It's obvious

[Joel S. Berson]

Presumably someone having the New Yorker on CD can tell us, and date
it relative to Feynman, but -- I remember the cartoon as a single
panel, single blackboard wall densely covered with complex equations,
and just one professor speaking, "Yes, it's obvious."

Joel

At 8/11/2008 09:12 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
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>I don't know the the dating, here, but the Feynman story may well have
>inspired the cartoon. Also, my memory of the cartoon is spotty. It may
>very well be the case that, as in the story, it's Prof. B who agrees
>that the analysis is indeed obvious.
>
>-Wilson
>
>On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 7:16 PM, James Harbeck <jharbeck at sympatico.ca> wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       James Harbeck <jharbeck at SYMPATICO.CA>
> > Subject:      Re: ADS-L on Language Log
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >>Remember that old cartoon - from The NY-er, I believe - featuring two
> >>profs? It went something like this:
> >>
> >>Prof. A to Prof. B:
> >>
> >>"It's obvious."
> >>
> >>Nevertheless, having second thoughts, A proceeds to fill two walls of
> >>blackboard with abstruse mathematical calculations. After he finishes,
> >>he turns back to B and reiterates:
> >>
> >>"Yes. It's obvious."
> >
> > Oh, Richard Feynman, in _Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman_, has an
> > anecdote just like that:
> >
> > ----
> > At the Princeton  graduate school, the physics department  and the math
> > department shared  a  common lounge, and every day at four
> o'clock we  would
> > have  tea.  It  was a  way of  relaxing  in the  afternoon,
> in  addition  to
> > imitating  an  English  college.  People  would
> sit  around  playing  Go, or
> > discussing theorems. In those days topology was the big thing.
> >      I still  remember  a guy  sitting on the couch, thinking
> very hard, and
> > another guy standing in  front of him,  saying, "And therefore
> such-and-such
> > is true."
> >      "Why is that?" the guy on the couch asks.
> >      "It's trivial! It's  trivial!"  the standing guy says,
> and  he  rapidly
> > reels  off a series of logical steps: "First you assume
> thus-and-so, then we
> > have Kerchoff's this-and-that; then there's Waffenstoffer's
> Theorem,  and we
> > substitute this and construct that. Now you put the vector which
> goes around
> > here and  then
> thus-and-so..."  The  guy  on  the  couch  is  struggling  to
> > understand  all  this stuff, which goes on at high speed
> for  about  fifteen
> > minutes!
> >      Finally the  standing  guy comes out the other end, and the
> guy  on the
> > couch says, "Yeah, yeah. It's trivial."
> > ----
> >
> > James Harbeck.
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
>
>--
>All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
>come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>-----
>  -Sam'l Clemens
>
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