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Re[2]: The troubles (revisited)



At 6:07 AM -0700 10/21/97, Karl Trappe wrote:

Geez folks, what BS! Did some of you just migrate from behind the iron
curtain where anything other than classical music was forbidden?

If you think you can change students by ramming anything down from a bully
pulpit as a teacher, then I understand what *I* am up against in keeping
funding for science.

Jeez, Karl, lighten up! While you are spending all your effort in "keeping
funding for science" are you imagining me preaching about musical taste in
physics lectures? Did I suggest that I do that?

In fact I never do; didn't that come across? I have taught a course in the
physics of music here at SFU about five times. (I'm the only one who has
ever taught such a course here.) Questions of taste arise from time to
time, but I never preach. What's this about all music except classical
music having been banned behind the iron curtain? I've been behind the
iron curtain; if there was a ban, it didn't work. Get real!

If you don't think that the kind of rock & roll Tom objects to is a bad
influence on youth today I will alert you to an easy example. Observation
of this common phenomenon should inform you.

The next time you are out driving in your automobile and you hear a
rhythmic bass "boom, boom, boom, boom" look around you. Chances are the
sound comes from a car within a block of you. The car has been rigged at
considerable expense to emit that sound to annoy people like me and to
attract the attention of everyone. Next consider the character of the car
and the visible manifestations of its driver. I'll bet you will not get
the picture of a thoughtful, courteous person. More likely you will see a
conspicuous victim of testosterone poisoning. That's what we observe up
here in the Great White North, anyway.

Leigh