Re: Idiocosmology

[Leigh Palmer <palmer@sfu.ca>]

> Just because the text is encyclopedic, does that mean we have
> to teach that way?

It is because we have small-minded colleagues who believe that
the physics curriculum was divinely constituted to be accomplished
in three lectures per week over thirty weeks (26 in Canada, 26:30
in Newfoundland), and also that they are Defenders of the Faith.

But don't worry; we aren't teaching that way. There's no way we
could possibly do so. We spin them past all the curricularly
prescribed topics as though they were inscribed on so many prayer
wheels, and vainly hope it will sink in, even though it never has
done so before.

The reason we do it, as I pointed out before, was most succinctly
enunciated by Tevye: "Tradition!"

At the bottom of that post there is something I find offensive:

> "Every [person's] world picture is and always remains a construct
> of [their] mind and cannot be proved to have any other existence."
> --E. Schrodinger in Mind and Matter, 1958.

Erwin Schroedinger would have constructed this in a grammatically,
not politically, correct form. You do his memory a great disservice
in imputing to him this "inclusive language" crap that he certainly
never indulged in. Let his real words speak for him. Even if it is
in German I think most of us here could handle it. Shame on you!

Leigh