remember in "Contact", "they shoulda sent a poet?" CANADA DID!

[Mr. Analog]

a final list of many of the proud moments for Canada, summarized via the Chris Hadfield Appreciation Society aka CBC
http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourcommunity/2013/05/five-things-chris-hadfield-did-that-amazed-us.html


my personal fave:
in Soviet Russia, bread comes in a "pill" form!

Man! Scrolling through that was like reliving it all over again, what a journey for both Chris AND us!

[Darren Dirt]

grumpy poet, apparently...

http://www.thebeaverton.com/chris-hadfield-ejected-from-movie-theatre-for-loudly-heckling-gravity.htm

Spoiler

"TheBeaverton" = Canuckified TheOnion ... but that fact is apparently lost on some legit news sites (!)



via https://twitter.com/BeavClassified/status/395677990446592000 , https://twitter.com/Serrels/status/395676453594873857

[close]

[Darren Dirt]

grumpy poet, apparently...

http://www.thebeaverton.com/chris-hadfield-ejected-from-movie-theatre-for-loudly-heckling-gravity.htm

Spoiler

"TheBeaverton" = Canuckified TheOnion ... but that fact is apparently lost on some legit news sites (!)



via https://twitter.com/BeavClassified/status/395677990446592000 , https://twitter.com/Serrels/status/395676453594873857

[close]

LOL -- art vs life; I guess the joke article above is partly based on truth!

Well known pop-sci guy Neil-to-the-DGT actually has expressed some criticisms...
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2013/10/10/neil-degrasse-tyson-would-now-like-to-tell-you-what-gravity-got-right/

... as did Hadfield as well! http://arts.nationalpost.com/2013/11/12/chris-hadfield-says-sandra-bullocks-underwear-in-gravity-were-all-wrong-video/

(but the VISUALS are bang-on realistic, apparently!)

[Mr. Analog]

It's the best worst hard sci-fi film in a while

They tore it to pieces via twitter mostly, it was a daily thing for a while

[Tom]

Totally off topic, but I see Mr. A has got a new avatar. I think you may want to have a look at your camera.. I've heard it said that the camera adds a few pounds, but this is ridiculous.

[Mr. Analog]

Totally off topic, but I see Mr. A has got a new avatar. I think you may want to have a look at your camera.. I've heard it said that the camera adds a few pounds, but this is ridiculous.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat!



The guy is a reaction-image machine

[Darren Dirt]

Totally off topic, but I see Mr. A has got a new avatar. I think you may want to have a look at your camera.. I've heard it said that the camera adds a few pounds, but this is ridiculous.

Mr. A's new av simply cracks me up.

It's the best worst hard sci-fi film in a while

They tore it to pieces via twitter mostly, it was a daily thing for a while

But... BUT! They also (both!) totally loved a lot of it too! Of course that doesn't qualify as well for Media Over-Hype so the "pieces-tearing" tweets will be what most people hear about, and not the "yeah, but, it was excellent/accurate in the following dozens* of ways..." tweets. 



* Neil deGrasse Tyson made a LONG fb post to clarify He Ain't Mad...

Spoiler

Wednesday, 9 October 2013

No one was more stunned than I over the media attention given to my flurry of tweets posted this past Sunday, each commenting on some aspect of the Bullock-Clooney film Gravity. Hundreds of references followed in blogs and news sources, including television?s Inside Edition the Today Show, and Brian Williams?s NBC Nightly News.

What few people recognize is that science experts don?t line up to critique Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs or Man of Steel or Transformers or The Avengers. These films offer no premise of portraying a physical reality. Imagine the absurdity of me critiquing the Lion King: ?Lions can?t talk. And if they could, they wouldn?t be speaking English. And Simba would have simply eaten Pumba early in the film.?

The converse is also true. If a film happens to portray an awesome bit of science when there?s otherwise no premise of scientific accuracy, then I?m first in line to notice. In Chicken Little, for example, the hexagonal sky tiles, each mirroring what lies beneath them, was brilliant. So too are the factory-made doors in Monsters, Inc. As portrayed, they?re, functional wormholes through the fabric of space-time. In A Bugs Life the surface tension of water, which makes it ball up in small volumes was accurately captured at the Bug Bar, and for the little fella?s makeshift telescope.

To ?earn? the right to be criticized on a scientific level is a high compliment indeed. So when I saw a headline proclaim, based on my dozen or so tweets, ?Astrophysicist says the film Gravity is Riddled with Errors?, I came to regret not first tweeting the hundred things the movie got right: 1) the 90 minute orbital time for objects at that altitude; 2) the re-entry trails of disintegrated satellites, hauntingly reminiscent of the Columbia Shuttle tragedy; 3) Clooney?s calm-under-stress character (I know dozens of astronauts like that); 4) the stunning images from orbit transitioning from day to twilight to nighttime; 5) the Aurorae (northern lights) visible in the distance over the polar regions; 6) the thinness of Earth?s atmosphere relative to Earth?s size; 7) the persistent conservation of angular and linear momentum; the starry sky, though a bit trumped up, captured the range and balance of an actual night sky; 9) the speed of oncoming debris, if in fact it were to collide at orbital velocity; 10) the transition from silence to sound between an unpressurized and a pressurized airlock; ? and 100) the brilliantly portrayed tears of Bullock, leaving her eyes, drifting afloat in the capsule.

So I will continue to offer observations of science in film ? not as an expression of distaste or disgust but as a celebration of artists attempting to embrace all the forces of nature that surround us.

Respectfully Submitted

Neil deGrasse Tyson
39,000 feet over Arizona

[close]

[Mr. Analog]

Yeah well the power of snark goes a long way. As well celebrity scientists zinging off your flick is funny in itself

[Tom]

I've heard some film makers thinks its a bit of an honor, a bit like weird al making a spoof of your song

[Mr. Analog]

I've heard some film makers thinks its a bit of an honor, a bit like weird al making a spoof of your song

Sometimes, sometimes not

I went to see the film (it's pretty good BTW) but most of the buzz around it was related to the snark which after a while became eye-rolling.

[Tom]

I've heard some film makers thinks its a bit of an honor, a bit like weird al making a spoof of your song

Sometimes, sometimes not

Some people are uptight dickwads.

[Mr. Analog]

Yepp

[Darren Dirt]

I've heard some film makers thinks its a bit of an honor, a bit like weird al making a spoof of your song

Or similarly if South Park makes a mention of your [insert celebrity embarassing public or non-famous person minor viral video or similar incident here]. Unless you're Kanye (who I heard doesn't "get it" in real life too!)

[Thorin]

sometimes not

I clicked that, and then I clicked once more, and then I learned about the real-life 501st Legion, aka Vader's Fist.

[Darren Dirt]

Chris Hadfield gives G&M readers some suggestions about overcoming fear.

He uses spiders as a starting point.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/ideas-lab/an-astronauts-way-with-danger-how-chris-hadfield-overcomes-fear/article17568316/


in brief: familiarize yourself in advance, which will desensitize yourself to the point where REAL danger is distinguishable from PERCEIVED (or SPECULATED) danger. Cuz there's a place for healthy fear, just seems in this day and age with so much out of our control in this inter-connected world, a lot of people are so afraid of what "might" happen or "worst case scenario" perspectives that many get immobilized or even counter-react -- before The Bad Stuff even happens. (imo mainly political pundits and related, come to think of it)