the joke about high-energy physics that...

...just killed us dead. Thankfully, they just nodded and smiled and wandered back into the ballroom. And I looked at the other two scribes and said, cleverly: "Um, what were we laughing at?"
"No clue."
"Me neither."
R.I.P. Murray Gell-Mann, a true master of the universe.