You ever watch Emeril Lagasse’s cooking show, Emeril Live? It’s a hoot. He throws spices around, there’s a live band in the studio, and the audience applauds everything from the wine in the sauce to the nice tail on that crawfish. (Don’t even get them started on garlic.) Shots of the gorgeous fresh meat are interspersed with smiling audience members, and Emeril “kicks it up a notch” at least a half-dozen times a show. It’s a good time.
I watched Emeril faithfully for about a year, then I discovered Alton Brown’s show, Good Eats. I’ll never go back. Sure, there’s no band or live studio audience, and Alton -— who has a background in both film and food science -— is much more likely to get off on what’s causing those proteins to denature, or the history of barbecue through the nineteenth century, than anything that might lead to a standing ovation. But he’s smart, and fun to watch. More important, he makes me feel smart for being able to follow along. (I was even convinced after one show that I understood polyunsaturated vs. monounsaturated fats, just from a demo involving rubber trolls. False alarm.)
Here’s the thing, though. I’m a lousy cook.
I can fry an egg to blackness, and that’s about it.
So what’s the deal? I watch these cooking shows. I love them. I worship Alton Brown’s organic-chemistry knowledge, and can tell you the best way to de-vein shrimp (you keep them under water so the veiny stuff just floats to the bottom of the bowl). Why can’t I cook to save my life?
Simple. I watch TV sitting on my butt on the couch. When the show’s over, I delete it from the Tivo. You can’t cook on the couch, and you can’t cook if you never try to cook. Mystery solved.
I’m the most entertaining mathematics teacher I know1. I have even been known, on occasion, when events warrant, under carefully controlled circumstances, to kick it up a third of a notch. But you cannot learn to do mathematics by watching me, or anyone else, do mathematics. It can only be learned by doing it.
1 note that I do not attend any mathematics lectures other than my own, rendering the usefulness of this assertion pretty much zero