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Arts and Faith > Art & Media > Film > Film Criticism and Appreciation
Alan Thomas
Interesting article here. (It's all Méliès' fault.)

QUOTE
Without a doubt, abrupt climate change has occurred—but it was abrupt in terms of decades, not weeks. For example, a few times during Earth's history, the onset of cooling seems to have been triggered by immense surges of glacial meltwater into the North Atlantic. When the ice sheet covering northeastern Canada collapsed, about 8,200 years ago, more than 163,000 cubic kilometers of trapped water drained into the North Atlantic in a matter of months. That influx raised sea level by as much as 50 centimeters, shut down thermohaline circulation, and, in a decade or so, inaugurated a 400-year dip in global temperatures, some studies suggest.

...

While the scientific community can use press releases and critiques of movies to reach a broad audience, it is also turning to movies to provide instruction to smaller groups.

Many teachers use films to illustrate scientific concepts within their classrooms. "The bad stuff is usually spectacular," says Tom Rogers, a former mechanical engineer who now teaches at Southside High School in Greenville, S.C. If the science in a movie is really bad, Rogers says, he writes a review for Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics, which is a feature of an educational Web site that he founded.

...

Professors at U.S. universities have built entire courses around analyses of movies. At James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., for example, Christopher S. Rose has used films as diverse as Jurassic Park, Gattaca, and The Boys from Brazil to explore issues related to cloning and genetic screening in his "Biology in the Movies" course.
Ron Reed
A good friend of mine is a PhD in physics and a Christian. He recently saw WHAT THE BLEEP and went completely nuts - "bad science, bad religion" would pretty much sum up his response. Add it to the list...
MattPage
Confession time - I emailed them explaining the bad science in Shooting Fish - it would be physically impossible to live in that tyoe if Gasholder / gasometer.

How boring & geeky am I?

Matt
Ron Reed
QUOTE (MattPage @ Oct 24 2004, 11:47 PM)
Confession time - I emailed them explaining the bad science in Shooting Fish - it would be physically impossible to live in that tyoe if Gasholder / gasometer.

How boring & geeky am I?

Matt

You a science guy?
MattPage
Well -ish. My degree was in Chemical Engineering, and I worked in Environmental science / consultancy / engineering for about 5 years before starting work for my church about 20 months ago. FWIW 4.5 years of those were working for parts of the old British Gas, hence the knowledge.

Matt
Baal_T'shuvah
For anyone who wants to read some reviews from a scientific point of view, there's some good stuff at this site...

And You Call Yourself a Scientist

QUOTE (AYCYAS Homepage)
Dr Hugo Wagner: But you're sacrificing a human life!
Dr Alfred Brandon: Do you cry over a guinea pig? This boy is a free police case. We're probably saving him from the gas chamber.
Dr Hugo Wagner: But the boy is so young, the transformation horrible--
Dr Alfred Brandon: And you call yourself a scientist!
-----"I Was A Teenage Werewolf" (1957)

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