Movie Science . . .Revealed!

As the old Hollywood saying goes, the bigger the blockbuster, the most unlikely the plot. Filmmakers work hard to cultivate our suspension of disbelief–that is, as long as we’re entertained, we’re willing to overlook huge, unrealistic flaws in the film. Hollywood continues to abuse this tacit agreement in everything from low-budget productions to blockbusters. But apart from the obvious real-world discrepancies–guns that never run out of bullets, impossibly good-looking people, and the fact that you can always get a parking spot right next to the city building you’re headed for–Hollywood also relies on our ignorance of science to construct some seemingly-plausible contrivance to move the plot along. Below are some of the biggest movies that have made the least scientific sense.

Jurassic Park

The B.S. Theory: We can clone dinosaurs.

How they sold us: You have to remember that Jurassic Park was cutting edge for its time, and even more than fifteen years later the computer-generated dinosaurs were still cutting edge. For moviegoers back in the day, they were willing to put up with whatever concocted excuse the filmmakers could pull out of their story grab bag in order to see dinosaurs completely trash a metropolis.

As it stands, both the film and the Michael Crichton novel it was based upon start off on solid and rather ingenious grounds. Dinosaurs aren’t around today, but we can find their DNA in bones and (most importantly) inside blood-sucking mosquitoes and bugs long since fossilized in tree sap and turned into amber. From there, gaps in the genetic code were filled in with frog DNA, and aside from the whole dinosaurs-running-amok-and-eating-everyone part, everything worked out pretty swimmingly.

Why it’s wrong: The main problem with the cloning dinosaurs (or any extinct animal) is that DNA is frighteningly fragile. X-rays, gamma rays (Dinosaur Hulk smash!), toxins, viruses, and the good old sun all cause cumulative damage over our lifetimes. But add to that millions of years and the fossilization process (you know, turning organic matter into solid rock) does a number on DNA. The best locations for finding more intact DNA is from amber or bones found in certain favorable conditions (like the La Brea tar pits). Problem is, you’ve still got massive gaps. Finding enough material to get reasonably close to making not one but multiple species of dinosaurs would be damned near impossible, money nonwithstanding. Adding to the difficulty is that so few remains can be fossilized, or survive long enough to even be candidates for the process. Only about 1% of species alive on the earth are represented in the fossil record, and many species (including dinosaurs) are only known by fragments of bone or a handful of specimens. The odds are heavily against you. On the plus side, scientists managed to clone an extinct goat. That went extinct four years ago. And which died almost immediately after birth. Way to go, science!

Spider-Man/Superman/and almost every other superhero movie ever

The B.S. theory: The flying/web-slinging/rocket-propelled hero saves a person in mid-fall from making an awful mess on the busy street below.

How they sold us: Pure repetition. We like our comely heroines to survive, but also want action and danger. “Tell a lie a thousand times and it becomes the truth”, the saying goes, so the modern equivalent would be “Throw a hot chick off a skyscraper a thousand times and people will believe a spandex-clad hero will save her.”

Why it’s wrong: Because physics is a cruel mistress that won’t let up, no matter how many times you scream the safety word. It’s also generally quite reliable. Drop something off a building, and it accelerates at roughly 10 meters per second every second, drag notwithstanding. Thus in the five or six seconds you’ve let your imperiled person drop, they’ll have picked up a fair amount of steam. So much steam, in fact, that abruptly stopping them is liable to do almost as much damage as just letting them turn into a ketchup-colored stain on the ground. Most of the time, the hero manages to snatch the person and they suffer not so much as whiplash from having their momentum suddenly arrested. One of the few times physics ever caught up to a hero was when Spider-Man’s web-line snapped the falling Gwen Stacey’s neck: tough luck, champ, if you’d merely dove down and grabbed her yourself she’d be alive and well today!

The Dark Knight

The B.S. Theory: Batman is going to China to grab a man who controls the mob’s money (evidently in the East if you want to be protected you sit in huge glass-and-steel skyscrapers with floor-to-ceiling windows instead of bunkers. Hitler had it wrong.) To aid his quest he uses a cellphone he’s turned into portable sonar. Later in the movie he applies the same technique on a massive scale to find the Joker.

How they sold us: Batman outfitter and whizman Lucius Fox describes it a custom cell phone that sends out high frequency pulses and maps the response time. It plays into the fact that half of us think the government’s listening in to our phone calls anyhow, and after all, it wouldn’t take much work to make the phone emit the frequencies needed to create bouncing pulses, right?

Why it’s wrong: Fact is few of us actually know the technology that goes into our portable devices, and when you get to a fundamental level the speaker and microphone of your average phone are pretty simple. You probably couldn’t send the burst to the phone, because of the extremely narrow range of frequencies cell phones use. That would mean you’d have to produce the pulse on the phone itself. You’re going to need a better microphone on that custom phone too, Mr. Fox, because even our iPhone’s mic is pretty bad at registering direction–which you know, when you’re trying to figure out where a sound is bouncing back from, would be pretty crucial.

So all the above problems are hypothetical, yes, but it’s more an engineering problem than anything else, and considering the amount of money Bruce Wayne has thrown into his crime-fighting money pit, we’ll just accept that he can create a high-tech sonar cell phone. But what about turning every other cell phone in the city into a similar device? That’s assuming that every cell phone from your Palm Pre to Jitterbug would be capable of producing the same ultrasonic frequencies and recording the direction of bounced waves. Not likely. Unless everyone in Gotham has super-sweet smartphones and killer 3G connectivity.

The Core/Sunshine/Armageddon

The B.S. Theory: Asteroid heading to wipe us off the map? Nuke it. Earth’s rotation out of whack? Nuke it. Sun’s fusion slowly dying? …Wow, you’re a quick learner, aren’t you.

How they sold us: Deep down, we’d all like to think that the atom is our friend–why do you think all those ’50s and ’60s comic books had every Joe Six-Pack living on Main Street get superpowers from so much as looking at a radioactive flea the right way? And considering the nuke is pretty much the most catastrophic weapon conceived by mankind, it would be nice to think that we can use our stockpile for saving ourselves, rather than blowing everyone up. Plus, all that power’s good for something, right?

Why it’s wrong: People might have nagging concerns about the actual science behind some of these movies from the get-go. Drilling to the center of the earth seems rather hard; you would wonder why someone hadn’t done that before if it was possible to drill through the molten mantle of the earth. That’s the premise of The Core; Sunshine, meanwhile, has a crew riding a massive bomb the size of Manhattan to the sun in order to somehow blow it up and get it working again. Accepting the fact that they’ve managed to create shielding sufficient to protect humans from the massive dose of radiation they’d be soaking up on their trip to the merry ole’ fireball (actually, not as far-fetched as you may think), they still have someone touch the sun with his hand.

Ok, so The Core and Sunshine manage to turn themselves into laughing stock; what about blowing up that threatening space rock a la Armageddon? Assuming NASA and their contractors actually managed to get a crew into space to confront the extraterrestrial threat in time after somehow missing the space rock for months beforehand (remember these are the people who lost $125 million in an instant because someone forgot to check if they were measuring in inches or centimeters), blowing the asteroid up into two optimal pieces still would cause tremendous damage. While the asteroid pieces would be a lot less massive than the moon (you know, that thing that causes the tides and makes people crazy during certain times of the month), the fragments would also be much, much closer than the moon, with correspondingly scaled effects. The massive tidal forces created would cause global hurricane-force winds and mega-tsunamis. By the time the space rocks had disappeared into the cosmos, we’d be looking at the disruption of the global food chain and low-lying areas completely covered in water. In Armageddon, they simply return home as if nothing had happened. (Well, except Paris bit it, but the filmmakers don’t treat that as much of a loss.)

From this small selection of movies, the moral of the story is clear: if your science is bad, pretend it isn’t.

Frag Others for Free in Combat Arms

Let’s face it–many gamers stay away from online first-person shooter matches. Some just enjoy single-player stories more; the majority just don’t want a bunch of kids rubbing their digital junk in their faces over… and over… and over again. Most games have a steep learning curve, and the online training school doesn’t hold your hand. Many people just give up under all the abuse.

Combat Arms offers helpful tips on objectives, like "KILL EVERYTHING".

Combat Arms aims to address those issues. It’s a fast-paced Windows PC shooter (no dice, Mac fans) that looks to provide a low barrier to entry (it’s free) and a less-punishing newbie experience. It is fundamentally similar to most FPS with your garden variety of game modes, such as Team Deathmatch (“Elimination”), Free-For-All (“One Man Army”), and Assault (“Search and Destroy”). Special limited-time game-types and cooperative missions are also available, though there’s no single-player component. Beyond that, however, the game offers customization options for your characters and hundreds of weapons to choose from. Luckily for specialist players, Combat Arms offers everything from sniper rifles for annoying the hell out of that guy across the map, to SMGs and shotguns for getting close and seeing the whites of your opponent’s eyes (before you blow them to kingdom come.) The game has a strong web component and support, with clan support, ladder rankings, technical and game guides, and a wall of shame, which hopefully cuts down on the moronic wall hacking cheaters that often plague PC shooters.

"Can we hurry this up? My free gun disappears in five minutes."

Leveling up and getting kills earn a player Gear Points (GP), which you can use to buy new equipment and weapons, but the catch is that what you buy will eventually disappear. Want some permanent merch? No problem, turn to the Black Market, where the coin of the realm (NX points) is obtained using real money. Not only do paying customers often get to keep their shiny toys, but they’re also free from many of the level requirements and item limitations. It’s a win-win the company finally makes some money, and it’s a hell of a lot better than getting killed by players with unfair advantages.   You can even go full gangsta by buying a gold-plated AK-47 for just 700 NX points.   You’ll only have for a day, but you’ll be king of the jungle for 24 hours.

In short, Combat Arms is a good game–if you’ve so much as even touched a PC shooter once before, it’s easy to get used to the controls (PC gaming fanboys might say it would take a little longer for their “soft” console counterparts) and has a bit more depth than your run-of-the-mill Quake clone or web shooter. Best of all, it’s free to try and play, (if you don’t mind others having shinier guns than you.  For me – the gold AK-47 has become my personal Pimp Cup.)

Keep in mind that there are a host of other free FPS out there–crossplatform Tremulous and Urban Terror chief among them-but if you want persistent and customizable characters, and an expanded arsenal (over 150 weapons!) Combat Arms is the clear choice.

:Official site (North America)

The Worst Fitness Gizmos . . .Ever

Ever since someone realized that he could get totally ripped in just three weeks, an entire industry has sprung up to snatch the hard-earned coin of the working men and women before, you know, they actually spent it on arduous fitness regimens (that actually work) because let’s face it, if they reach their goals, then you aren’t going to be able to suck more money out of them. Alternatively, Many gyms bank on the principle of fundamental laziness to make the most money off gym members who don’t produce the most wear and tear on their equipment. And then there are those who sell directly to the consumer via methods proven to find the most slack-jawed morons (that is, customers) out there. Here’s a list of some of the worst attempts at fitness devices, and the people who make them.

Hell-Bent for Leather n’ Lead Bracelets

Get to da choppa! (And buy these sweet bracelets on your way there!)

Buff people telling us we are miserable maggots who can become like them for a few easy payments aren’t something new. Charles Atlas was peddling his “dynamic tension” devices to 97-pound weaklings since the 1940s, giving kids the mistaken impression that they could go home, kick a chair, order a catalogue and get ripped in the span of your lunch break. Atlas wasn’t the only one doing it, though: enter the “Hell-Bent for Leather n’ Lead Bracelets”, aka “I never thought of strapping harmful metals to my wrists until now!”

Remember, even if you spent your early career acting in atrocious films and shilling for products like these, California will take you if no one else will. Yes, that’s Arnold Schwarzenegger advertising Joe Weider’s “Hell-Bent for Leather n’ Lead” bracelets. If you thought the name came from an ill-fated Vietnam War flick, you’d be wrong, but we’ll forgive you for your mistake. The ad promises that within one second of putting on these lead-weighted bracelets, you will “Ooze 100% more power!” (now I’m known to ooze, but never power.  Mostly carbs and some proteins.)  Other benefits include “Striking fear and terror” into those that would do you harm, so apparently the next time you have to go score those drugs, wearing these will make sure you get home safely.

"Yeah, we totally wouldn't have *%$#ed with you if you had worn these stylish lead bracelets."

Interestingly enough, though the entire premise of the bracelet’s effectiveness is that it would force you to expend more energy to do basic tasks, the ad promises that there is “no exercise” involved. We’re not sure which is worse, the fact that they marketed this to kids and nerds (like me) via comic books, or the fact that people may have believed that you could actually wear these things in public without getting beaten to death with them by the end of the day. Sadly, this vestige of the 1970s faded away along with the Village People and black Michael Jackson, but we can only hope that this magnificent invention comes back in some form.

AB Doer Extreme by John Abdo

Beefcake . . .BEEFCAKE!!

Back in the day, John Abdo was just like us–eating pork rinds on the couch, sitting in front of the TV, and flat broke. Then he realized that he could make bank by creating a fitness invention that used his last name, and thus the AB Doer Extreme was born.  This gizmo pimps itself as “More than just an ab machine, it is a unique fitness product that exercises the entire midsection”. Plus, it also massages your back somehow. Win win, right? Douche-do tells us that by believing in ourselves (and buying his product) we can become just like him–the washboard abs part, not the “I-just-sold-you-a-device-that-looks-like-I-cobbled-it-together-out-of-Grandma’s-walker” part.

Okay, maybe we’re being too hard on him. Touting an “As Seen on TV” sticker doesn’t mean the AB Doer Extreme is bad, any more than having the word “Extreme” in your product title is overcompensating. His bio says he’s worked with Olympic athletes, so he’s pretty legit, right? Going by that metric, we wholeheartedly recommend buying his helpful book and CD packed with never-before-revealed information on how to get your Irish up–and how!

Anything by Tony Little

Who wouldn't buy products from this man?

You have to give Tony Little some credit; he makes fun of himself, and judging from his products, we half think that he and his marketing team smoke every substance they can get their hands on before their pitch meetings. There are the delightful Tony Little’s Cheeks Health Sandals (Doctor Scholls should get in on that market) and various books, t-shirts, and branded food that complement the backbone of his operation, – the Gazelle, which, strangely enough, also looks like you could make it out of old geriatric walkers.

Perhaps its that hair that looks like it was made from various dead animals, but you can’t argue with numbers: he’s sold $3 billion dollars worth of merch. So awful sexual innuendo in his products aside, the winning fitness formula is clear: you can look as bizarre as you want, but if you shout “YOU CAN DO IT!” with enough enthusiasm, people will open their wallets to you. . .or legs.

Thigh Master

This gizmo deserves a special place in the circles of bad fitness product hell. The idea is simple; make people pay for two metal tubes hinged together to create resistance. What makes it stand out from all the rest is how it helped create the modern fitness trash products that we know and love today, and the fact that Chrissy was the only decent tail on Three’s Company and still somehow wound up leaving to hawk this piece of crap, which totally screwed up my Tuesday night.

The Thigh Master scores you chicks. Crazy chicks, but chicks nonetheless.

It had Suzanne Somers appearing in its commercials, thus lending the product credibility through the lure of association: if we see someone with a great body using a piece of fitness equipment, the tendency is for people to believe they got their build using said equipment. Tony Little populates his infomercials with attractive women in the background, why not move the hot chick up front –and so they did.  Secondly, its infomercials combined all the now-cliche elements, including testimonials by the doctor who uses the product himself, and the magic $19.95 price point. You could buy this new for $20, or you could pick it up at an obese man’s yard sale for the price of your dignity. Your choice.

Men couldn’t peel their eyes off the TV, and had to lie to their wives that they were interested in the product.  Women saw their men ogling the TV and ran to the phone. The lure was irresistible, the profits huge, and the line of copy cats and “Me Too” business men stretched as far as a 50-cent piece of rubber that they now sell “As Seen on TV” for the requisite $19.95.

Today even Chuck Norris is in on the game.  Solo-flex, Ab-Rocket, Bow-Flex . . .do yourself a favor.  Do some push ups.  You’ll feel better.

To Facebook or Not To Facebook

Facebook is a great way to meet new people, stalk your ex-significant others, and reconnect with people you never wanted to see again, but were too much of a wuss to deny their friend requests. However, the professional world has realized that since people are more likely to post juice personal details online than truthfully fill out that space where is asks whether you were ever arrested or made a total ass of yourself that time in Rio, it would a shame not to snoop on their prospective drones—er, employees.

This isn’t an entirely new phenomenon. People have been using the internet to spy on each other since mankind first realized the internet was useful for things beyond spam and smut. But Facebook and other social networking sites make it all much more easy. Who wouldn’t want a one-click path to a picture of you doing jello shots of a woman’s stomach during Mardi Gras?

George Washington fought off the British so you could document your trip to drunken excess and have the right to embarrass yourself. Never forget.

Sadly, the internet is rife with stories of people who have gotten pwned by posting stuff on Facebook (and we’re not just talking about the fake screencaptures they make over at CollegeHumor, either.) From having your party crashed to having your insurance coverage revoked (who knew a photos of someone being happy could hurt them), to getting kicked off a sports team, or having to apologize many, many times for expressing your desire to get laid, if you can get in trouble for something on Facebook, people have already done so. So don’t think you’re a trailblazer.

Of course, during job hunting people are actually looking for dirt, so your chances of getting fingered are exponentially higher. More than half of UK employers admitted to searching for their prospies’ Facebook pages, and more than a quarter of applicants weren’t hired because of what was found. In the United States, software is available to do this automatically, since apparently we Americans are so lazy we can’t be bothered to surf the internet and have gotten the computers to do that for us too. Think you’re safe once you’ve got your job? Not so fast—people have been fired for venting about their jobs, likin’ the ladies a bit too much in their downtime, and being a gay teacher at a Catholic school (no, really!)

If the above information wasn’t enough to stop you from poking that girl from way back in middle school (lest you be smacked back with a sexual harrassment lawsuit), criminals are jumping in on the social bandwagon. Data mining profiles allows scammers to create personalized messages that sound totally legit, unlike that money-stuffed Nigerian prince who couldn’t spell worth a damn. Hell, one escaped convict is taunting the police using Facebook status updates (as stupid as this sounds, realize that the prison released the guy during the day anyhow; there weren’t any Shawshank-style hijinks here.)

So what can be done? Facebook recently updated their privacy terms and controls, giving you increased flexibility in managing who can see what. The vast majority of content is pretty much available to every employer, significant other and creepy uncle with a Facebook account, so at the very least limiting access to just friends or friends of friends is a start. Not posting the pictures would also be a 100% effective way of making sure they don’t come back to haunt you (shocker, I know.) Until Facebook has the equivalent of Drunk Googles, though, the best you can do is wake up the next morning and hope you didn’t make too much of a mess.

Sodium One: Heavy on socializing, light on salt

Massively Multiplayer online games (aka MMOs, aka what your roommate used to play for ten hours straight) would seem to be something of a cluttered field; the furry mythical creatures of World of Warcraft reign supreme. That said, it looks like Sony is interested in making a console-based MMO integrated into their Playstation Home gaming community.

Many might remember Playstation Home from its rather bumpy beta days back in December 2008—complete with digital humping and all the trappings of a shallow consumerist ghost town, where your only options for diversions are to fork over real cash for imaginary goods and stare at others with a vapid look that Paris Hilton would envy. Sony trumpets the service as currently offering more than 100 games to play, 50 spaces to experience, and more than 2000 of the aforementioned makebelieve clothes and such.

"I got this sweet pad. What the hell am I supposed to do now?"

Sodium One, it would appear at first, is a step on the way to change the rather poor impression Home gave to many. It’s a futuristic “social gaming environment” that Sony trumpets will “[leverage] the incredible computing power of the PS3 to deliver truly unique, and visually stunning social gaming experiences you won’t find on any other platform.” While Sony says that Sodium will be “genre-defying”, it’s not exactly explained how it will do so. The first section of the mini-game, Salt Shooter (make your own pun or innuendo out of that one) sounds like a standard vehicular shoot-em-up with a competitive leaderboard aspect. Credits and rewards earned can be redeemed (for what is not clear, but I’m assuming Sodium-branded merch.) The first taste is free, but getting additional levels and experiences are going to cost you $1 to $5.

"Sweet, after I frag five more of these I get a sweet wall decal for my make-believe house!"

Which brings us to the main thrust: what’s the point? The main appeal of the Playstation network is that it offers free gaming compared to Xbox Live’s subscription fee (which begs the question: where do all those annoying 12 year olds get the $50 to pay for the service?) Home, meanwhile, is a curious social add-on, where scarcity and engagement are made-up. Most gamers aren’t interested in logging on to swap stories, “serve virtual drinks to friends” and browse and buy fake merch like a virtual mall (complete with the lameness that comes from hanging out in a mall). Sodium’s future games will have to be compelling enough to tease people out of their hard-earned coin—and so far, it doesn’t appear that it’s living up to Sony’s hype.

Source: PR Newswire