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Armageddon versus scientific accuracy

A bit off-topic, but I hope no one minds.

Certainly one major reason to see movies is to be entertained.

But I don't see why we have to put up with such poor science,
engineering, and computer interactions in movies. It may give
young kids a bad intuition for these fields.

If there is a lawyer movie, there appears to be at least an attempt
to get courtroom drama correct, if it's a doctor movie, there will
be no end to technobabble and disease dagnosis. 

Perhaps to a doctor and a lawyer these are very inaccurate movies,
but there is a least a pretense to be technical to some extent.

But when it comes to areas like astronomy, or computers, forget it.

Maybe it's because people perceive these as dull? 2001 was quite
accurate, at least in the space scenes, and perhaps it was too boring
seeing a large ship appear to be dead in space...

Contact was a step in the right direction - it did skim over highly
technical things (like the difficulty in decryption and detection
of the signals within the signals), but it wasn't too far off-base
in accuracy. It was also quite entertaining and had a lot of
impact - in fact, to me, it was the human interaction and non-technical
side of that movie that was dull.

   - Jim Hurley

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