The mobster philosopher
QUESTION Whose motto was ‘Man is the hardest animal to kill’?
This was a saying by New York mobster salvatore Maranzano. he was unusually well-read for a criminal and had a penchant for philosophising to his
capos (sidekicks). he admired Julius Caesar, which earned him the nickname of Little Caesar.
Maranzano was born in 1868 in Castellammare del Golfo, sicily, the youngest of 12 children, and emigrated to New York in his 1950s.
he set up a successful estate agency as a front through which he laundered his profits from bootlegging, gambling, narcotics and prostitution.
he became the mentor to Joseph Bonanno, later a major crime boss, who studied the meticulous way in which Maranzano conducted himself.
he always travelled in convoy in armourplated limousines, sitting in the back seat with a machine gun mounted on a swivel between his legs.
he also packed Luger and Colt pistols, and kept a dagger behind his back.
Every night he would load his shotgun cartridges with powder while imparting his trademark philosophy. The speech that stuck with Bonanno was: ‘To kill a rabbit, to kill a deer, to kill even a bear is simple. You aim steady and you shoot.
‘But man is the hardest animal to kill. When you aim at a man, your heart flutters, your mind interferes. Man is the hardest animal to kill. if possible you should always touch the body with your gun to make sure the man is dead. Man is the hardest animal to kill. if he gets away, he will come back to kill you.’
in 1930, Maranzano became embroiled in a bloody turf dispute — known as the Castellammare War — with rival mafia boss Joe (Giuseppe) Masseria. it came to an end with the execution of Masseria.
Maranzano briefly established himself as capo di tutti capi (boss of all the bosses) until a murder squad, reputedly hired by mafia bosses Lucky Luciano and Vito Genovese, stabbed and shot him in his office on Park Avenue in 1931.
Phil Laven, Nottingham.
QUESTION In physics, what is the significance of a point particle?
A PoiNT particle doesn’t have any significance other than as a mathematical convenience. Physics students are familiar with shorthand phrases in exam questions, such as ‘assume a frictionless surface . . . a perfect vacuum . . . a massless pendulum rod’. These are ways of simplifying a potentially complex calculation.
A real pendulum has a long rod with a large, heavy weight on one end. if a physicist wanted to calculate the time of its swing, this would involve a complex algorithm and a lot of computing power.
however, if we assume a massless rod, and that all the mass of the pendulum is concentrated at a point at the centre of gravity, then the calculation can be done with just a pencil and paper.
Many calculations involving elementary particles are simplified by assuming a point particle. A proton is not a point particle because it is composed of three quarks, but it can be assumed as such.
When the simplified equation has been generated and the figures need working out, it can still look a bit daunting.
This leads to another shorthand much used by tutors: ‘it is left as an exercise to the student.’
Keith Matthews, Ferndown, Dorset.