referring to the assasination of Martin Luther King
“early morning April 4 a shot rings out in the Memphis sky”
although I saw them last month and Bono sings “afternoon April 4” but it doesn’t feel right since half a beat is missing.
“Eight Days a Week”
What calendar are you looking at?
It is if you get Black Lung: espousing nuclear power over coal is not exactly a scientific inaccuracy by Mr Sumner, but he’s certainly romanticising the reality of coal mining. This being CS I don’t need cites {what fun!}, but I’m willing to bet that far more coal miners than nuclear power palnt workers have died as a result of their employment.
From the Spinal Tap song Stonehenge:
This has so many inaccuracies that I don’t even know where to start. For example, Stonehenge wasn’t built by Druids and it isn’t living rock. I think Spinal Tap should stick to singing about things they know about, like the size of their girlfriends’ butts.
I’m forgetting The Rolling Stones’ 2000 Light Years From Home: “See you on Aldebaran”. Uh, Mick? Aldebaran is a star, not a planet, and is actually quite hot this time of year. I doubt you’ll be seeing anyone on it for very long at all.
Simon Singh being rather cosmologically pedantic about Katie Melua’s song Nine Million Bicycles.
The song’s writer, Mike “Wombling Free” Batt, being rather snotty and overly grammatically pedantic in reply.
That was badly expressed: let’s say that miners are proportionately more likely to suffer potentially fatal injury or ill-health.
On the other hand, Mr Bowie has no such recourse in Ashes To Ashes: “Ashes to ashes, funk to funky/We know Major Tom’s a junky”. Presumably Nasa does have a mandatory drug-testing policy, and as such are highly unlikely to send a heroin addict into orbit. To suggest otherwise is libellous.
Of course the nearest star is 0.000015 ly away, anyway.
From what I know, you’re correct Case Sensitive. Uranium mining isn’t great work, either, but you don’t need to mine as much of it. Vaguely speaking, coal power presents a moderately high risk to a small number of people, nuclear power presents a rather low risk to a much larger number of people.
[QUOTE=panamajack]
Of course the nearest star is 0.000015 ly away, anyway.
That should be more like 0.000016, or 0.0000158 light years.
According to the Talking Heads,
“From the age of the dinosaurs
Cars have run on gasoline”
There have been numerous alternative means to power your car, including steam, horse, and even feet, the last of which is believed to have been used by neolithic families.
Well, yeah, that’s not the scientific inaccuracy I’m talking about. The assertion that “nuclear power is dangerous” is not a scientific inaccuracy, but the assertion that “nuclear power is dangerous because it produces Carbon 14, which will be deadly to man for 12,000 years” goes beyond scientific inaccuracy into complete horseshit (necessary to the meter of the song, admittedly, but still horseshit). Carbon 14 is a naturally occurring isotope found in all organic compounds, including our bodies in an exact equilibrium with the Carbon 14 content of the CO2 in the atmosphere until we die and quit ingesting it, hence Carbon 14 dating. It’s created by nuclear reactors, but for that matter so is steam that could give a nasty scald. Neither one is what actually makes nuclear power dangerous.
Now, if he’d said “but the process of turning Uranium 239 into enriched Uranium 235 is a dangerous one, and the creation of transuranic waste from processing Uranium 238 into synthetic Plutonium 239 in so called ‘breeder’ reactors poses significant problems with disposal and possible contamination” he’d have a much more scientifically accurate song, albeit a much crappier one.
Hey, A Mighty Fortress is our God is totally scientifically accurate. Literally.
We’re talkin’ like Castle Greyskull here.
Contrary to what we hear from the Hollywood Argyles, there is a zero probability that a caveman by the name of Alley Oop, rode a “genuine dinosaur”.
I think that perhaps having Drops of Jupiter in one’s hair would not be quite as uplifting an experience as we are led to believe. Certainly not on par with Mozart and Tae-bo.
Hmm, if I recall the Simpsons got praise for doing just that because it was scientifically accurate.
Gerry Rafferty’s Right Down the Line
If he’s saying that the Northern Star is the brightest light (or star) he’s wrong. If he’s referring back to his woman, well, whatever.
To be fair, the idea that Druids built Stonehenge is a very common one, even if it is wrong. It’s not like Spinal Tap was pulling this out of their asses.
I’m not going to try to defend the living rocks, however. They’re on their own.
In The Police’s Walking in Your Footsteps, Sting asks:
“Hey, mighty brontosaurus, don’t you have a lesson for us? You thought your rule would always last, there were no lessons in your past.”
Scientists have recently concluded that what they had previously called the brontosaurus was actually a mix of pieces from two other species. While one could argue that this simply means the answer to Sting’s first question is “No,” it must still be acknowledged that the second part of the song is impossible. Never having existed, the brontosaurus could not have had any thoughts on the length of its rule, and in any case we can be fairly certain, based on the cranial size of comparable dinosaurs, that even if it did exist it was not sufficiently intelligent to consider matters of long-term global climate change.
On the other hand, in The Vigil, The Blue Oyster Cult claims:
“We see them coming, faster than the speed of light.”
While on the surface this looks laughably innacurate, it is in fact quite possible. It’s true that we know of no way for an object to surpass the speed of light, but it is possible to percieve an object as moving faster than the speed of light. For example: a ship leaves a planet 10 light years from Earth at a speed of .75c, heading straight for us. The light coming from the moment of lift-off, and therefore our information that the event has taken place, does not arrive at Earth until 10 years later. By that time, however, the ship has travelled 7.5ly and only has 2.5ly to go. To observers on Earth, it would then appear that the ship had travelled the full 10ly in only 3-1/3 years, thus achieving a speed of 3c.
Uh… folks, we might want to allow for literary devices like metaphor and hyperbole.
Obviously, Joan wasn’t being serious or literal. It’s a song about Bob Dylan, with whom she once had a relationship. In the song, HE’S still trying to be part of her life, but she now considers him ancient history, someone from long ago and far away.
I don’t know if thgis is science, but gravity is involved…
In “End of the Innocence,” Don Henley sings:
“Lay your head back on the ground,
And let your hair fall all around me.”
Huh?
If she’s lying back on the ground, how is her hair supposed to fall all around him? Does her hair fall upwards?
And Stonehenge is not, in fact, 12 inches tall.