Yet Another Cycling Forum
Off Topic => The Pub => Arts and Entertainment => Topic started by: Tim Hall on 11 September, 2015, 06:23:56 pm
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I listen to a lot of Radio 4 drama and it's mostly quite good. Today I was listening to a downloaded Afternoon Drama froma week or two back, "Hazard" which was episode 2 of 3 in "Red or Blue". Our hero writes war games/emergency planning exercises. Scene: an emergency planning exercise involving a gas tanker, a van and misc other vehicles. The police, fire and ambulance "Gold Control" are tucked up in a control room, reacting to stuff happening at the simulated collision. News comes through of the contents of the gas tanker. It's sodium hydroxide. Really? A gas container with sodium hydroxide? "It's exothermic so I wouldn't want to be near it if it goes up".
You go to the trouble of writing and producing the play. Why not spend two minutes getting the science right?
(waits for someone to point out that NaOh can exist as a gas)
(and they made a mess of the Hazchem stuff)
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Because noone else gives a monkeys.
Oh hang on; these people do:
https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=89875.0
(perhaps it should be made a Sticky?? )
But honestly, 99% of listeners dont. That's why.
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Perhaps it was fictional science.
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Maybe these guys wrote it...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alEWhMXIZUg
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It's exothermic..... :facepalm:
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Jeez, The Archers has an Agricultural Advisor, can't they employ a physics graduate to check up on the basics?
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A physics graduate may have little knowledge of chemistry....
Real problem is that scientific illiteracy is very common in the literati, some of whom are PROUD of their scientific illiteracy!
Sometimes I think half the pseudoscientific myths that bounce round the interwebs would fail to get propogated if almost everyone had a couple of science GCSEs to rub together.
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"Thor" had a SCIENCE adviser. Yes, the film about the deity from Asgard, with the magic hammer.
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I remember sitting through one episode of Spukes where their science chappie pointed at a formula and said "That's got to be deadly: look at the chlorine bonding". There wasn't any chlorine in the formula.
I reckon a lot of the scientific negligence in film & TV comes from the fact that producers, directors and writers think - probably rightly - that 99% of their audience doesn't know the difference and the 1% that do can shove it because they won't be heard.
Much the same attitude as politicians, come to that.
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Scientists Go to Hollywood
On iplayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tj5qk
Adam Rutherford heads to Tinseltown to talk to the scientists who have left the lab for the glamour of the film set.
Although the silver screen may not be known for its scientific accuracy, in recent years Hollywood does seem to have come calling, where science is concerned. A growing number of scientists seem to be taking time out of their day job to advise Hollywood directors and producers on the portrayal of science, and scientists, in some very well known films and TV series.
Adam visits the set of one of the most well known science based TV shows, CSI New York to meet the writer and co-producer, himself a former forensic scientist. He talks to physicist Brian Cox about his role as science advisor to the Danny Boyle directed movie Sunshine. He meets the new wave of Hollywood movie makers who are turning to the real life scientists to help improve not only the image of science on screen, but to inspire some of their most fantastical plot line, and finds out whether factually incorrect science in the movies really matters?
According to the US National Academy of Science, it does. So much so that they have now set up a programme specifically designed to help their scientists work with the entertainment industry, to improve and foster a positive image of science on screen. Adam meets the producer of one of last year's biggest Hollywood blockbusters about his ambition to keep the science fact in the science fiction as accurate as possible, and how the scientists he worked with came up with some far more intriguing plot twists and turns than anything his writers could have dreamt up.
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I burst out laughing at a critical point in the film Coma because the liver they were slapping about on the slab was way too big.
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"Thor" had a SCIENCE adviser. Yes, the film about the deity from Asgard, with the magic hammer.
Yet another job my school careers teacher failed to tell me about. Be a doctor, he says, everyone likes a doctor. No, they'd like the guy who ensured Thor's hammer behaved with the correct levels of inertia and momentum. The ladies, I'm sure, would be down with that.
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And bad maths in the movies: https://youtu.be/zBuykQHFQ1Q
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A physics graduate may have little knowledge of chemistry....
Real problem is that scientific illiteracy is very common in the literati, some of whom are PROUD of their scientific illiteracy!
Sometimes I think half the pseudoscientific myths that bounce round the interwebs would fail to get propogated if almost everyone had a couple of science GCSEs to rub together.
Indeed. Our Uni's art students used to put up posters showing a cartoon Neanderthal with the caption "Yisday I cont ivin spil injueer, now I are wun"
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The government need science advisors (to avoid making shite policies).
The BBC science/ejucashun team need them for making science programmes.
Drama/entertainment makers do not need them. It doesn't matter if there arent any chlorine atoms in the nasty stuff.
(Hollywood needs them if they want science geeks to see their movies. Although Star Wars did pretty well without; perhaps because they had Princess Leia ... ).
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The government need science advisors (to avoid making shite policies).
This statement is wrong on so many levels ;)
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Doctor "it's for kids" Who. All of it.
Mostly the Sonic Screwdriver though.
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I remember a spectacular episode of Casualty
The patient was diagnosed with a missed fracture of her cervical spine.
Shame the X-Ray was a foot!
Then there was an episode that caused us a lot of problems.
Nurse gets into CT scanner with upset child, holding the child thoughout the scan
We spent weeks explaining to parents that they were not allowed into the scan room, never mind the scanner... but they knew we were lying because they had seen it on Casualty
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Most recent episode of The Infinite Monkey Cage had one of the guests getting rather exercised over what forensic SCIENCE can actually do, as opposed to what the screenwriters on the CSI franchise think it ought to be able to do.
No, dear juror, you cannot get a full DNA analysis inside forty minutes no matter what you saw Grissom doing on the anbaric distascope the other day.
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Sodium Hydroxide? Hair dye, no?
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AIUI sodium hydroxide is good for clearing drains and cleaning ovens.
It is a VERY strong alkali NOT ACID, RIGHT? which can damage the skin and is VERY nasty to the eye.
It is so nasty that it's difficult to purchase and the solid gives of heat if dissolved in water.
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Maybe these guys wrote it...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alEWhMXIZUg
;D
( I didnt think it was possible to love Mitchell and Webb any more than I do ).
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Maybe these guys wrote it...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alEWhMXIZUg
;D
( I didnt think it was possible to love Mitchell and Webb any more than I do ).
I cannot see this where I am at the moment. Would it perchance be the Casualty alternative 'medicine' skit?
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Sodium Hydroxide? Hair dye, no?
Are you thinking of hydrogen peroxide?
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I burst out laughing at a critical point in the film Coma because the liver they were slapping about on the slab was way too big.
Perhaps the person died of one of those conditions that can cause an enlarged liver.
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Mark Watney - "I'm gonna have to science the shit out of this."
Script writer - "I'm gonna have to shit the science out of this."
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Sodium Hydroxide? Hair dye, no?
Are you thinking of hydrogen peroxide?
I believe it's used in hair straighteners and to remove calluses from your toes (Google says potassium hydroxide for that). It'll hydrolyse the keratin and other proteins pretty effectively.
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Sodium Hydroxide? Hair dye, no?
Are you thinking of hydrogen peroxide?
I am now. Do you realise how incredibly useful it is?
34 Reasons Why You Need Hydrogen Peroxide In Your Home (http://www.naturallivingideas.com/hydrogen-peroxide-uses/)
Medicinal compounds ain't got nothing on Hydrogen Peroxide..
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Sodium Hydroxide? Hair dye, no?
Are you thinking of hydrogen peroxide?
I believe it's used in hair straighteners and to remove calluses from your toes (Google says potassium hydroxide for that). It'll hydrolyse the keratin and other proteins pretty effectively.
Ugh, I hate the soapy feeling you get when you get NaOH on your hands...
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I burst out laughing at a critical point in the film Coma because the liver they were slapping about on the slab was way too big.
Perhaps the person died of one of those conditions that can cause an enlarged liver.
They were fairly healthy people put into comas because (redacted to not spoil the plot)
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Doctor "it's for kids" Who. All of it.
Mostly the Sonic Screwdriver though.
lazy deus ex machina
see also: patronus (n), The Force (n)...
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Doctor "it's for kids" Who. All of it.
Mostly the Sonic Screwdriver though.
lazy deus ex machina
see also: patronus (n), The Force (n)...
I seem to recall the original sonic screwdriver being little more than a sonic screwdriver. The new one seems to be a magic wand. Expelliarmus!
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All the sprinkler heads going off at once.
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I'm in the "it depends" camp on the whole subject.
If the drama is science fiction, then it's allowed exactly one piece of off-the-wall ridiculousness. The story tends to flow from the implications of having a widget that can crack uncrackable cyphers, a machine that can travel through time, a sentient computer, an extra-terrestrial micro-organism or whatever. Where science fiction tends to go wrong is solving the inevitable fictional-science problem with some other fictional science deus ex machina. Of course sometimes it's not actually science fiction, but a soap opera on a spaceship, or a kids' show where travelling through time and space is used to tell a wide variety of unconnected stories, and that's just fine as long as you don't expect it to be science fiction.
It's when drama is trying to be realistic, but conspicuously gets the science wrong, that irks me more. I think you can draw a distinction between the use of dramatic cliches that happen to be scientifically wrong (we all know that the world doesn't just go blue when it's dark, that telephones don't give you dialtone when the other party hangs up, that cars don't flip over and explode in huge fireballs, that computer software doesn't use enormous garish fonts and beep on every keystroke, and so on), and incongruently bad science. How realistic the science should be depends mostly on how realistic everything else is. So a story set in a fantasy world inhabited by alien races, superheroes or magic horses gets a bit more slack when it comes to what you can actually do with a computer, for example. If a volcano erupts in downtown LA, then I'll forgive a slightly unrealistic portrayal of geologists. But a contemporary police procedural should make the same effort to get the forensics right as it does the legal aspects. A military drama that goes to some lengths to get the minutiae of training and protocol right should make an equivalent effort to get the capabilities of the hardware correct. That sort of thing. (The ultimate problem, of course, is that like the writers we're not experts in all fields.)
On that basis, if a drama is playing fast and loose with realism in all directions, then I don't see the point in nitpicking the science. So Casualty's allowed to get the medicine hilariously wrong at about the same rate that it takes liberties with the laws of physics. We all know that in the real world A&E is full of drunks and people with boring medical conditions that have slipped past primary care, and that having a secret boyfriend your parents disapprove of doesn't actually cause ectopic pregnancy. But you can't get good telly out of someone deciding to go to hospital because they've been vomiting all week, a medical staff who are too overworked and underpaid to have interesting private lives, or minor industrial accidents that don't involve exciting explosions or exploitative employers. Nobody wants to watch defibrillators not working and people shitting themselves.
CSI is a major offender. I haven't watched enough of it to tell how realistic it gets the policey stuff, but the science is so ridiculous that the rest of it would have to be pretty silly in order not to jar. On the other hand, Numb3rs has achieved cult status thanks to its hilarious application of real scientific theories to contrived investigative scenarios through the medium of over the top Hollywood science montage.
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Cars tend to be highly explosive (A car NEVER drove over a cliff without exploding halfway down).
Parked cars form perfect take-off ramps for moving cars.
Actually this crosses the line into Movie cliches but .... solving wooden puzzles in old houses will tend to open up a portal to a different dimension.
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I don't think all of the cars hoiked over the edge of a cliff (three Mins, two E-Types, one DB4 - though I think we only see one of those go) explode, though the Miura that meets a bulldozer at high speed in a tunnel does go up rather spectacularly.
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Cars tend to be highly explosive (A car NEVER drove over a cliff without exploding halfway down).
This wasnt the case before colour film predominated. (don't trust me, people have studied this!)
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I don't think all of the cars hoiked over the edge of a cliff (three Mins, two E-Types, one DB4 - though I think we only see one of those go) explode, though the Miura that meets a bulldozer at high speed in a tunnel does go up rather spectacularly.
I have read that if you study the footage closely enough you can spot the DB4 transform itself into a Lancia Flaminia just before it goes over the edge, but could not verify this myself.
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I can't see that myself. It's possible.
We don't see the wrecked E-Types go over the edge, but it's implied that's what will happen. The DB4 (or whatever it is) does not explode. The blue Mini initially seems to be exploding, but doesn't; the white Mini tumbles all the way down the hill; the red Mini has a most improbably large conflagration, but still tumbles a long way.
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I did watch a series or two of CSI before it all became too much. It's an heinous science offender probably because people think it is real and every plot was pretty much the same: some inevitable plot convolution then they'd find some DNA, do some lab jiggins', and justice would mostly be done. Plus, as a viewer, you can always work out the ending through the Economy of Characters rule. No DNA required for that. I do watch Bones which is cheerfully ludicrous and I suspect they know it. Plus I think the leading lady has mesmerized me with her eyes and my wife has a David Boreanaz thing. Basically it's a vehicle for out mutually incompatible sexual fantasies (see also Castle). With gruesome murder and shiny labs and science nonsense. This people is what marriage – after ten years – is like. With less gruesome murder.
I think writers split into two categories, those that love to research, will spend hours looking up and finding information and those that just make shit up. One group is a lot bigger than the other and I don't blame them. I, at least, have the benefit of knowing some science. I mostly don't mind, I can suspend belief and make it do trapeze if the story is good enough to justify the exertion. I firmly believe you can outrun a volcano but also that you shouldn't actually arrange to try doing so. Cars that just crash and crumpled would be dull and who wants to see a BSOD when the put that DNA profile through the database. We want flashbangs and movieOS. It's very important when searching a database to rapidly flick through all the faces. I've tried to impress this fact on our DBAs to little effect. They're doing it wrong. Damnit, when our customers search they want to see stuff happen.
I mostly get narked when it all trips over the low walls of terminal absurdity and becomes a faceplanted whathefuck? There's an equation somewhere, possibly my head, that combines plot, levels of science, the nonsense quotient, and a few other variables to define the limit of terminal absurdity in popular entertainment. I should publish it in a proper academic journal.
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I firmly believe you can outrun a volcano but also that you shouldn't actually arrange to try doing so.
AUIU you need to check the chemical composition of the lava before deciding whether you can outrun it. I also don't think that's something you should actually do.
The really important thing about lava is that while it's liquid and burny, it's still *rock*. People aren't going to sink in it, even if they have my level of Quake skills.
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I was a thinking of a good pyroclastic flow, the sort a volcano coughs up when it's clearing its throat, like its a mountain-sized chain smoker. Just keep up a good dramatic jog, or maybe hop into your handily parked pickup truck, you'll be good.
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Would a heat-resistant Zorb ball protect you?
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[Wish I had access to youtoob from here - South Park did a great thing of the school kids "Duck and Cover"-ing from lava under their desks. Worth a google, I expect. ]
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Would a heat-resistant Zorb ball protect you?
I'm pretty sure they'd do the trick. Pompeii would have been different movie if they'd had heat resistant zorb balls.
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All the sprinkler heads going off at once.
Dry systems can. One sensor sets off a whole load of open sprinkler heads, unlike the more usual sort where the system is pressurised and each goer soff according to its need (or rather, whether its thingy has bust due to overtemperature.)
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All the sprinkler heads going off at once.
Dry systems can. One sensor sets off a whole load of open sprinkler heads, unlike the more usual sort where the system is pressurised and each goer soff according to its need (or rather, whether its thingy has bust due to overtemperature.)
This logic is usually foiled onscreen when they show Bruce Willis triggering a sprinkler head directly with a Mk 1 Zippo.
Presumably a sensor detects the flow and triggers alarms etc in response to a sprinkler going off, so that's legit.
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Or hitting the fire alarm to set the sprinklers off.
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An entire population of viruses mutates into something harmless at one go (Michael Crichton, The Andromeda Strain).
This is the man the US Republican Party selected as Congressional Science Advisor. Nothing in life became him like the leaving it.
And another Spukes one: a vaccine can cure you of a disease. No more can a lid on your pint fish a fly out of your beer.
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Can I nominate this for 'bad drama in science'? OK, it's not really science, but is part of the BBC's week of computer science related content (some of which is very good).
The Gamechangers (http://bbc.in/1itEwJH)
Oh dear.
Oh dear, oh dear.
A dramatised reconstruction supposedly exploring the role of video game violence on real world behaviour, following the various US litigations surrounding the release of Grand Theft Auto (specifically GTA San Andreas and 'Hot Coffee').
Clumsy acting, appalling screen writing, stereotyped ruthless lawyers and hipster kids. Every line appears to be a ham fisted attempt at exposition. It's as if you're watching a film trailer that has to summarise the plot in 20 seconds, but for 90 minutes. Kind of reminded me of Monsters and Mazes (https://youtu.be/awTKqydci_c) for generation Y.
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Bad drama and bad science together:
To get to a neighbouring galaxy a spacecraft is launched straight at it. Mission to Mars? Can't remember, but somebody did this. And even without that, the film is :sick:
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Bad science in drama critique:
Bad drama and bad science together:
To get to a neighbouring galaxy a spacecraft is launched straight at it. Mission to Mars?
Mars is in our galaxy.
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Bad science in drama critique:
Bad drama and bad science together:
To get to a neighbouring galaxy a spacecraft is launched straight at it. Mission to Mars?
Mars is in our galaxy.
Yebbut dormant aliens on Mars, ditto starship. Voom.