h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

OH please Count Zero keep going.You make so much sense that I'm sure you have some more gems of direness and totally cr@p application of science in a movie.I could read this all day.

Incog.

Put it this way, I'm not allowed to watch CSI either.

(n.b. CSI is a VERY popular criminal investigation drama on US TV.)

Yes I know.It's also available here.

It's all the computer software that gets me in that show.It all works perfectly giving the precise result.No one ever loses a piece of work because the program sticks or the pc can't keep up.As if money is no object and they get the most powerful computers on the planet in a police department.Yeah right!AND instantanious results too.

As if forensic departments get the most swishy office environments either.

The only episode I watched for longer than 10 minutes had a fungus that only affects people of Norwegian descent.

They found a piece of neoprene at the bottom of a pool and assumed that the only source could have been a white wet suit used to hide on the bottom of the pool... Anyone ever use one of those things that keep beer and cola cans insulated?... guess what, they're neoprene too and come in a variety of colours.

It also had this little scene: A prime piece of evidence is found on a website... in the form of a real estate ad of the suspects house. On the ad is a photo of the living room... the entire room on a browser friendly jpg image... So they 'enhance' the image to get a close up of a picture on the mantel piece!!!! Think about it... a picture on a website is usually around 300-600 pixels wide. That photo on the mantle would have been only one or two pixels total and they were able to get a not only recognisable image from it but perfect image of ONE person in the image.

I had to leave the room... All that stupidity in the span of ten minutes.

I like the way that CSI investigators will all walk in to a darkened room with a torch each.

All that clever technology and none of them can remember to turn on the light switch!

The CSI stuff seems to have infiltrated Waking the Dead on the BBC. The darkened room and torch stuff is very much in evidence but they also have the same magic spray (presumably got from Batman's utility belt) that will show up anything they choose when a UV light it shined on it

Talking of Armageddon you haven't mentioned two of the more ridiculous episodes of that film. How about the idea of sending TWO shuttles (in case one explodes, so safety in mind ) and then inexplicably launching them 200m apart at the same time! When I watched it I was waiting for them to launch straight into one another.
Secondly, I liked the 12g slingshot they pulled around the moon. Not only did they not turn into mush and spleen all over the shuttle walls but they managed to talk to each other during it! That would have stretched the credulity of all from planet ludicrous.

Star Wars episodes 1-3, couldn’t agree more, utter toss. For the originals, they built a life-sized Millenium Falcon, and it looked real (well, you know, dirty and unreliable). The sound effects were taken from trucks and old vacuum cleaners but were astoundingly effective. 20 years later, unlimited budget, unlimited CGI and what do we get? A scratch-resistant chrome-plated spaceship with air intakes and an engine noise sampled from a WWII bomber (with propellers!)

The droids used to be quirky and damage-prone. Now you can suddenly drop the head of one onto the body of a completely different one (backwards!?) and it’ll work perfectly . And those Jedi fight scenes where they manage to deflect the fire of 1000 incompetent battle-droids just serve to ridicule the original, brilliantly done, Darth Vader duels. I wont mention the Yoda / Christopher Lee fight scene, I presume that was a joke.

So they 'enhance' the image to get a close up of a picture on the mantel piece!!!! Think about it... a picture on a website is usually around 300-600 pixels wide. That photo on the mantle would have been only one or two pixels total

I agree completely. The most annoying thing in TV shows is when they 'enhance' small sections of a computer image to about 300 times the size and it all just 'swishes' into high resolution with the push of a button.

Oh, Orcus... I didn't mention those things it's true... Yea, about that, how can you get more than 1/6 G on or around the moon anyway???

The dual launch was just too rediculous to even comment on.

Ever used the clone tool in photoshop?... That's all they did and it showed.

There's seriously few scenes in Armageddon I can't pick apart...

It's easy to compare it to another film that was shot here around JSC... Rocket Man...

Not The Rocketeer mind you, but Rocket Man... It actually uses a antigravity button... But they meant to be silly... Armageddon was trying to be serious.

OOOH! This is so much fun, almost as much fun as going to a sci-fi flick with a bunch of rocket scientists -- you should have been a fly on the wall in the restaurant after we all went to see "Mission to Mars"!

Go for it, people, PICK AWAY TO YOUR HEART'S CONTENT, this is FUN!

sc

Is Mission to Mars that stupid one with the "face on mars"?

I refused to watch it if it is.

Interesting side note. Richard Hoagland, the guy that keeps bringing up this supposed face on Mars (it appeared only distinctly in one image that had 'data drops' or black spots that helped it appear to have eyes) made a big uproar previous to the Mars Global Explorer mission. NASA headquarters decided to ignore his public requests to specially target the Cydonia [sp?] region where this face was located. He then claimed that as proof of a cover up. So in response NASA made that region the first area to be examined. The images were the highest quality ever taken of the 'face'... It showed what was obvious to anyone not making a buck from a conspiracy theory that there was no face, just some low hills that with the exact perfect angle of sunlight and some lucky dark spots could look like the famous picture of the face. (There are many other faces all over the solar system including a 'happy face'... just as there are bunnies and castles in clowds if you look long enough for them).

Hoagland continued to show his 'face' with the new images... as long as you looked at his "enhanced" views... They were enhanced alright, beyond recognition to MAKE the face reappear.

Oh, well. You can't keep a good crackpot down.

Richard Hoaglund has a LOT to answer for....

One of his "adherents" used to park himself on a lawn chair in front of the JPL sign on public property with a sign that said "Ask them about the Face on Mars cover-up --- JPL Lies!".

I went to a lecture there one night in 98 or so, at Von Karman auditorium, and this guy stands up and accuses Dr. Donna Shirley (the manager of the '97 Mars Pathfinder mission) of deliberately hiding the Face from Mars, because "everybody knows the Viking camera was much more capable than that, and you didn't want anyone to see the truth!".

He kept interrupting the questions at the end of the lecture, until finally an older man in the back got up and told him *in no uncertain terms* that Hoaglund was full of it about the camera's resolution, because HE was the Viking engineer who built the d**n thing (which, it turned out, he was.)

Pandemonium ensued, security was called and the evening was over.

I Love a good science debate!

SC

That sounds about as entertaining as it gets

NO NO NO... That was good, but here is the most entertaining scientific debate: http://www.csicop.org/articles/20021018-aldrin/


Bart Sibrel, a moon landing conspiracist had been harassing Buzz Aldrin for quite some time. This day he caught up with him outside of a public appearance and kept haranguing Mr. Aldrin to swear on a bible that he had landed on the moon. After Mr. Aldrin politely tried to ignore him for some time, Mr. Sibrel called him a coward and a liar... See for your self Mr. Aldrin's reply.

The L.A. District atty. declined to file charges.

Before I read it, I remember a story about Buzz Aldrin punching someone who did this to him.

Now let me go and read it, I wonder what's going to happen...