Instant 
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Not it. I’ve resisted the AGW denial discussion so far since it’s as pointless as trying to argue with an anti-Vaxxer. Once someone’s decided that science is lies, there’s no path forward.
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The musical?
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One more wonderful quote from Ignition!. Regarding Chlorine trifluoride, or “CTF”, experimented with as a high-performance storable oxidizer for rockets:
All this sounds fairly academic and innocuous, but when it is translated into the problem of handling the stuff, the results are horrendous. It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that’s the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water —with which it reacts explosively.
It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals — steel, copper, aluminum, etc. —because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminum keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.
And even if you don’t have a fire, the results can be devastating enough when chlorine trifluoride gets loose, as the General Chemical Co. discovered when they had a big spill. Their salesmen were awfully coy about discussing the matter, and it wasn’t until I threatened to buy my RFNA from Du Pont that one of them would come across with the details.
It happened at their Shreveport, Louisiana, installation, while they were preparing to ship out, for the first time, a one-ton steel cylinder of CTF. The cylinder had been cooled with dry ice to make it easier to load the material into it, and the cold had apparently embrittled the steel. For as they were maneuvering the cylinder onto a dolly, it split and dumped one ton of chlorine trifluoride onto the floor. It chewed its way through twelve inches of concrete and dug a three foot hole in the gravel underneath, filled the place with fumes which corroded everything in sight, and, in general, made one hell of a mess. Civil Defense turned out, and started to evacuate the neighborhood, and to put it mildly, there was quite a brouhaha before things quieted down.
Miraculously, nobody was killed, but there was one casualty — the man who had been steadying the cylinder when it split. He was found some five hundred feet away, where he had reached Mach 2 and was still picking up speed when he was stopped by a heart attack.
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Think I might have to read that.
Sounds good.
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Flag me out. Please.
Or you could just post on the topic, or stop posting here and start a new thread instead.
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I am not even sure if this qualifies, but lordy is it stupid. And we still like it every now and then:
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
Even the wardrobe is hilariously… eh… dumb? Regrettable? Odd? Has some immortal lines in it though.
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Buckaroo is action adventure. He is a modern day Doc Savage.
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The filmmaker claims Buckaroo Banzai is a “docudrama.”
They are definitely making the most of that running gag…
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I remember thinking it was remarkably drama-less and the ICU patients were are old. Then I started working at a hospital and realized that this was highly, highly accurate. In a scary-sad sort of way that made me want to never ever die in a hospital if I can avoid it.
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Or as I like to call it, angry delta-V. Reminds me of a story one of the orgo profs at my university likes to tell about someone they went to graduate school with. He got it into his head that he wanted to make an azidoazide azide derivative. His colleagues told him it would be a bad idea. He didn’t listen. He now has three fingers on one hand, and the professor calls him, and I’m quoting here, “Pretty lucky.”
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Hitchcock made one “science”-based movie. It is both dumb and wonderful:
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Wow! I can’t believe this thread’s been around for nearly week, and I only just now saw it!
You guys have covered all the obvious ones I might have mentioned (the Bruckheimer-esque ones in particular), but I’ll see what I can think up.
You might remember how badly I reacted to this sight of the Starship Enterprise:
And of course there’s pretty much any movie dealing with ATOMIC MUTATION!!! Or accidents involving matter transporters. Or indeed ancient titans from prehistory thawed out to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting planet.
Dumb as a popcorn box full of miniature hammers, all of these. But, man, do I love them so.
(Except for the Star Trek one. That’s too dumb.)
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I should probably mention Sunshine, except I love about 95% of that film (especially the score) and Brian Cox was the scientific advisor.
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Star Trek: The Motion Picture at least got that one right. No wacky, zany adventure based on the side-effects. Just “What we got back… didn’t live long… fortunately…”
BTW, a rough cut of Star Trek: The Motion Picture - before proper editing and finishing the special effects - was shown to studio executives. They said, “We want a Christmas release. We’ll take it as is.” This was what was shown in theatres and on TV.
A few years ago they made a special edition DVD, properly edited it, and finished the special effects. Not George Lucas style; they just finished what was supposed to be in it. It’s a MUCH better movie, MUCH better paced.
Naturally, the Blu-Ray is the bad rough cut version.
It’s the same story with The Abyss. The “we finally got to finish it” special edition DVD is MUCH better than the “the entire point of the movie never made it into the theatrical release” version.
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Yeah I finally was able to find the longer, first-intention version at Half Price Books for $5 and it is a different movie, though I did see the theatrical release in a real actual movie theater the year it came out. The special edition (2 discs) had a “making of” which just blew my mind.
It made the “making of” Apocalypse Now movie…
… look like a modest achievement of limited scope by comparison, and I am a big fan of both films.
The interview with Ed Harris in particular gave you a perfect snapshot of just how crazy you had to be to work on Cameron’s picture. Some production wag had blue t-shirts made for staffers with the promo poster graphic showing The Abyss printed out as The Abuse. Near-drownings, gear breaking, film running out on the perfect take, the weather turning cold so all staff meetings had to be held in hot tubs just prior to the day’s shoot in the increasingly frigid water, cameramen’s hair falling out due to all the bromine/chlorine they used in the millions of gallons of water inside the never-completed nuclear reactor Cameron rented for filming underwater shots, which was most of the movie… ye gods!
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I adore this movie with every fiber of my being. I’ve got the end credits tune as my ringtone currently.
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