The Intersection

Top 10 Scientifically Inaccurate Movies

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 09:14:30 -0500

If movies were completely scientifically accurate, they'd probably be as interesting as a Physics 101 lecture. In real life, there are no explosions in space, gas usually doesn't explode from a lit cigarette, and Bruce Willis/Jackie Chan/Will Smith would most likely be in a coma after getting kicked in the head. Some movies, though, put science front and center in the story and more often than not the science proves to be head-slappingly bad. Here are some of the worst offenders.

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The Carbon Age

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:02:42 -0500

Carbon: Seems it's the subject on everyone's mind these days... and for good reason!

It's in the food we eat, the gasoline that fuels our cars, our clothes, jewelry, and beyond. It's us! C is the sixth most common element in the universe and intimately important in the tale of life on planet earth. And fortunately for us, Eric Roston (full disclosure, a colleague and friend) is a spectacular storyteller and has composed it's balanced, structured narrative across 12 chapters (coincidentally carbon's atomic mass) in The Carbon Age.

Admittedly, when I opened the book I had my doubts. It sounded like a text about chemistry... not my favorite subject in college. But this isn't a complex work of calculations, rather it's a page-turning portrayal of a vital and fascinating element inextricably linked to familiar challenges like climate change and energy. The first half of the book deals with evolution and its effect on the global carbon cycle and the second half focuses on technology.

As James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies describes:

Carbon, the citizen king of elements, governs who we are and what life is--but the king is going mad! Citizens, revolt against the despots, or all may be lost!

I couldn't have said it better myself. The Carbon Age is an enjoyable read packed with information that's necessary for all of us to digest in a changing wold. Policymakers, media outlets, industry leaders, and general audiences will benefit from reading this book.

You can find more from Eric at his blog Carbon Nation and read a full interview with the author at Jennifer Ouellette's place. In my favorite response from their discussion, Roston touches on the significance of science communication:

..the problem with Washington isn't politicians, it's voters. Americans get the political leaders they deserve. The same might be said of media. If editors sense that people don't want to read about science as much as celebrities, there will be less science and more celebrities. On a positive note, I would emphasize strongly that there is more good journalism going on today than possibly ever. It just has smaller, fragmented audiences.

I agree and in short, The Carbon Age is my recommended 'must read' of summer 2008. But you don't have to take my word for it, pick up Roston's spectacular narrative and decide for yourself!

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Hurricanes and Gas Prices

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:10:23 -0500

So: Dolly, which is now lashing southern Texas as a borderline Category 1/Category 2 storm, wasn't the big one. It wasn't a Katrina or a Rita--a storm capable of shutting down all Gulf oil production.

On the other hand, if you're the type to worry then it's not irrelevant that we're staring down what could be a very bad hurricane season--and one Gulf storm in the wrong place could lead to a dramatic gas price spike. Given the vulnerability of our economy right now, that's not something we could easily handle.

My latest Science Progress column, entitled "The Perfect Storm," addresses this topic--just one more way of illustrating how vulnerable we are because of our dependence on oil.

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Climate Change Is An All-Hands-On-Deck Affair

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:55:53 -0500

This week's question at NexGen asks us about what policies are necessary toward diversification of energy sources on a national and international level. Are we ready--economically, politically, and technologically--to accept and expand in so many directions?

Many have predictably taken issue with Gore's vision toward 2018, and I discussed the challenge with friend and colleague Eric Roston--author of this summer's must read, 'The Carbon Age'* and blogger at Carbon Nation. For our perspective, read my post at NexGen...

* If you haven't picked 'The Carbon Age' up yet, do! Roston's book is an excellent narrative and I'll have a review here tomorrow.

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Dolly Is Rapidly Intensifying Before Landfall

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:15:13 -0500

This is not good. The pressure reported by the National Hurricane Center was 976, then 972, then 967....meanwhile, the storm has developed a perfect eye:

The Advanced Dvorak Technique, a computer program being run by folks at the University of Wisconsin that assesses storm intensity, now shows a major rapid intensification burst:

I can only expect that when the National Hurricane Center next reports, it will be calling this storm a Category 2 or even perhaps a Category 3....

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Good Golly Miss Dolly

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 17:12:59 -0500

This storm, heading for the Mexico-Texas border, is now a hurricane. Our second of the 2008 season, and it's not even August yet....

Eric Berger has some interesting discussion of just how busy this year is starting out. Only three years in recorded history have been busier so early, and two of them are the busiest two years in history: 2005 and 1933.

Did I mention I was worried?

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Sizzling in LA

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:11:30 -0500

[From Sizzle: No caption needed.]

On Saturday night, along with Molly and two friends, I attended the opening of Sizzle at the Fairfax theater here in Los Angeles. The movie was airing at Outfest, a gay and lesbian film festival, and the woman introducing the film remarked on its pioneering attempt to find shared ground between the environmental and gay communities--to, in short, bring concern about global warming to a broader audience.

There were some 200 people in attendance, along with the entire cast and a few personages from the film--Dr. Naomi Oreskes of the University of California-San Diego and Dr. George Chillingarian of USC (of whom more in a minute)--and, finally, fellow ScienceBlogger and Sizzle fan Jennifer Jacquet.

Overall, at the screening I continued to feel struck by the incredible gap that exists between most ScienceBloggers, and most others, in terms of their responses to this film. Whereas many ScienceBloggers either didn't like Sizzle or didn't appear to get it, the audience in LA laughed at all the right moments, laughed repeatedly throughout, and generally seemed to be having a grand old time. Similarly, although I get the impression that many ScienceBloggers aren't particularly entertained by Randy Olson's mother, Muffy Moose, the audience loved her. Just as it loved Mitch, and Brian, and especially Marion, the film's trouble-making cameraman.

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Sciblings Take Manhattan

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 09:24:50 -0500

Remember the 2007 Scibling meetup? Well it's that special time of summer once again for Seed's science bloggers to gather in Manhattan and take the city by storm! Unfortunately, Chris can't make it this year, but I'll be in town with Jennifer, Bora, Razib, Grrl and many more of the colorful characters that inhabit the interwebs here at Sb. No doubt chaos will ensue...

And for the first time, readers are invited to meet us on Saturday, August 9th, around 3pm. The overlords will decide on the venue when they get an idea of how many readers may come so comment or email if you'd like to be there. We'll post details when we know more...

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I'm Getting Very, Very Worried About Hurricane Season

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:09:10 -0500

[Atlantic Sea Surface Temperatures: A Whole Lot of Energy Just Waiting for a Storm]

I've just blogged over at the Daily Green about the latest tropical developments. I'm a bit stunned that we're on our fourth named Atlantic storm--and likely soon enough, our second hurricane--and it isn't yet August.

This isn't good people. This is almost on pace with 2005, and we all know what happened in August, September, and October of that year.

You can read my full worried statement here.

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Evolution Of Music: Girl Talk

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 09:08:43 -0500

If anyone's perfected the science of music, it's Girl Talk.

Regular readers know how I feel about music's power to move and motivate people. Well I've just discovered Gregg Gillis who began as a student of biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve University. Regardless of whether his art is your style, what Gillis has accomplished on his laptop convinces me he's nothing short of a savant. In what I can only describe as an auditory museum, he samples from Nirvana, Jackson 5, Of Montreal, Metallica, Ludacris, Rick Springfield, Fergie, The Beach Boys, Rage Against the Machine, Missy Elliot, Rod Stewart, Avril, Sinead O'Connor, Tag Team, The Police, Wu-Tang Clan, Queen, and on and on and on. As described in an interview with Pitchfork:

[When Gillis] listens to Top 40 radio... he filters the best of the bunch through his brain, searching for loops, phrases, and sounds that he can later combine into new sample-based compositions.

The result is hundreds of artists spanning decades of music* incorporated into tracks that play as if they were supposed to evolve in synergy. In generation A.D.D., the overlay may work better than the originals in a hustle and flow of sound unlike anything I've heard before. And like Radiohead before him, Girl Talk's latest album Feed The Animals is available to listeners at whatever they want to pay for downloading.

Listen here.

* Note: includes explicit lyrics

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To Infinity, And Beyond!

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 09:08:57 -0500

It's no secret, I love space. From following the Mars Lander to cosmic collisions, I call it 'my dark side' along with complex adaptive systems theory. And now's our chance to shuttle up to the moon! Well, sort of...

NASA is inviting all of us to send our names along board the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) later this year. It's mission:

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is the first mission in NASA's Vision for Space Exploration, a plan to return to the moon and then to travel to Mars and beyond. LRO will launch no earlier than November 24, 2008, with the objectives to finding safe landing sites, locate potential resources, characterize the radiation environment, and demonstrate new technology.

Okay, so it's not exactly a personal trip into orbit... but hey, it's one small step closer! The entire database submitted by July 25 will be placed on a microchip in the spacecraft. Check out NASA's LRO website for details.

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Time For Some Campaignin'

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:44:43 -0500

The latest from JibJab reminds me of the night we covered Dylan in NYC at the 2007 Sb blogger meetup... Chris, I think it's time for an encore.

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In Reviewing Sizzle, Should ScienceBloggers See Themselves in the Mirror?

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:07:59 -0500

[From Sizzle: The scientist meets American culture.]

Yesterday my review of Randy Olson's Sizzle went up at Science Progress. I absolutely loved and raved about the movie. To my mind it's exactly the kind of thing we need more of.

So you can imagine how I felt when I surveyed the reactions from many of my fellow ScienceBloggers, who seem to be panning this film and just not getting it.

First, everyone is entitled to his or her aesthetic opinion. And indeed some fellow science bloggers really did like the film, including Bora, Jennifer Ouellette, and Greg Laden, to name a few.

Second, I acknowledge that the merits of Sizzle were debated intensively on the message boards, where I didn't take part--and are still being debated there. But I still just have to say....I'm mystified with the tone of much of what I've read over all.

And so I'd like to make a suggestion: Could it be that, for some of these hypercritical bloggers, Randy Olson's documentarian character in Sizzle is really their reflection in the mirror? After all, the character is basically a caricature of someone who repeatedly demands facts, facts, facts, and can't relate to non-scientists, have a good laugh, enjoy a good story.

In my view, what's so great about Sizzle is the way it asks us to look hard at the insularity of our pro-science community--and the disconnect between the science world and other walks of life, other parts of American culture. In this context, doesn't the fact that many science bloggers are slamming it--and misunderstanding it--simply validate the film's central point?

In throwing this idea out there, what I'd hope to encourage is that some of my fellow bloggers consider watching the film again with such thoughts in mind. Meanwhile, I'm going to the screening Saturday night in LA with three friends, and I'm going to mention this movie to everyone I see.

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Biofuels And Food Production On Uncommon Ground

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:34:54 -0500

This week at Next Generation Energy we're taking on the question of input and output. Can we--and should we--balance the production of biofuels with food production? And to add complexity, I'm asked to forecast our transportation needs down the line and predict whether sustainable biofuels will play a role. Tall order, eh?

A recent world bank report leaked to The Guardian suggests that biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75%. But really, have biofuels acted independently? Doubtful. While it's possible their production has contributed to the high costs we're seeing today, the principle culprit is likely investors' over speculation in other markets.

And further down the page:

The thing is, we must come up with some other way of doing energy now. It's no longer just about a green environment... our cultural perspective has changed. For the first time, we're seeing shifts in behavior driven by fuel prices. As far as cars, bigger is no longer better, while compact and fuel efficient is sexy. As oil is nearing $150 per barrel, there's an economic incentive to make certain choices and we can either structure that in government through tax incentives or its going to happen regardless. We've passed peak oil and possibly peak coal... It's a brave new world.

I make the case why things have to fundamentally change or we won't move... Figurative and literally. But don't jump into the discussion before reading my full post here.

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Sizzle, The Funniest Global Warming Movie Ever Made

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 13:35:04 -0500

My review of Randy Olson's Sizzle just went up at Science Progress. Wonderful, excellent, hilarious, profound: These are some of the things that I would say about this movie. In the review I even note that Sizzle "may be the funniest global warming movie ever made (unless you count The Day After Tomorrow, which didn't mean to be)."

Here's an excerpt:

At the outset of Sizzle...Olson-the-mockumentary-character participates in a scene that will be all too familiar for people trying to promote science (or anything else) in Hollywood: He meets with studio executives to try to get funding for his global warming documentary, and they won't give him the time of day. Yet even without such big-time support, Olson-in-real-life has managed to produce a wonderful film, a remarkable achievement. In light of this, it would be a true shame if scientists, science bloggers, and science pundits make the same mistakes as the literal-minded scientist-documentarian portrayed in this film, and fail to realize what Olson (in real life) has accomplished.

You can read the full review here.

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