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Re: joe sixpack



I said

we show it to a class today we are trying to feed vintage champagne to
nascent Joe and Jane Sixpacks. You can't fight contemporary culture.

to which Fred Bucheit replied

I think you are judging them too harshly.

My original comment was that they would react more to the clothes and
the somewhat arch dialog than they would to the physics in "Frames of
Reference". The clincher to this came when I saw a commercial [sic]
on PBS for "Bill Nye the Science Guy" which used a clip from "Frames
of Reference" as a foil, dismissing it as dull and boring. I pay money
to that station (KCTS), too!

I'd say my judgment was pretty much the same as that of the marketing
people at PBS. In this case, though their taste is rotten, I think
they hit the nail on the head with their audience. Nye/Beakman score
much higher than Hume/Ivey/Goodstein nowadays.

I just bought some Feynman tapes (the talks he gave that he wrote up
as the popular book "QED"). I'm going to show them to my students in
the local physics undergraduate society. They are dated, but I think
my students will be suitably impressed. I don't prejudge them badly
all the time.

Leigh