"He needs all the world to confirm that he ain't lonely."
Sunny and warm today. Our high was 84˚F.
No work to speak of, so we're just gonna skip over that.
But two other things...
I'm going to call this the Michael Crichton Effect. When someone – say Michael Crichton – writes a book with and intriguing and somewhat clever premise that fools a whole bunch of people into thinking that book is build on good, solid science. Jurassic Park is a great example. It gets genetics wrong. It gets cloning wrong. It gets paleontology wrong. It gets chaos theory wrong. But it still manages to convince most people it's a very smart and scientifically literate book and that, to whatever degree, the possibilities posed by this piece of fiction are somewhat plausible. Even though they aren't. It's really hard to think of a better example than Jurassic Park, if only because of the novel's great popularity (and the popularity of all the sequels). But Crichton gets the science so wrong that at least one book has been published (there may be more; I've read one) devoted to debunking the bad science of its foundation (The Science of Jurassic Park and The Lost World, or, How to build a dinosaur, Ron Desalle, 1997). Anyway, the point I'm getting around to is that the novels of Andy Weir are, at times, and sometimes at heart, built on the same sort of wobbly science we see in Michael Crichton's books. Having just read Project Hail Mary, I'm a little overwhelmed by how much bad science there is in the book.
I know I said something yesterday about the suspect biology of "astrophage," but the problems are so much more widespread, from errors in relativity to gross oversimplifications of linguistics to getting the melting point of paraffin wrong. And yet...there is the misapprehension by many, many people that this guy's novels are superb science fiction with exceptionally accurate science. In part, that's because Weir is trying, in a sloppy way, to communicate what it is that scientists do, and that's fun, especially if science interests you. but I also worry that it's because, at least in the case of American readers, our scientific literacy is so abysmally low (a staggeringly low 28% as of 2021). So, less than one third of Americans are likely to recognize bad science in fiction. Or politics, but that's a talk for another time. Now...I want to be clear, I'm not talking about things like Star Trek and Buck Rodgers, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Star Wars. That's the stuff I call "science fantasy," and I'm a great fan of it. Here I'm talking about authors who would have us think they're offering us good science. So, don't start with the "Aw, you're no fun" crap. You can, in theory, do what Weir is trying to do and do a better job of getting your science right, as with, say, Carl Sagan's Contact. So, yes, Andy Weir is a great example of the Michael Crichton Effect. You can't clone dinosaurs from dead mosquitoes preserved in amber and, as described by Weir, the Hail Mary could not possibly have traveled to Tau Ceti in the time we are told that it does. The math is way off. Same with the Blip A.
Anyway...
Last night we saw Matt Reeves' The Batman, and I found it absolutely brilliant. This, you nerds, is the Citizen Kane of Batman films. Drawing heavily on a 1990s aesthetic, with influences from Dark City to The Crow to Se7en, well..bravo. I had not expected to be impressed, never mind entirely blown away. There's nothing at all I did not love about this film. More, please.
Please have a look at the Big Cartel Shop.
Damn, this thing is likely full of typos.
Later Tater Beans,
Aunt Beast
11:58 a.m.
No work to speak of, so we're just gonna skip over that.
But two other things...
I'm going to call this the Michael Crichton Effect. When someone – say Michael Crichton – writes a book with and intriguing and somewhat clever premise that fools a whole bunch of people into thinking that book is build on good, solid science. Jurassic Park is a great example. It gets genetics wrong. It gets cloning wrong. It gets paleontology wrong. It gets chaos theory wrong. But it still manages to convince most people it's a very smart and scientifically literate book and that, to whatever degree, the possibilities posed by this piece of fiction are somewhat plausible. Even though they aren't. It's really hard to think of a better example than Jurassic Park, if only because of the novel's great popularity (and the popularity of all the sequels). But Crichton gets the science so wrong that at least one book has been published (there may be more; I've read one) devoted to debunking the bad science of its foundation (The Science of Jurassic Park and The Lost World, or, How to build a dinosaur, Ron Desalle, 1997). Anyway, the point I'm getting around to is that the novels of Andy Weir are, at times, and sometimes at heart, built on the same sort of wobbly science we see in Michael Crichton's books. Having just read Project Hail Mary, I'm a little overwhelmed by how much bad science there is in the book.
I know I said something yesterday about the suspect biology of "astrophage," but the problems are so much more widespread, from errors in relativity to gross oversimplifications of linguistics to getting the melting point of paraffin wrong. And yet...there is the misapprehension by many, many people that this guy's novels are superb science fiction with exceptionally accurate science. In part, that's because Weir is trying, in a sloppy way, to communicate what it is that scientists do, and that's fun, especially if science interests you. but I also worry that it's because, at least in the case of American readers, our scientific literacy is so abysmally low (a staggeringly low 28% as of 2021). So, less than one third of Americans are likely to recognize bad science in fiction. Or politics, but that's a talk for another time. Now...I want to be clear, I'm not talking about things like Star Trek and Buck Rodgers, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Star Wars. That's the stuff I call "science fantasy," and I'm a great fan of it. Here I'm talking about authors who would have us think they're offering us good science. So, don't start with the "Aw, you're no fun" crap. You can, in theory, do what Weir is trying to do and do a better job of getting your science right, as with, say, Carl Sagan's Contact. So, yes, Andy Weir is a great example of the Michael Crichton Effect. You can't clone dinosaurs from dead mosquitoes preserved in amber and, as described by Weir, the Hail Mary could not possibly have traveled to Tau Ceti in the time we are told that it does. The math is way off. Same with the Blip A.
Anyway...
Last night we saw Matt Reeves' The Batman, and I found it absolutely brilliant. This, you nerds, is the Citizen Kane of Batman films. Drawing heavily on a 1990s aesthetic, with influences from Dark City to The Crow to Se7en, well..bravo. I had not expected to be impressed, never mind entirely blown away. There's nothing at all I did not love about this film. More, please.
Please have a look at the Big Cartel Shop.
Damn, this thing is likely full of typos.
Later Tater Beans,
Aunt Beast
11:58 a.m.