From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Tue Dec 10 2002 - 15:47:51 MST
On Tue, 10 Dec 2002, Damien Broderick wrote:
Ah-ha, the south-man living in summer-land (its a *really*
nasty day in Seattle today) *is* still alive and phoneth home!
> Ah, but relevant to *what*? Half the trouble in understanding difficult
> discourse is knowing what interpretative frame to read it through.
[snip]
> His error is not in saying any of this, which is a commonplace of physics,
> but in supposing that this insight can be imported directly and usefully into any
> relativism salient to human culture.
Now I'm *really* confused. I'm absolutely certain that both Damien and
Anders are using a variant of English that I don't speak (with or without
my Bostonian accent).
> But I have the mournful feeling that this attempted explanation of Derrida's
> apparent obscurity will have failed Robert Bradbury's test and will itself
> need explanation...
You got that right!
> BTW, there are plenty of groups of smart people out there (mean 3 sigma,
> say) who are not members of this club house. :)
Agreed. But with Feynman gone are they having much fun?
Robert
P.S. I have this story running around in my head about the parties that Feynman
used to attend where he and another famous physicist, presumably a Caltech
professor, would try to out-do each other with their mental jousting. I've
tried googling it and didn't get anywhere. Does anyone know who the other
physicist was and/or the source of the story?
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