With the LHC starting up last week, this week’s Saturday science video on bloggingheads.tv had a physics theme, with Sean and Jennifer getting together to chat about physics, calculus, and poker.
It’s good stuff, and I was surprised to hear my own name appear in the middle of it. Unfortunately, the idea Jennifer cites me for– the concept of “lies-to-children” isn’t original to me. I got it from Terry Pratchett (or possibly Ian Stewart or Jack Cohen– I think it’s in The Science of Discworld).
Of course, the really important question here is how does one get on the list of people asked to do these? ‘Cause I think it would be fun to give it a try. I do all right on video, too…
It’s in The Science of Discworld. It’s a damn good description.
The idea of lies-to-children is pretty similar to some of the stuff in Hogfather, so I’m never entirely sure whether it came from there or not. Thanks for the confirmation.
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Can you be more specific?
In what way is it broken?
It vaguely remember seeing it in Stewart/Cohen’s The Collapse of Chaos, which predates SoD, but it’s been a while since I read that and I don’t have a copy handy, so I’m not sure.
Next time I’m checking Wikipedia before posting anything…
The Collapse of Chaos was written the year after SoD, but both came out after Figments of Reality (Stewart/Cohen again), which I guess either has the term or at least the basic concept. And Hogfather came out the year before that…