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Al Seckel on Richard Feynman (2001)
- 082349872349872 4y agoThe Supernatural Clock *mwah*
- jimhefferon 4y agoWonderful! Thanks.
- ManuelKiessling 4y agoYou will love this, too: https://anecdotage.com/anecdotes/penn-jillette-small-favor-from-richard-feynman https://anecdotage.com/anecdotes/penn-jillette-small-favor-f...
- dang 4y agoAnybody have a year for this? archive.org has 2005 as its earliest version but that's just an upper bound.
- 082349872349872 4y agopage source includes <meta name="copyright" content="1997-2001 J. Eric Slone">
- dang 4y agoOk, I've lowered the upper bound. Thanks!
- dvh 4y agoWas he 10x physicist?
- going_ham 4y agoMore like a generalist who also happened to be one of the greatest. You can read his book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" It adds some characteristic to his flamboyant personality.
- fluidcruft 4y ago"Flamboyant" https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/surely-youre-a-creep-mr-feynman-mcneill https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/surely-youre-a-creep-mr-fey...
- LawTalkingGuy 4y agoThat article is overblown and written like it's trying to take offense. The first thing they list is Feynman "calling women bitches" in the autobiography, but they leave out the context that it's a thought experiment his friend is proposing to him to try to snap him out of being a loser. He psychs himself up to see bar girls as users and bitches and refuses to follow their script which removes him from the patsy role and lets him reexamine the dynamic. He then says that while this works he didn't use those techniques because he found them distasteful and doesn't refer to women in a derogatory way in the rest of his memoirs. Apparently his most serious offense was not admitting he was a professor when dating. As long as he wasn't dating students in his faculty I don't see why that's inappropriate at all. They quote his ex-wife saying he flew into violent rages when interrupted and treat it as if he was violent to her, where the report makes it sound like he threw things around. Flawed, sure. Enough to warrant having some snarky cancel-culture style takedown written about him and dropped in a passive-aggressive way during every semi-related conversation? Doubtful. There's no evidence, or even coherent suggestion, that he hurt people let alone enjoyed doing so.
- 082349872349872 4y agoI can't go into detail without losing at least 20 bits worth of anonymity, but fwiw this internet rando claims to have personal reasons to agree with the last para.
- jameshart 4y agoThe number of people falling and sliding out of chairs in these anecdotes seems surprisingly high. Then I realized, these are physicists. The chairs are just idealized horizontal frictionless surfaces.
- function_seven 4y agoThe chair doesn’t change just because the occupant is a physicist. The reason is because they’re spherical frictionless scientists.
- Uhhrrr 4y agoThe rose cutting trick is "Shadows", Teller's signature trick. It's not surprising they didn't figure out that one.