Ye Gads! The Horror, The Horror!
Just watched A&E’s Biography program on Albert Einstein – few hours in my life have been spent less profitably. Of the hour, a good twenty minutes were devoted to his love affairs – this, for the Man of the Century! At the end, viewers were assured by two prominent Einstein specialists that the legacy of Einstein was one of inspiration and the overcoming of obstacles – please! Gag me with a spoon…
Must we take the most revolutionary man of science since the age of Newton and turn him into a Hallmark card or self-help book? The legacy of Einstein is not perseverance, inspiration, blah, blah, blah – the legacy is his brilliant work in physics, with the glorious Annus Mirabilis and its five groundbreaking papers, and his Special and General Theories of Relativity. The other stuff may be interesting on a certain level, but please – a little perspective. Ah, the dumbing down of America continues apace…
I believe they also did an episode that featured that noted humanitarian and well – known person…Kathy Lee Gifford.
When I was watching more broadcast TV 5+ years ago (I’ve migrated to Netflix where I can order movies, plus The Civil War, The Elegant Universe, …) I was struck by a similar realization. The documentaries on A&E or Discovery move SO slowly. At that pace they’re boooring. And then you get to commercials. Arghhh. You’re right, part of it is dumbing down/fluff and part of it is a complete emphasis on irrelavant aspect of peoples lives. I could do a crossword puzzle at the same time I was watching and barely miss a beat on these shows. PBS documentaries I have to pay a bit more attention to.
Still, I like the documentaries on all those channels for at least one reason: they can integrate pictures (especially video) in ways books can’t. It will be nice when the web or Wikipedia has a more organized access to this footage.
If you want a really great (and technical) read of Einstein’s work, see Abraham Pais’ Subtle Is the Lord.