OT BBC Radio 4 does it's bit of dumbing down

[old.bailey]

A prog. about Physics the other night included some comments of the work of Feynman. The host made it easy for the listener by saying he was kind of like a "70's/80's "Brian Cox (physicist)".

Yes that's right. A moments Wiki will show the huge similarity in the calibre of their works won't it.

The prog. then went on to compare a (simple) "poem" by Feynman with some tosh by someone who was "caught up with" in Denmark - a woman poet of course. I had to turn off at the line "... a sparrow alighting from the end of..."

[Cursitor Doom]

The BBC in general is just total *shit* these days, I fully agree. On R4 tomorrow morning at 9am there's supposed to be an item about the elegance of certain important equations. But as you say, it'll no doubt be couched in such elementary language that no one feels 'excluded' and so consequently I probably won't even bother giving it the benefit of listening for the first 3 minutes just to find out for sure.

[Graham.]

I think it was the PM programme last week, they did an item about lasers blinding airline pilots. On three occasions the reporter expressed the power of a laser pointer in megawatts.

[newshound]

The Maxwell one with Will Self? I gave up half way through the first episode.

I'm quite selective with what science I listen to. Jim Al-Khalili's interviews are good, and I like Tim Harford and David Spiegelhalter.

Some of the drama is good; I tend to download it from 4 extra, then listen using a phone or tablet.

[Bob Eager]

They did issue a correction later on, at least.

[newshound]

I was still navigating the minefield of "Contact Us" on their web sites when that came through!

[Mike Barnes]

Most media types find it hard to resist mentioning at least one celebrity in every paragraph. Otherwise young people turn off.

[tony sayer]

In article , Graham. scribeth thus

That .. is very wrong, its prats like that who write CC stuff thats then picked up by ignorant politicos with the usual results:(

[Dave Plowman (News)]

You really expect a program presented by Will Self to be about science?

[Adrian]

It was picked up on and corrected later in the prog.

[Alan Dawes]

Why cann't they do the same as the RAF V-bomber pilots and wear an eyepatch over one eye so that if the other eye was blinded by the flash of a nuclear explosion they still had one good eye?

Alan

[Brian-Gaff]

They might have done better with Kermit the Frog. Brian

[dennis]

Just fit laser seeking missiles and use them.

[Cursitor Doom]

No, nothing to do with Self (gets on my t*ts too) and just about equations generally. I have to admit it was actually really rather good. You can probably download a podcast of it from the R4 site.

[newshound]

To be fair, at least one of the "megawatt" quotes came from an interviewee/user rather than the presenter.

[Bob Eager]

A program presented by Will Self is only ever going to be about....well, Will Self.

[Huge]

*applauses*

Can't stand the bloke, myself.

[Tim Streater]

I find him interesting sometimes on Point of View (BBC-R4, 08.50, Sunday) but I can't remember any specific examples.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Sort of clever, which one likes, but snide, which one does not, and a total smackhead, which is a pretty poor example to set on the airwaves.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Well, yes. But can be quite amusing. He makes such a virtue about being clueless about so much. Typical wannabe achademic.

The funniest part was he hired a hybrid car (Volt) which can also be run purely from electricity by charging the battery externally. But didn't come with the fast charging lead - even assuming you could find charging points. Then complained it had to be run on petrol.