posted
Are you serious? I'm watching an hour long documentary on super-massive black-holes and the background music is the score from Vertigo. The narrator sounds like he's reading a poorly written suspense novel. There's flash cinematography and dramatic sound effects for galactic computer animations.
Is this supposed to be science? Do we really have to sell this with "how can this destroy your life" style journalism? Have we sunk this low? Can we do science without having to pretend we're part of a Hollywood summer blockbuster?
posted
Seriously, the narrator just told us that, "more disturbingly, this suggests that there could be a super-massive black-hole at the center of our galaxy."
posted
Well I have no idea what specific work you are referencing but it is fairly easy to guess that what you are watching is probably categorized as 'entertainment.'
Science is not determined by the content of whiz-bang television documentaries so it is pretty safe to say that it is not science so much as it is a commercial product designed to profitably entertain using very simplified notions of complex subjects.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
My comment's not so much about science itself, as about how it apparently has to be presented to the public. Now, see, this is science, but it's kind of hard to understand...
quote:Originally posted by Hobbes: Seriously, the narrator just told us that, "more disturbingly, this suggests that there could be a super-massive black-hole at the center of our galaxy."
OMG! We need to send an action team including Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, and Vin Diesel to destroy it!
Posts: 1569 | Registered: Dec 2004
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No, no! The Core 2 starring Hilary Swank. For once, the sequel couldn't be worse that the original.
Did they show this video? It's pretty convincing evidence of a massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Stars don't normally whip around like that.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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Nobody except for science people would watch if it didn't have a bit of drama and special effects.
Posts: 2705 | Registered: Sep 2006
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I could understand this easily, if I knew the specific math, that is, the symbols and what they represent, precisely. Though it's a bit of an impediment, it's still interesting.
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quote:Originally posted by Hobbes: Is this supposed to be science? Do we really have to sell this with "how can this destroy your life" style journalism? Have we sunk this low? Can we do science without having to pretend we're part of a Hollywood summer blockbuster?
Hobbes
It isn't just "Hollywood", Hobbes. Didn't you know that the entire apparatus of all the media now has as its be-all and end-all a mission to convince us that everything is dangerous, everything is a threat?
Honestly, I don't think a day goes by on local news around here where there isn't the "danger of the day" story, told (I almost wrote "reported", but I don't consider it reporting) in the most alarmist, emotionally loaded language possible.
My favorite of the genre comes from the period of the SARS scare. On one of the local stations, the newsreader did a story about SARS from outside the emergency-room doors of a hospital and ended the report with this (probably not an exact quote, but close enough and the "just a matter of time" is a direct quote): [Holding up a surgical mask] "And it is just a matter of time until we will all be required to wear one of these."
Now, how alarmist is that?
Posts: 2454 | Registered: Jan 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Hobbes: Whatever happened to Bill Nye the science guy?
I miss him too. I can't tell you how many times in school my 8th grade science teacher would come in saying she had too many papers to grade the previous night, and that we would be watching Bill Nye that day.
We all said we hated it, but I look back with fondness.
Posts: 4229 | Registered: Dec 2002
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He still re-runs on one of our (three) local PBS channels. I like Bill Nye.
(One of my favorite NCIS dialogue exchanges ever:
Abby: "...you know, like Bill Nye, the Science Guy?" Gibbs: "Who?" Abby: "Does experiments with household products, teaches science to kids?" Gibbs: "Oh, like Mr. Wizard." Abby: "Who?"
*giggles*)
(Also, he guest-starred on Numb3rs a few times.)
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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Hobbes: it's not just science shows. I sometimes find myself commenting (loudly) to the TV over history shows I disagree with. (Mary Magdalene was an apostle? I don't think so!)
And last night I watched Prehistoric Park on Animal Planet for the first time. Nigel Marven stars in this one and the show is about him going back in time to bring extinct animals to our time. To my mind he is now less of a wildlife expert/presenter and more of an actor. (Maybe that's all he ever was, but before I trusted him to give me facts about animals; now it's scientific speculation about extinct animals.)
There have also been shows about what life might be like on other planets or in the distant future on Earth. But the narrators don't talk like it's speculation - they state things as facts. That bothers me.
I can't remember the show I've seen recently that was along those lines. It was kind of all speculation about some historical event, and seemed sloppy to me. I think there was one that was basing some science or historical "fact" on an urban legend or something. I wish I had written it down - I really am wracking my brains and just can't remember.
"Digging for the Truth" seemed like that to me. The host was always finding one supposed fact and then jumping to the next place in a row. (Let's find King Solomon's mines!)
Posts: 2034 | Registered: Apr 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Hobbes: Seriously, the narrator just told us that, "more disturbingly, this suggests that there could be a super-massive black-hole at the center of our galaxy."
OMG! We need to send an action team including Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, and Vin Diesel to destroy it!
"That's it! I am tired of this mother fricken super-massive black-hole, in the center of my mother fricken galaxy!" - Samuel L. Jackson
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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