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NASA Names Best & Worst Sci-Fi Movies of All Time
mvar writes "Working through the year-end best/worst movie lists can be a feat of Olympic proportions, but there's one list which is so damn cool you'll definitely want to give it a whirl. NASA and the Science and Entertainment Exchange have compiled a list of the 'least plausible science fiction movies ever made,' and they ranked the disastrous (in more ways than one) 2012 as the most 'absurd' sci-fi flick of all time."
How is it NASA is qualified to judge the best and worst Sci-Fi movies of all time? Don't they have something more important to be working on?
I can't argue with it. It was an insanely awful movie, both for the absolutely retarded "ooh, look, Africa just rose a mile", but just as importantly because it was just a plan bad film.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If I recall correctly, 2012 was the disaster movie that caused hundreds (maybe thousands) of overly emotional retards to call NASA directly and ask whether the world was actually going to end. I think one caller even asked NASA if they should kill their child now, in order to save them the pain of having to deal with the 2012 apocalypse. I know if a particular movie turned my work phone into a spam pot for dipshits I would declare that movie the ultimate fuck up of all time as well.
I think next we'll see NASA using it's orbital lasers to melt John Cusack's for his role in that film, at least, I can dream.
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Well, now I know why we never returned to the moon
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
They don't even list "Capricorn One".
Even when I saw the name here, I was like: "wow, is that another 2001, like 2010? I should see that" Then I looked it up on IMDB. :(
I'll have to post without RTFA (what a shame). Gattaca is cool, but come on... instant sequencing of genomes?
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
"GATTACA" is considered the "most realistic." The fact that its politics is so obvious, its smarmy moralizing oozes from every frame, and it's "space mission" at the end consists of people in 3-piece suits entering what looks like an elevator in the lobby of a modern office seem not to weigh against it. I think we're seeing at work the presumption that in order for a film to be considered scientifically-accurate, it must first be considered a terrible bore.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
I know you're being sarcastic, but it is money well spent. NASA faces huge uphill battles from people wondering why they aren't doing as much as they could be, and why we're not building colonies on the moon. SciFi movies are the primary tool to impression people as to what is technologically available to us. Bad movies give the public unfair expectations of what could happen, who controls it, and how it can be fixed. These people then write their congress people and complain that NASA isn't doing enough. Congress then gets onto NASA on how they're spending what they're spending, and how they should change priorities. The public is dumb, congress is dumb, and they're controlled by images given in SciFi movies.
Think if a majority of the people in this country were convinced by "2012" that the world would really end at that year. Their priorities for government spending would be dramatically different.
...a new form of life on Earth which turned out to only be a present form of life that adopted to arsenic, I don't give NASA much credit lately except in the area of grandstanding. Guess this is what we get when NASA's shuttle funding gets cutoff.
Please, if the title of the submission includes the word 'names best & worst' in it, please provide the list of the best and worst.
I got distracted and started checking out the live webcam from the ISS.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
But not all sci-fi films were mocked by NASA experts, they did agree to praise 1982s Blade Runner, starring Harrison Ford. The movie which they said “convincingly portrayed a futuristic Los Angeles now only eight years away”
And the most “realistic” sci-fi film according to NASA, goes to 1997s Gattaca, starring Ethan Hawke, Jude Law and Uma Thurman. The movie was about “a genetically inferior man assumes the identity of a superior one in order to pursue his lifelong dream of space travel.”
It looks like the smart guys at NASA agree with many of us 'dotters that the future is going to be a bleak, dystopian police state where the richer get richer and the poor eat noodles off the street. Ah well, at least we get Harrison Ford and glowing umbrellas right?
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They went into space in double-breasted suits.
http://www.metro.co.uk/film/851586-2012-named-most-absurd-science-fiction-film-by-nasa
How did Core fail to make the list?
I hate to break it to you, but (A) they didn't judge best or worst, but most absurd as science goes, and (B) they do have people qualified in several branches of science and technology. In fact, I'd expect that if anyone is qualified to judge woowoo doomsday scenarios based on stellar alignments and mysterious radiations from the galaxy, it would be NASA. That's, you know, the kinda thing they _are_ supposed to do: know what's happening up there.
Of course, don't tell that to the homeschooled idiots who'd rather wait for a "rapture" that kept being sold as any day now for 2000 years straight and never happened, than fix the real problems on Earth in the meantime. And who'll even take a non-existent Mayan prophecy as support for their Bible delusions. Or to the gang who just wants to believe any non-scientific idiocy, presumably because it makes them feel less bad about sleeping through Physics class high-school.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Think if a majority of the people in this country were convinced by "2012" that the world would really end at that year. Their priorities for government spending would be dramatically different.
This part of your comment reminded me of this article; NASA actually had to post a rather lengthy FAQ about 2012 because of the sheer volume of grief that movie was causing them.
Personally, I agree that NASA should take the proactive approach on this one. It shouldn't be part of their job to educate the public like this but it has proven necessary.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
Wrong. Oh so wrong. Clever but wrong.
P.S. You want Columbia instead of Discovery.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Here is a better link with the whole list.
What is the point of writing about 2012 being "absurd"? It was a special effects action movie intended to entertain people in a cinema for 2 hours. Mission accomplished, for me and millions of other people. The same team that made 2012 also made films about alien invasions and giant lizards, so they aren't exactly aiming for hard realism and non-absurdity.
Someone at NASA isn't making an interesting or valid criticism, they are demonstrating their own lack of humour.
Worst Sci-Fi Movies
1. 2012 (2009)
2. The Core (2003)
3. Armageddon (1998)
4. Volcano (1997)
5. Chain Reaction (1996)
6. The 6th Day (2000)
7. What the #$*! Do We Know? (2004)
Most Realistic Films
1. Gattaca (1997)
2. Contact (1997)
3. Metropolis (1927)
4. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
5. Woman in the Moon (1929)
6. The Thing from Another World (1951)
7. Jurassic Park (1993)
...I have to ask: doesn't NASA have anything better to do with its time (and our money)? ..bruce..
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
Why would a government agency be rating movies, anyway? The only possible explanation is that they know something we don't about 2012, and it actually is going to be the end of the world. The top gubmint politicians and military brass are confident that they have their secret shelters and caves to flee to, but the masses are being psychologically conditioned to quietly walk right into their doom.
The worst thing is, the few brave voices that speak out against this stuff tend to get a bullet in the head without warni
Where is Duncan Jones' Moon on the best of list for science?
The trailer turned my off for seeing it.
Way to much over the TOP.
At lest the B movies are so bad they are good!
The major western governments were still functioning democracies in calendar year 1984, so technically the film would be implausible.
It does not happen.
It's not only NASA vs. SciFi Movies. That problem can be seen in a lot of genres. The more and more movies and shows try to claim they are "authentic" and are seen as such, the more people start to wonder why what they see in their shows isn't done in real life.
A friend of mine is in forensics. You might be able to imagine what he thinks of shows like CSI. To quote: "If they killed the prez, we wouldn't get the money needed to do half the tests they do routinely there on a hunch". Not to mention that the tests (those that ARE actually working as they do in RL, by far not everything they do has anything to do with reality, deus ex machinas are a staple of the later CSI episodes) sometimes require machinery so expensive that you couldn't get your hands on it if you blew your annual budget on just renting it. Not to mention that petty things like constitution or human rights seem to be non existent in the world of CSI.
But people see it as genuine and start to demand that forensics can flawlessly identify every culprit. That's not the case. By far not. Having a piece of hair or a cigarette butt doesn't mean you also have a suspect to match it against.
It's very well spent money if such claims are debunked so people do not have irrational expectations based on movies and shows. What people have to learn is that their main focus is entertainment. Not education.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
mod parent troll,
that was clever 30 years ago when i watched challenger explode live and the NASA acronym was first coined...
Hush! Not 'til the next start!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's not so much the movie as the conspiracy theory to which the movie draws some vague inspiration.
The NASA take is informative, but for something more informative, with Gary Coleman no less, start here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CN5sNXxe498
Article slashdotted so I can't RTFA but I find it hard to believe that NASA really think Tron, Avatar, and Mars Attacks! are all more feasible scenarios than disastrous environmental effects from global warming.
It seems NASA saying 2012 was most unrealistic was more than slightly motivated by proagandist politics.
If I were at NASA I'd have voted Capricorn One as the worst SciFi movie of all time. After all this film claims the moon landing was faked.
The 'alien lifeform debacle' as you chose to propagandize it, was a very important and interesting discovery regarding the fundamental ingredients for life that is still being reviewed by major microbial scientists worldwide. Not recognizing the significance of that announcement just because it wasn't the discovery of alien life (something that NASA never advertised, but, rather, a speculation that the media over-hyped) does little more than betray your ignorance on that particular matter.
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Just this week I have been searching for something Sci-Fi to watch that I haven't seen.
I'm looking for something like Firefly, Battlestar Galatica, Farscape, etc. Spaceships, alien planets, etc. Or something with worlds inside computers like The Matrix, The Thirteenth Floor, Caprica, etc.
I have seen most of the Star Trek TNG episodes and honestly didn't like it all that much. Same goes for the original Star Trek.
I have not seen much of Babylon 5 but I really didn't like what I saw. It's like watching a bad soap opera on the Spanish channel. The production values and acting are total crap. People have told me it gets better in season 2 but I watched some of that and it was barely any better. Not watchable if you ask me.
I have not watched any of the Stargate TV series but as far as I can tell it's not much of a spaceship show is it?
Anyone have any other suggestions?
The ratio of people to cake is too big
and not the updated version Amazon Women on the Moon (1987)?
I always figured that shows like CSI worked best as propaganda. People watch it religiously, conditioning themselves to think that they could never get away with even the smallest crime, no matter how intelligently planned.
Of course, the truth is that more crimes go unsolved than are figured out. That's not even taking into account crimes that never even bring attention to themselves... after all, the perfect crime wouldn't even be suspected as something worthy of investigation to begin with.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Maybe it's dumbassed attitudes from people who reply without understanding the opinion of who they're replying to?
Parent has NOT said you're not allowed to criticize. Parent was saying he agrees with what NASA is doing and he stated why.
Dilbert RSS feed
I keep reading the new on the net, but all i see is some journalist pretending the "NASA" named the worst SF film from science POV, but no link whatsoever to NASA.GOV and certainly a search there turn out nothing.
So is it really NASA ? Or some people from NASA in private/unrelated to work ? Or even it was made up ?
The correct answer is Forbidden Planet.
As for the worst, the list is way too lengthy even to contemplate.
Apparently you're unaware of Newton's 4th Law. "Any natural disaster travels at the speed of the transportation you happen to be in at the time." Of course later Einstein showed that relativistic effects could add or subtract 10 or 20 miles per hour, but only in faster vehicles which weren't available in newton's time.
This part of your comment reminded me of this article; NASA actually had to post a rather lengthy FAQ about 2012 because of the sheer volume of grief that movie was causing them.
That's nothing. Pluto Nash was causing so much trouble that astronomers downgraded it to a dwarf planet.
Here is the CORAL link to this:
http://ramascreen.com.nyud.net/nasa-names-2012-the-most-absurd-sci-fi-film-gattaca-is-the-most-realistic/
And here is the link to the movies with bad science:
http://ramascreen.com.nyud.net/check-out-bad-science-in-movies/
Willie...
It's even worse than that, really. It's not just "who cares about Mayans". It's that, really, they're trusting a calendar from back when the Mayans were as primitive as to not even figure out the length of a year (the Long Count uses 360 day years; seriously) and a culture who even at its apex only managed to count the days in the cycles of Venus (you know, the most bloody visible thing up there after the Sun and Moon) to tell them about galactic events. And they turn the end of a Mayan century into some kind of prophecy, although the Mayans never made such a prophecy. It's so fucking stupid, it's depressing.
To repeat a previous post (hey, it's Slashdot, you're used to dupes), for those who happen to still not know what that mayan thing is actually about:
Let's start from the start. The Mayans didn't count in base 10, but in base 20, presumably because they could count on their toes too. (No, really, look at their digits.) Thank goodness they didn't come up with a male-only maths, eh?
So they started with a year based on 260 day years, the so called Tzolkin calendar. If now you went "wait, that can't be right, it would skip through the actual year like crazy", congrats, you'd be smarter than the Mayans.
Then came the Long Count calendar, which was 360 days long, or 18 months of 20 days each. (Told you they were big on 20.) This is actually the calendar used in the 2012 (non)prophecy.
Yes, that's right. Those poor idiots are actually trusting a civilization to tell them about galactic alignments... who isn't even advanced enough to figure out the length of the year. Nor had the smarts to reset it to some equinoxe or such each year, like the lunisolar calendars used around here by even the most primitive ancient cultures. Yeah, that's the guy to trust with galactic calculations, right? ;)
To make it more stupid, even the Mayans eventually got a better calendar than that, the Haab calendar. Which finally padded the year to 365 days long, putting them finally on par with what the Egyptians had had, oh, only a couple of millennia before them. But anyway, a doomsday calculation based on the Long Count is already based on a calendar which is obsolete and crap even by Mayan standards.
So, anyway, a Long Count year was 18 months of 20 days each.
From there it went kinda like for us with decades, centuries and milenia, except in base 20.
So for us a decade is 10 years, for them a katun is 20 years.
For us a century is 10x10 years, for them a baktun is 20x20 years.
For us a millennium is 10x10x10 years, for them a piktun is 20x20x20 years.
All that happens in 2012 or 2013 is the end of a baktun. Yes, it's not even millennialism. The piktun (base-20 millenium) won't end for another couple thousand years or so.
That scare isn't even like Y2K, it's more like being scared of the rollover from 699 AD to 700 AD. I mean, WTF, it's not even running out of digits or anything.
And again that's _all_ there is to it, because there is no actual Mayan prophecy for that date.
But I guess that won't stop the doomsday idiots from waiting for their Rapture on that day. What else is new?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The site is slashdotted, but is 2012 really worse than Tron or Tron: Legacy? At least in terms of believability.
Idiocracy
Think if a majority of the people in this country were convinced by "2012" that the world would really end at that year. Their priorities for government spending would be dramatically different.
The federal government's budget between now and 2012 could subsidize a hell of a lot of hookers and blow!
I would more like assume that they're not serfs, and don't work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There'll be enough time for them to do their job _and_ watch a movie now and then. Sometimes even together with a few co-workers and start comparing notes.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Isn't some public education a mandate of all science agencies? (If not, it should be.) Given the public's infatuation with entertainment, this seems a decent way to drum up interest.
If that $14T was all spent on actually worthwhile endeavors like NASA, we'd be having this idiotic argument on Mars.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
I am not sure this list is real. I couldn't find anything on NASA's website about it, and the Science and Entertainment Exchange say they were not involved: http://blog.scienceandentertainmentexchange.org/2011/01/note-to-our-web-visitors-london-sunday.html
Yup. Gattaca was a good flic.
2012? More a disaster movie than sci-fi IMHO
Battlefiend earth? The most gawdawful flic ever made. HOWEVER!!!... The book was amazing. Real page turner and if you read it, you'll realize there was no way to turn it into a movie. Just couldn't be did! (Movie proved it) The flic turned a fascinating sci-fi novel into a brutally awful sci-fantasy movie.
None of those movies really stretch the science *fiction* very far at all. And they were all pretty good movies.
I thought Moon was just about the most convincing sci-fi movie since 2001 - taking one simple premise that's not particularly far-fetched at all, and exploring it to its full conclusion, is what made the classic era of British sci-fi so...er...classic.
And of course Contact had to be there - after all, it was written by the same chap who co-designed the Pioneer Plaque...
Gattaca - the most realistic sci-fi movie where a mission to Titan is a once-in-a-lifetime matter (so much so that the director of a space center murders his subordinate with a computer keyboard just to launch it). Yeah right.
Personally, I agree that NASA should take the proactive approach on this one. It shouldn't be part of their job to educate the public like this but it has proven necessary.
It's only necessary because of the complete dumbing down of the science curriculum in schools. That's what happens when you let a bunch of religious nutbars dictate what kind of science is taught to children.
It's time to ignore the religious crackpots and start teaching real science without fear of backlash.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
That was Mystery Science Theatre 3000 material. I think they should bring back MST3K just for the purpose of skewering it.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I know! I'm feeling soooo deceived by the movie's I've seen lately. I mean, I was at the hospital the other day, and the nurse was not wearing a form-fitting white uniform with a plunging neckline. She didn't come on to me or tell me how naughty she'd been. She didn't even have enormous breasts! B-cup, tops! All she did was poke me with needles and bring me terrible food!
Think if a majority of the people in this country were convinced by "2012" that the world would really end at that year. Their priorities for government spending would be dramatically different.
Yeah, they might start throwing trillions of dollars at all sorts of useless stuff!
Oh, wait ....
And my last doc was not quipping, didn't order a multitude of pointless tests and downed a few packs of Vicodine while belittling his team. I felt kinda cheated.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That "they always get their man" is nothing new, that's been the staple of crime shows since the beginning of TV. What's new is that what is depicted as "science". In other words, the problem that only the sci-fi genre had to deal with is invading other genres now.
(tinfoil hat on)
Maybe it's an assault on science by its enemies. When we can discredit science and "scientific working", people will lose their faith in science and instead look for other sources for answers.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Also, the perfect crime is being too big to fail.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well how much effort do you think that took them?
World War II predates Star Trek by a couple of decades.
People take venues of entertainment too seriously and can't just enjoy things for what they are.
God, I hate humans.
First Elijah and his family drove a car to some mountain, along with the rest of humanity, where Elijah did an about face, left his family, and somehow miraculously returned to his home. He then proceeded to steal a motor bike and commence driving to find his girlfriend somewhere in the United States.
Only after finding his girlfriend among the 10's of 1000's of vehicles on a particular highway system did the meteorite impact occur, causing a tsunami, which they at first out ran on motorbike, and then finally on foot.
What's the problem?
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
Science fiction seems like it has to be in the form of a novel to really qualify as sci-fi; movies seem to always be movies regardless of the source material or subject matter. Like comic books which should never be made into movies. ("Danger: Diabolik" being the exception that proves the rule.) IMHO
Hardly:
A rat done bit my sister Nell.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Her face and arms began to swell.
(and Whitey's on the moon)
I can't pay no doctor bill.
(but Whitey's on the moon)
Ten years from now I'll be payin' still.
(while Whitey's on the moon)
The man jus' upped my rent las' night.
('cause Whitey's on the moon)
No hot water, no toilets, no lights.
(but Whitey's on the moon)
I wonder why he's uppi' me?
('cause Whitey's on the moon?)
I wuz already payin' 'im fifty a week.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Taxes takin' my whole damn check,
Junkies makin' me a nervous wreck,
The price of food is goin' up,
An' as if all that shit wuzn't enough:
A rat done bit my sister Nell.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Her face an' arm began to swell.
(but Whitey's on the moon)
Was all that money I made las' year
(for Whitey on the moon?)
How come there ain't no money here?
(Hmm! Whitey's on the moon)
Y'know I jus' 'bout had my fill
(of Whitey on the moon)
I think I'll sen' these doctor bills,
Airmail special
(to Whitey on the moon)
Had to completely rework my Netflix queues...
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
I'm almost certain the joke is older than that, going back to the seven astronauts of the original Mercury program. Some of the early (unmanned) prototype rockets didn't exactly get into space, and these failures were more public than many of the USSR's failures.
Not a typewriter
I have to say, I am glad this wonderful film found some recognition, and from the most unexpected, but very highly admired institution.
What I keep telling and kept telling about Gattaca for a long time, is that Gattaca has already started. You have people selecting embryos and discarding ever healthier ones, sometimes just to have a donor for a previous child. Gattaca may just happen little by little and we, our imperfect generation, find ourselves right smack in the middle of it.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
This has been written up in the Toronto Star, Wired UK, The Australian and a few others.
Interesting, and saddening, that overseas media has picked this up and US media doesn't seem to be terribly interested. From one of TFAs,
But why has Nasa taken the day off from searching the galaxy to try its hand at movie criticism? Well, the agency argues that bad flicks can worry viewers. In fact, so many people wrote in to the agency, worried about potential 2012-related catastrophes, that Nasa had to publish a special website just days before the film's November 2009 release.
The myth debunking page reads "Nothing bad will happen to the Earth in 2012. Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012."
Scientific illiteracy is becoming a big problem in the US. Kudos to NASA for tackling it.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
They missed Krakatoa, East of Java (Krakatoa is West of Java).
Though perhaps NASA left this for the USGS to villify...
Inside the station they walk at normal pace and what appears to be Earth gravity.
Outside everyone moves in slow motion.
Also, no delay in telecommunication.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Marooned should've been listed as one of the most realistic movies since it almost happened just a few years after the movie was made (Apollo 13).
One of my favorite scenes from Moral Orel:
Doughy: Hey Orel, what did you put for number 3 on the science test?
Orel: Jesus!
Doughy: [slaps forehead] Of course!
That could be Texas after the state board of education with the "leadership" of creationist Don McLeroy molded public education in the image of his chosen god and political party.
Is that sarcasm? Hard to tell because some people think Mars is worthwhile...
Going to Mars has no practical benefit to anyone on Earth outside of the few people employed by NASA.
The flip side of these bad science movies is that it keeps people thinking that going to Mars is not an utterly ridiculous waste of resources. If you debunk all the bad science, people might realize that and NASA would lose some funding. It's the dreams that keep their money coming in...
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
Ahem. Congress prefers the terms page and freedom powder.
It's utterly ridiculous to those who have different priorities. There were people who believe that going to the moon was utterly ridiculous, that the billions spent on the manned space program were better spent on other priorities. Others of us believe differently, that those billions were spent on pushing frontiers that would otherwise remain dreams. For us, not everything has to have a positive financial return to be worthy of doing.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
The whore is becoming more and more desperate, and behaving more and more strange.
2012 fails in the science. I can believe the global conspiracy to hide the truth while trying to save "selected people", so it must fail in the science (which is crap). So how then does Contact get marked realistic?
That cuts both ways though. I've read about the police's and prosecutors' frusteration at the "CSI effect" and I'm fine with it, despite the fact that the details depicted on the show are sometimes dodgy or exaggerated. And beleive me, I know the frusteration. I know enough science to sit there and kibitz when the show gets things wrong. And, working in computers, I've had to explain that, "No, computers can't/dont actually do that." my share of times.
But juries demanding to actually see hard physical evidence of a crime, instead of just taking the word of some random guy who said: "he done it." is a GOOD thing... a VERY good thing! Peoples' freedom and sometimes their lives are at stake in a criminal trial. And if the government is going to take away either; we should damn well be a whole lot more sure about that than we are now. "Innocent until PROVEN guilty." and "Better a thousand guilty men go free than one innocent should suffer a trial." and all that.
And boo effing hoo for the cop who's PO'd that his version of events is not golden anymore, or for the DA who's seen his conviction ratio drop. It's almost routine now for DNA evidence, for example, to exonerate people who've spent years in prison, falsely convicted after some crooked cop lied in court to frame him and the DA went along with the sham just to get his numbers up. How many innocent people have lost years of their lives because of this? Have we executed anyone because on this? Even person, even one year, is intolerable. (And does anything ever happen to the cop and DA who set someone up for the crime they didn't commit? Nope.)
So yeah... I'm all in favor of anything that conditions juries to expect to see real evidence... even if that expectation is unrealistically high... as opposed to taking the word of a human who may be lying. It's absolutely better than the alternative.
And as a purely practical matter; your friend, frustrated though he may be, still comes out as a winner and should be happy. Said "CSI effect" is also generating more demand for forensic evidence in order to convict. Higher demand means a higher budget and more cool toys for him to play with... and better job security as well.
Looks, to me, like a win-win across the board.
Imagine all the people...
> Science and Entertainment Exchange
S.E.X. ?
"Better a thousand guilty men go free than one innocent should suffer a trial." and all that.
The sad part is, if you polled the American people today, I bet 80% would disagree with that statement.
After all, that guy just *looks* shady, I bet he did *something*! /sigh
With the first link, the chain is forged.
Went to see True Grit. A trailer started up - Apollo capsule approaching the moon - hey, looking pretty good - titles: For 40 Years NASA Kept The Secret (or some such) - oh, no, a fake landing movie - then Eagle is down on the actual moon, so okay - then the two astronauts pogo over a crater to see a huge alien craft crashed and half-buried in the dust - hey, this could be a cool movie - never heard of this in production - what could it be? - then the ominous signs: Michael Bay. Steven Speilberg. And the killer: Transformers 3. Audible groans of disappointment from the audience.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
It's so refreshing to see an actually good ranking of movies here, instead of the usual half-assed commercial flotsam made by some journalist who just plays a geek on the Internet.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The Creationist shit is, well, shit. But even in a more liberal/evolution curriculum, the educational system is still shit. It's not what you learn, it's how you learn. And in the current system, it can be said that the students don't learn well.
The least plausible movie of all!
An insult to idiot level intellects!
Beyond stupid!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0298814/plotsummary
I especially like the portrayal of the superdense 8,000 degree+ radioactive molten iron/heavy metal composite of the earths
core as a kind of transparent gas in which you could move!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
And boo effing hoo for the cop who's PO'd that his version of events is not golden anymore, or for the DA who's seen his conviction ratio drop. It's almost routine now for DNA evidence, for example, to exonerate people who've spent years in prison, falsely convicted after some crooked cop lied in court to frame him and the DA went along with the sham just to get his numbers up. How many innocent people have lost years of their lives because of this? Have we executed anyone because on this? Even person, even one year, is intolerable. (And does anything ever happen to the cop and DA who set someone up for the crime they didn't commit? Nope.)
As an engineer in R&D, my job involves asking questions to physical systems in the form of experiments and interpreting the results to get my answers. I can tell you with very high degree of certainty that nature lies as often as cooked cops do. Alternatively, you could say I am as often stupid in interpreting the results of an experiment as a crooked cop lies. If I were to tell a jury what CSI's GC-MS results mean, my explanation would probably be just often as wrong as when I am interpreting the results of my GC (I am lucky or rich enough to have a GC-MS in my lab.) No *thing* is evidence, only the interpretation of the physical world is "evidence" and that interpretation might be wrong. It might be honestly wrong, or it might be the lab technician is crooked just like a cop might be. There is only one way to avoid executing innocent people: don't execute anyone. That is actually a simple and very effective way.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
The very worst science fiction of all time is a book called "An Inconvenient Truth." I think the person accused of being the author, was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature (or something....).
Well, jury wanting "hard evidence" cuts both ways too. Because of CSI and their "foolproof" DNA testing, presenting a DNA test means that this test will dictate the verdict.
In other words, if you plan a crime, make sure you collect a few cigarette butts first, then make sure to drop them at the crime scene. Either to prove your innocence ("the DNA on the crime scene does not match the suspect, the three witnesses must be wrong"), or to frame someone ("no matter how many people saw him 50 miles away, his DNA is at the scene of crime").
The blind reliance on "factual evidence" made it much easier to pull a well planned crime off. Sure, you can now much more easily convict the dumb criminals. And it certainly helped against hearsay and prejudiced witnesses. But it also made planting evidence much more powerful than it ever was. And since CSI made it almost mandatory to show ANY kind of DNA if you want the trial to go somewhere, they now take whatever they get their hands at that might contain any, and use it.
As most things, this swings both ways. It's a good thing that "hard facts" are getting more and more important in trials. But relying only on them is equally dangerous. If the rest of the events don't add up, even "hard facts" have to be considered with caution.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No, the paper was also just bad science, and deserved no special spotlight. Nothing to do with alien life, just bad methodology.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I would probably enjoy having a doctor with House's personality, but damn do they ever stumble around in the dark...
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
No, it's not out of context.
Instead of trying to explain it, just give the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUNc9bWu_1I
He said engaging with the muslim world was one of his top 3 priorities for NASA.
You're the one trying put a spin on it, bunky.
I largely agree with their list. contact is, imo, the best and gattaca is second. i think, however, that they missed 2010. its way different than the original, but as a realistic sci-fi movie it stands on its own and has aged well
My kids actually like the Star Wars holiday special.
Wow, a site which doesn't load anything without javascript being enabled. It's been a while since I saw one of those.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
Well, if everyone would have the common decency to just contract lupus instead of some incredibly obscure disease, it wouldn't be so hard!
Cusack is a fine actor. This movie is more than enough to forgive his agent's recent lapses.
I went to battle M.C. Escher, but drew a blank.
For many of us, having a positive financial return is hardly a reason to do anything at all.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
I think I remember one of the episodes it was lupus, still took him all episode to figure it out. If they are extremely rare disorders/diseases, then doesn't it follow suit that they are extremely rare?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Sure, we can blame some of that on standards and requirements laid out by the legislatures. "Add this to your 5th grade health class." "Add this to your 7th grade math class." Teachers are spending a lot of time pushing crap that a politician thought was important, not what's actually important. I wouldn't be surprised to find that 10% of classroom time is wasted on political agendas instead of learning. But it's not the entire problem.
A big part of the problem is refusal to accept discipline as an appropriate path. (Note that discipline does NOT mean corporal punishment.) If little Johnny Trouble is disrupting class again, the rest of them just sit there and read 'Dick and Jane' for the 17th time while the teacher spends an hour trotting him down to the behavioral psychologist's office. Little Johnny is talked at without effect, then put back in the classroom where he then disrupts it for the 18th time. Little Johnny needs to be efficiently removed from the classroom setting without the parent's approval, and without concern for his "feelings", as every other approach rewards his bad behavior. And yes, his teacher should be able to tell the other kids that little Johnny was kicked out because he was being naughty. Stigmatize the offense. It works.
I'm not blaming little Johnny here. I'm blaming the system for deciding that accommodating little Johnny's every whim is a viable approach to education. If little Johnny has to end up in "special school" for a month to work out his issues, that gives 24 other kids the chance to excel. If Mommy or Daddy feel that little Johnny is being stigmatized by being placed in special school, Mommy or Daddy can hire a specialist to work with little Johnny to figure out his problems and get him cooperating so he can return to the classroom. The schools don't have to abandon him, but they also don't have to keep him slowing down the mainstream.
School boards have to step up and recognize they must represent the 95% of kids who aren't little Johnny. They also have to stop acting as the supreme court of schoolhouse behavior, and stand up to the whiny parents who think their kid shouldn't have been singled out. "Sorry, ma'am, that's a decision between the teacher and the principal, not us. They were there, we were not. Their decision is final. Your alternative to special school is to move out of our district, and take little Johnny with you. Now if you would please sit down and shut up, we won't send your new district a full transcript of little Johnny's discipline issues. Have a nice day."
Another big part of the problem is refusal to accept failure as a possible outcome for a child. Instead of moving the class along and leaving little Johnny behind, the entire class is held back to little Johnny's level of non-progress. If little Johnny can't keep up, alter little Johnny's schedule, not the whole class. There can be a standard pace, and it can be set to the pace of the average student. It doesn't have to be hyperaccelerated, but without the anchor of slow students, it will certainly speed up.
"No child left behind" takes the Garrison Keeler joke of "Lake Woebegone, where all the children are above average" and tries to apply it legislatively, which is absurd. 5% of the children will always be the bottom 5% of the children. So far all it's accomplished is that we've proven that we can't squeeze 5% up into the bell curve without squeezing down the middle 90% to hide them.
John
It's only necessary because of the complete dumbing down of...
Everyone and everything. I mean seriously it's not just schools look at the media it's totally patronising and just keeps getting dumberer and dumberer every day. Even documentaries are so seriously rewriting history I feel genuine woe for the ignorance being inflicted on the human race. We basically don't get good quality politicians because, after all, what sane person would try to do something the dumb ignorant masses don't understand just to get pummeled into submission by a frenzy of ignorance.
It's time to ignore the religious crackpots and start teaching real science without fear of backlash.
Yeah good luck with that. The greater irony is that even the bible describes the masses as sheep. baaaa baaaaa. I think it was Hitler who said "What great fortune for tyrants that men are so easily led"
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Moderator: don't you believe this "news" story is false? You should and here is why:
1. You cannot find a link to the listing on NASA website.
2. You will see The Science and Entertainment Exchange [www.scienceandentertainmentexchange.org] says this on its homepage:
"Note to our followers: The article in the London Sunday Times on January 2, 2011 “To Absurdity and Beyond: NASA damns flaws in sci-fi films” incorrectly attributed a top-ten worst sci-fi films list to the Science & Entertainment Exchange. We were not involved in creating the list."
3. You will find that The Science and Entertainment Exchange is NOT a part of NASA, but rather is part of "NAS". Where NAS is the National Academy of Science [www.nasonline.org].
Please consider removing this article because there is little evidence to support the claims of attribution to these 2 well known institutions.
IMO: I think some unknown entity created this list and attributed it to these institutions in order to spur comments and reposting of their article.
Paranoid Opinion: someone wants to shine a spotlight on these institutions to make them appear wasteful.
I could be wrong and will welcome correct links to the real articles on the actual websites mentioned (NASA or The Science and Entertainment Exchange). However, if I am right that this is "false news"... please remove this whole thing so others will not form opinions on these institutions based on false attributions.
I watched that crappy movie all the way to the end because Woody Harrelson said there would be spaceships. A couple of times they cut to the China compound and showed us vehicles that looked a lot like spaceships. They got on the damn things and started talking about "pressurization" and "life support".. then it turns out they're just regular old ships. Cunts.
How we know is more important than what we know.
More importan, why is there no record of NASA actually doing this and the other website cited says they had nothing to do with it?
We Muslims have an interesting take on yaumul qiamat (doomsday). If my memory of religious schooling is correct, doomsday won't happen until everyone stops believing in the doomsday. So, as long as there are people believing that the doomsday will come in 2012 or whenever, then it will not happen. Of course there are all sorts of signs of the end times is nigh, but no one knows what "nigh" really means, whether it is 1 year, 50 years or 50000 years etc.We will only realize that it is coming when it is too late. And in Islam, doomsday means the end of the universe, not just the Earth.
well.... i don't see why, we didn't lose anyone in mercury, scratch 3 for Apollo 1, 7 for chall and then 7 more for columbia... i wasn't alive for apollo or mercury so i couldn't really tell you...
as for the USSR.... WTF cares? they cheated anyway...
Gagarin and Titov faked it....
7. What the #$*! Do We Know? (2004)
It was worth reading this thread just to see this listed as one of the worst.
I come here for the love
"School boards have to step up and recognize they must represent the 95% of kids who aren't little Johnny."
1/25 is 4%, not 5...
but i agree with you.
people will lose their faith in science
science should not need faith to avoid being discredited.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
they should wait for 2013, sequels suck even more in 99.99999%
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
The US public education system has low science scores even compared to homeschoolers--yeah, that means it turns out that somebody who believes in Creationism scores better than somebody who...believes whatever got taught in the public schools. I have no idea what it was, just that it was not the modern synthesis of evolution. (For those who do not know: the modern synthesis of evolution is the, well, modern version of the theory. Aside from a few tweaks, it's over half a century old. It's not terribly hard to understand, especially for people used to computer technology: microevolution is the biology equivalent to version changes. Macroevolution is how species fork. You are now ahead of most freshman biology majors...)
I'm reminded of this: “The Sound Barrier” (1952)
At the end of this famous film, a British pilot solves the mystery of the sound barrier by reversing the controls at the critical moment during the power dive. There are just two problems with this account. It was actually an American, Chuck Yeager, who first broke the sound barrier (see “The Right Stuff”) and reversing the controls in the transonic zone is likely to kill the pilot. In his book “The Right Stuff”, Tom Wolfe describes how Yeager was invited to the American premiere of the movie and, when asked afterwards for his reaction, responded that the picture was “utter shuck from start to finish”.
Thanks to http://www.rogerdarlington.co.uk/afilms.html for retaining that piece of info.
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
Mercans, and north mercans, are so warmed over by hollywood glitz sht that it does not seem unreasonable to them to be having reality weigh in on entertainment, and is typical of a state that hires movie stars for its political machinery. It is one of the reasons the rest of the world hate the us - spinning entertainment on budgets that would help feed and develop the rest of the world and more than likely solve most of the ills and ails - all for its self-congratulating 'glory'. Any other more equitable industry could be set up to provide economic stability and a more appropriate means of providing advantage to many, instead of the very few. The farmer, laborer, the displaced factory worker - all of who will not be movie stars, or stage hands or make up artists, are ruled in part by those that were and who really have no real abilities or business in doing so.
Scientists are full of inconsistencies from the hiding in their rooms reading Howard, Bradbury, Bova, Burroughs, secretly denying that portion of the wonder and awe that formed their outcomes who are now making pronouncements about the validity of how notions are portrayed in a particular medium, your arrogance is staggering.
While it may seem advantageous that Mr. Stewart repeatedly brought the plight of 911 1st responders to the attention of the public and the us political machinery it is EXTREMELY sad testimony that a state is both incapable and unwilling to: 1) run the government properly, 2) recognize problems, 3) be able to respond to and fix problems most especially for a state that, (never grows tired of proclaiming to the world what a great machine it is for the last 230 years) has supposedly been in business and doing things correctly for several centuries.
A war mongering nation so enfactuated with itself is why there are so many commanders that see absolutely nothing wrong with making their own entertainment. One would imagine that such a magnificent nation would at the very least have the ability to figure out which of their personnel in charge of huge potentials (ships, human psychs, etc) are killers, crackpots and fktards, instead of promoting them through good ol boy networks. much less even giving them jobs.
Fk ur prophecies youll be lucky to make it through yesterday.
"No child left behind" takes the Garrison Keeler joke of "Lake Woebegone, where all the children are above average" and tries to apply it legislatively, which is absurd. 5% of the children will always be the bottom 5% of the children. So far all it's accomplished is that we've proven that we can't squeeze 5% up into the bell curve without squeezing down the middle 90% to hide them.
I'm not from the US so I can't comment on the particular absurdities of your education system.
However, in the rest of the world, the idea is that even though by definition half the people are below average, you can at least do two things:
(1) push up the average so that everyone is better educated and (2) ensure that the shape of the curve remains the same, i.e. the bottom 5 or 10% don't fall any further behind than they already are.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I think you are missing the point that this film is a work of dramatic fiction, not a documentary.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I guess STVI is so bad that it is not even worth mentioning.
as for the USSR.... WTF cares? they cheated anyway... Gagarin and Titov faked it...
Talk about being a bad loser, you Yankee running dog of imperialism.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I had 1:20 as the original ratio, but 20 was an unrealistically small class size in today's schools. Didn't change the percents to follow, sorry.
John
I'd rather see criminals go free than law-abiding citizens jailed. Our society's in bad shape when those in power believe otherwise.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
So NASA is saying that human interaction with Aliens is more "realistic" than natural disasters, a large comet hitting earth (which has been speculated to have happened in the past), a natural volcano going off, a new energy source being created with huge ramifications, or the potential for human cloning? I will call the burrowing train into magma a wash.
I think either NASA is really rather optimistic and bullish on actually meeting ET, or perhaps they should all be fired and replaced with safety cones.
Nah, then they just look for the fat guy.
It's NEVER lupus!
That's basically why it took them so long to figure it out. It's like those = instead of == mistakes you never make.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Clearly they did not count John Travolta's acting in Battlefield Earth as "least plausible."
Once Congress gets done with the Federal budget, the only people in DC who'll be able to afford hookers and blow are the lobbyists. They'll be the ones whom congressmen go to in order to get their fix, and the lobbyists will be all "What does a bitch do to get a fix, Congressman?" And it kind of goes all grindhouse 'sploitation-film bad from there.
"I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."
thanks! that's actually my indian name... "running dog of imperialism"