Toast Masters P5 Script – Past-O-Mania

This script was written an hour before the actual speech. Of course I knew upfront that I am going to muse about the bygone era. And I had so much content from all my research in the past. Now, the challenge was to extract stories that can be told in 5 minutes and that would also enable me to use my body language much (which is the prime objective of ToastMasters Project 5).  


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Past-O-Mania is reveling in the past,  celebrating the heroes of the yester years, marveling the intensity of their lives and comparing it with that of ours. This short speech is my musings about 2 men from the past. 2 GREAT but relatively unpopular men  outside the philosophical and scientific circles.

Gentlemen, who knows how to measure the height of this building? Wait a minute, I am not going to give you sophisticated altimeters or any access to Google. (Some people answered to count the number of stories… I ask them how would they know the height of each story. There are no answers for that.)

Don’t sweat, Folks. This problem was solved 2600 years ago itself. A great man called Thales of Miletus did that. Thales was vagabond and a bohemian. “Bohemian” is a term that came much later but typically bohemians are people with itchy backsides. They just can't sit in one place. Adolf Hitler and his forefathers were bohemians, if you read about Hitler. Thales traveled to Egypt, stood under the pyramid on a sunny day. He measured the length of his shadow. He measured the length of the pyramid’s shadow. He knew his own height. And with a simple arithmetic, he accurately measured the height of the pyramid.

Thales was the first of the natural philosophers. But why do I call him a hero? Before Thales, the humans described everything around them using mythologies – stories of gods and powers. I will give you a sample...

Why is the earth hanging in the mid air?

Its because Atlas is holding it.

But what does Atlas stand on?

Oh, he is standing on a turtle.

Oh really, then what is that turtle standing on?

Another turtle, actually, for heaven’s sake!

Wait a minute, what about that second turtle then?

Its turtles all the way down. My goodness! You are offending the gods. Just shuddup or you will be prosecuted.

Thales rattled this world during his days. He ignited the whole rational movement. The seeds of philosophy and metaphysics are sowed from here. We need to understand the power of the 5 metaphysical questions here to see the magnitude of Thales’ influence.

1.     What is matter?

2.     What are substances composed of?

3.     How does matter interact with each other?

4.     Who created matter?

5.     Are Time and Space also matters? What am I in this universe?

These questions that Thales was pondering is what you and me are working on until today. The first 3 questions later branched into physics, mathematics, chemistry and other disciplines of science. The 4^th question became Theology and the last question evolved into Astronomy. Look  around you now. These simple pencils we use, the retina displays in these iPhones and all the way to the mars rovers - are all side effects of men trying to find answers to the above 5 questions.

I want you to fast forward to the 18^th Century now. A French man with a name Guillame Le Gentil! He continues the same stream of work that Thales left. Le Gentil travels to India to triangulate and figure out the distance between sun and the earth when Venus passes between them. This solar event happens once in 8 years. Le Gentil arrives late and misses the window of  opportunity. He decides to wait for the next 8 years in India. Every day, he would test and retest his equipment and is in a solid state of readiness. Catastrophically, when the day arrived, a persistent cloud comes in between and blocks him totally. His mission fails and he decides to return to France. This journey takes him another daunting 3.5 years as his ship gets looted. He falls sick many a times.

When at last he reached home, eleven years after setting off, and having achieved nothing, he discovers that he was declared dead by his relatives and his estate was plundered by them enthusiastically.  I declare him a great man just for his spirit to contribute though he did not achieve anything concrete. It is these great men that we owe our lives to.

So Past-O-Mania, Ladies and Gentlemen. It is about regaining the passion and intensity in life as that of our past hero's. Past-O-Mania is to join them by upholding and continuing the stream of work they left towards untangling the mysteries of this universe.