Not to mention the fact that John Carmack had longer hair…
The fact that I could make that joke makes me sad.
I see a lot of movies about furniture and cabinets.
Most of the time there are people in the movies too, but they aren’t the part that matters.
I watch films for clues that they were shot in locations other than where they were set (variations in flora etc), or look out for items such as foodstuffs that were not available in the location/era of the story.
I always watch movies ready to see bullshit. My area of expertise is computers, so I notice the moronic things computer-related in movies and TV so often it’s background noise to me now.
Gotta floppy? Yeah, stick it in that iMac, right. OS? Naw, it’s all fully-compatible now, and every moderately bright four-year-old can crack NSA passwords. Autistics can factor 1024-digit numbers in their sleep, too (Red Bile Rising). Gotta computer screen? Yep, every computer can do realtime 3d rendering just to navigate a directory structure, every monitor is bright enough to cause glare, and people always use ten-inch-high typefaces that can be read from across the room. Gotta run? No, don’t bother saving anything or shutting down the OS. Just flip a switch.
HAL’s tape drives were classic, too. And the fact that Asimov extrapolated vacuum tubes into the distant future. That is forgivable, however, because Clarke and Asmiov were bright men of the 1950s and 1960s. No matter how visionary someone is, he must still see things he knows and understands.
What isn’t forgivable is blatant ignorance like that described in my second paragraph. I don’t expect them to get things exactly right, but it’s important to try.
To elaborate a bit:
After Giamatti died of a sudden heart attack, the above mentioned photo (which I cannot at the moment locate a link to) was discovered. A doctor saw a pair of hands whose fingernails exhibited the ‘classic signs’ of imminent heart failure, and assumed they were Giamatti’s hands.
This led to a lot of 'Oh, well, he should have known, his doctor should have seen" type of speculation untill someone looked a bit closer at the photo and realized, lo and behold, the hands belonged to someone else, who, as noted, after being tracked down, was found to be perfectly sound.
Giamatti, however, is still dead. (And his hands showed none of the ‘classic signs’, either.)
Jeffersons costar Paul Benedict (Mr. Bentley) was diagnosed with acromegaly by a doctor who saw him perform on stage. He was able to get treatment for it in time, as the disease can shorten one’s life if it goes unchecked. You can read about it here: http://www.bestbuy.com/movies/Artist.asp?cid=1951&m=270
Thanks for the responses.
That answered my question. However, now that we are in the cafe society, can you tell by Janet Jackson’s sixpack that she has stopped menstruating? I’ve heard that if a female loses too much body fat, i.e. less than 14%, that they stop menstruating.
Nothing to do with Janet Jackson.
But my father is a medical doctor, and while he usually thinks it’s the best researched show on TV, he did have a quibble with MAS*H the other day.
Stupid, stupid mistake… he spotted Hawkeye carefully inspecting an X-ray that was upside down!
This post is a bit GQish, but Sandwriter asked…
I’ll preface this by saying I’m not a doc, just a pathetic little Bio BA, but I’ll give the Janet Jackson question a shot (those who know better, please do correct me if I’m wrong).
I don’t think you could tell by looking at someone whether they’re body fat is too low to menstruate. I believe healthy body fat is generally 15%-20% for a woman, and well below that, you’re at risk to stop menstruating, lose bone density, etc. But there’s no hard and fast rule, like ‘under X-percent of fat, and no more Tampax for you’. Menstruation doesn’t have a strict relationship with body fat - more with overall health. If you’re body’s too stressed, it will stop menstruation to conserve more vital functions. Low body fat can be one form of stress, but if you’re low-fat and otherwise healthy you aren’t necessarily going to lose your period. There are, after all, a wide variety of healthy body shapes.
Hope that helps in some way.
Most of the medical stuff in movies and TV is off the mark. I often notice discrepancies between my ER and ER or what-have-you. I don’t go out of my way to notice these differences but I don’t make a point of mentioning them to others enjoying the show. I’m not that pedantic, and I guess I bore enough people with the facts as it is.