Ha...Nice way to start your opinion/analysis/semi-rant post @svemirac - with a joke about 'chickens'... :>) Physicists LOVE chicken jokes according to the most recent polls that I've seen. Especially ones about "Chickens in a vacuum."
Did 'he' say, "Spherical chickens"...??? I'm not quite sure that I heard it right, but somehow feel as if it doesn't matter, because I laughed anyway. Maybe it's because I'm getting old and a bit senile?
Yes he did, apparently, the first joke was with a spherical cow in a vacuum, and there is also a tribute Linux distribution (Fedora 18 with a code name - Spherical Cow).
Basically, all the theories and very complicated stuff, especially in undergradute classes are simplified to be spherical (INPUT YOUR WORD)_ in vacuum, and has nothing to do with reality. :) later we complicate them a bit.
But as said above :) we have a spherical HF21 in a vacuum. :D
Naaah, you are good! :) 69 are the best years, at least I hard so. )
Ha...Yeah, nothing to do with reality...
I'm a lot better off than most I know of. Fortunately, I worked out for most of my life, prepared most of my own food and gave up the party life in my early thirties :>)