{"id":13293,"date":"2021-12-25T19:09:08","date_gmt":"2021-12-26T03:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=13293"},"modified":"2021-12-26T17:14:52","modified_gmt":"2021-12-27T01:14:52","slug":"dont-look-up-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2021\/12\/25\/dont-look-up-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Look Up, 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another quick holiday post.<\/p>\n

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Part-way through streaming Don’t Look Up<\/i>, the satirical SF movie about astronomers who detect a comet heading toward impact with Earth in six months, and how when they try to warn everyone, they are brushed aside or disbelieved, by cynical short-term minded politicians, or relentlessly cheerful TV show hosts who book them after news of the latest celebrity divorce, and then all but make fun of them.<\/p>\n

I want it to be more pointed, and so far — we’re about 45 minutes from the end — I’m a bit disappointed. But we haven’t seen the end yet.<\/p>\n

Anyway, for supposedly having scientific consultants, there are several scientific boners that undermine the film’s credibility, and thus its basis for parody.<\/p>\n

1, When the astronomers first detect the comet, the first thing they do is contact the president. No, the first thing they would do is contact *other astronomers* around the world to confirm their observations and prediction. And *then* go to the politicians.<\/p>\n

2, Later, when the comet first becomes visible to the naked eye, the Jennifer Lawrence characters tries pointing it out to someone. “Look, there’s the Big Dipper…. and there’s Venus… ” No, Venus would never ever be in the same area of the sky as the Big Dipper.<\/p>\n

3, A scene or two later, the Leonardo DiCaprio character — through the windshield of his car! — spots the comet too. He gets out of his car and yells at everyone to look up! There it is! No, no. The news of the comet’s naked-eye visibility would have been widely known already. And you would never first spot a faint object like a comet from the middle of a well-lit city street.<\/p>\n

Sigh. Well, let’s see how it ends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another quick holiday post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13293"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13298,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13293\/revisions\/13298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}