Pentagon Wants Screenplays From Scientists 757
Aix writes "According to the New York Times, the Pentagon is funding classes in screenplay writing for 15 scientists. The idea is to encourage kids to go into science and engineering through mainstream media and thereby presumably bolster long-term US national security. While it sounds like a lot of fun for the researchers involved, and anything that stems the spiral of the US into a culture of anti-intellectualism is a good thing in my book. Will glamorizing science in the movies make kids pay better attention in chemistry class?"
Well, an anti-intellectual is heading us up though (Score:5, Insightful)
Forget Superman... (Score:2, Insightful)
the problem will fix itself (Score:1, Insightful)
The problem will basically fix itself. A reduced number of tech grads will drag the economy down, which will lower the standard of living, which will make people look for more financially sound jobs, which will lead students back to sci/tech.
The intervening drop in living standards has probably already begun, and is likely unavoidable.
Complicated (Score:4, Insightful)
Whatever your opinion of the administration- Imagine if W had a conference, said that we are going to get rid of our need for foreign oil w/in 10 years, and got scientists etc. going with the support they deserve and need- it could be like JFK's moon challenge.
It isn't just movies that influence people- we need a whole atmosphere of education in the US.
Of course, another way to do this would to bring kids to 15 year reunions, when the football team captains have gotten fat and work at car washes, and the high school nerds are making great money in great jobs.... Education is cool man.
Uh oh, I'm in academia, and getting mixed messages (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:glamorous (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If Movie Science Got Any Sexier... (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't believe this, myself. Nor do I believe that scientists are inherently uncreative (or at least any more so than semi-established script-writers.)
How about... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:That's why I'm in I.T. (Score:5, Insightful)
not even close (Score:5, Insightful)
you never hear anyone even mention engineers in movies or tv series. it's got to do with the social culture of the states. 100% of the political leaders in China have an engineering or science degree. In the states? none! (source: IEEE spectrum magazine June 2005).
Re:glamorous (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You ignored my point. (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually it is not off topic as we in the sciences are suffering a dramatic reduction in funding in the NIH, DARPA and other funding agencies. This is happening at the same time as a change in education in the USA with more and more students not enrolling in the sciences or engineering. This is also happening at a time when the religious right is trying to push their agenda through an administration that got elected based upon their votes.
So, comments by our CINC that appear to pander to the right end endorse an agenda that does nothing to help our science and engineering problem in this country are very much related.
Re:Pefect script (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You ignored my point. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, there is certainly more documentation about presidential appointees doing things like fudging scientific reports to make them more ideologically correct, but you can't deny that Bush and others in his administration -- as well as members of the same party in other branches of the government -- have been promoting an anti-intellectual climate. I mean, that was a selling point in last year's election! Do you want to vote for the good ol' boy from Texas, or that whiny intelectual from Massachusetts?
Will they be Bollywood style movies? (Score:3, Insightful)
And Meanwhile, Salaries for Engineers.... (Score:4, Insightful)
So... we're starting to outsource knowledge work, lumping science/technical skills in with manufacturing labor in the competetive race to the bottom. And Academia is increasingly competetive and less remunerative, and public funding is getting slashed.
I guess science is something you go into for love, right?
Re:Well, an anti-intellectual is heading us up tho (Score:1, Insightful)
"why truth?"
To be more specific.
If there is no God/gods no absolute truth that is critically relevant and can be known then WHY should i care about science? Why should I care what is true? Why not believe whatever happens to make me feel better to believe?
If my mind and body are mere accidents then why should I trust any conclusion that I come to anyway? So what if you happen to be able to "PROVE" something is a fact? What if that 'fact' doesn't 'resonate' with me and it feels better for me to believe something else. why shouldn't I ?
In summery the existence of science as a discipline is based on the idea that knowing what is true about the observable world is valuable and important. Without moral and philosophical context to support that assumption all you have left is what feels good to the individuals involved. Not enough people have that 'good feeling' about science and where it is taking us for them to consider it to be relevant.
I guess maybe making a few movies might help to bolster that 'good feeling in the short term' *shrug*
Re:I wonder.. (Score:3, Insightful)
They are only writing the screenplays, not making the films. Hollywood can butcher a screenplay six ways from Sunday without a moment's thought. I gather the screenplay for "The Island" actually resembled a somewhat thoughtful SF story before Michael Bay and his production team got a hold of it. They can write and brilliant creative and interesting a screenplay as they like, unless it happens to fall into the right hands the first act in the production of the film will be to suck all the creative and interesting elements out of it to make the usual bland lowest common denominator that studio execs can feel safe about.
Jedidiah.
Re:Just an Idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Science should stick to things it can handle: physics, chemistry, genetics, biology (without origins of life). We can reproduce certain actions based on certain inputs, so it can be classed 'scientific'.
Since the origins of life cannot be reproduced, it's not science. It's philosophy, world view, or theology.
Re:glamorous (Score:4, Insightful)
It is useful, at least it was for me
Re:glamorous (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:glamorous (Score:4, Insightful)
Hollywood (in general) does cheap ascientific things because it makes better movies than the real stuff. Just like people don't watch a "hacker" movie to see someone typing endless lines of C code, the same goes with "technical" fields, in general.
Re:Movie Physics website (Score:3, Insightful)
The scene I am particularly interested in is near the end of the movie when XXX (Ice Cube) jumps from a train going about 150mph off a 150-200ft high bridge into a river or lake. Just a split second before he hits the water he shoots his shotgun into the water where he will enter. Could one survive such a speed (perhaps terminal velocity) / force (negative deacceleration) if he/she were to break the surface tension of the water by shooting a shotgun into it or using something else to make a large splash?
Re:glamorous (Score:3, Insightful)
- business
- marketing
- law
- medicine though the payoff there isn't so great either
The reason the U.S. is cratering in science and engineering is that, other than during the dot com bubble, they are career paths for people who don't want to make a killing. Most talented Americans want to make a killing so they opt for business, law, etc.
You want to get more scientist and engineers you have to do two things both nearly impossible:
- Fix the education system where athletics is a 10 and academics is a 1 in the real priority scale of kids, parents, teachers and administrators. In the upper class parts of India academics is a 10 and athletics a 1 though cricket is a passion. This is nearly impossible to fix because the jockocracy is entrenched in nearly every school, football and basketball are fun, exciting and glamorous, physics and chemistry is not.
- Fix the financial rewards system so that CxO's stop making 400X what people who actually invent, design and build things make. This being a free market system you can't. fix it.
Engineering and science pay better than a lot of jobs but anyone who understands where the money is, is going to go in to management, sales and accounting tricks.
As usual, Pentagon is off-target (Score:3, Insightful)
[relevant aside: Did you hear about the Polish actress? She was sleeping with the screenwriter.]
If they want more good movies about science, the way to do that is not to encourage the generation of more screenplays. Fucking Hollywood is tit-deep in screenplays. You can't swing a dead cat without knocking over a stack of them.
If the Pentagon wants more science movies, then start up a production company and buy the scripts, make the movies they want made. The train a couple of nose-mounted
More screenplays? They are farting into gale-force winds.
Re:Well, an anti-intellectual is heading us up tho (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, there is no real "WHY". But think about it this way, if we as a species didn't spend a lot of time caring about science, then you probably would not have been around ask that question. Hell, without science you would still be cowering in a cave somewhere, wondering if that sound you just heard was a lion who invited himself to dinner.
So there is no reason for you to care about science, other than that it is the one way we have of improving our chances, both individually and as a species, of surviving a little longer. If it makes you feel better to believe in some omnipotent space fairy, then go ahead. What really matters is whether you help or hinder the survival of the species.
You are probably asking "but why should the species care about survivial if there is no universal truth". What it comes down to is that it doesn't really matter. If the species stops caring about survival it pretty soon won't be around anymore. The problem pretty much solves itself.
Actually, if there is a god out there, I think it is probably even more in our interest to learn as much about the universe as possible. I mean, if a god exists he is certainly not looking out for us. It might be time for a coup...
Re:glamorous (Score:3, Insightful)
And now, for a touch of reality... (Score:4, Insightful)
> fizzling. Suddenly the President comes into view
> and hands Billy a big bag of money
I very much doubt that. It is much more likely that suddenly a SWAT team would burst in and surround little Billy, pointing their automatic weapons at his head and screaming obscenities. Then they'd throw him in jail for possessing drug paraphernalia (namely, labware, chemicals, alcohol burner, etc.). If Billy wasn't alone at the time of arrest, conspiracy charges would no doubt follow.
Then he'd be named a terrorist, after some underpaid police chemist runs some unspecific test and finds explosive precursors (do you realize how many chemicals fit in that category? Anything with a benzene ring can be converted into TNT.) in Billy's test tube. Billy's friends would be immediately included as co-conspirators to blow something up while stoned on some homemade drug.
As anybody who has tried to do chemistry anywhere outside strictly controlled and designated places knows, the message from the government is chrystal clear: don't do chemistry. And now they try to blame us for listening and obeying the law? How amusing.
We don't need anymore science majors (Score:2, Insightful)
This idea is retarded. Contrary to popular belief, there is no shortage of science majors to fill the science positions in the United States. The job market, especially for physicsts, is terrible right now. I could give examples of the sacrifices it takes to become a researcher, for little material gain, but you're better off hearing it from someone who has been through this grinder, as I am just starting down this path.
In addition to this, a lot of scientific research, while it can be really rewarding in the long run, is fscking BORING! day to day. (Guess what I do for a living.) Are we really helping children by giving them unrealistic impressions of what it's going to be like if they grow up and enter the sciences. In the movies, scientists go from the desgin stage to the production stage in a matter of hours and whatever they come up with always works on the first try. Guess what? This never happens in real life. Never! If you design something new and build it, it's not going to work the first time.
I think it would be a lot better to stimulate the production of media that actually talk about science in a way that is accurate and accessible at the same time, in contrast to most of the stuff I heard about when I was kid.
Yes and no (Score:3, Insightful)
When I was a kid I watched 3-2-1 Contact, Reading Rainbow, and most importantly Mr. Wizard. Mr. Wizard was a show on Nickelodian in which an older gentleman paired up with kids to do cool easily-reproducable experiments and teach science. He had a show where he used an old Mac to draw a spaceship and then airbrushed in some white smoke (like an early version of paint) and then animated the smoke and lift-off. This instantly drew me to computers and was the true start of my love and interest in science and computers. Movies are one shot deals and not grounded in reality, a weekly show that shows kids like yourself doing cool stuff will get kids interested.
There is the show Zoom and Dragonfly TV, both which do a somewhat good job nowadays.. but they are sillier and not focused. But better than 99% of the current shows which don't have any moral/learning value at all like spongebob. Even cartoons used to have a real message at the heart of them and usually taught a valueable lesson, now it is all just fluff... gee, I wonder why American youth are so ignorant of any number of subjects. Hell, in a college World History class only four people got the bonus question of "Place an X on the country of India" and it was during the time of the Tsunami!!! These are sad times for kids/teen learning, I'm glad my mother had the sense to force me to watch educational TV... I'm thanking her now.
Movies are not the answer.
Re:NUMB3RS (Score:3, Insightful)
Except, in that show, the math guy, while smart, is a social outcast, while the cool guy is the FBI agent.
Re:Ha, ha. No. (Score:3, Insightful)
Newsflash! They're just people, pretty much like anyone else; they *don't* come in models, like RealDolls. Once y'all start to wrap your brains around this idea it becomes much easier to get the ladies to take you seriously. Assuming, of course, that you couple that with regular bathing and some rudimentary mastery of personal interaction that doesn't revolve around shiny-cool tech-toys....
Max
Cop-out (Score:2, Insightful)
A startling fact is that the number of students pursuing engineering and science degrees and careers is shrinking greatly. At a time when other countries, such as India and China, are stepping up their national education in science and technology, the US is making budget cuts in education funding. [washingtonpost.com]
Now I don't consider myself a liberal...in fact, I am a moderate who leans in many ways toward the conservative side, but these budget cuts scare me. If we can't foster the brainpower today that will keep us competitive tomorrow, jobs will keep flowing to India. But this time, they won't be call center or grunt-programming jobs. They will be development jobs. Design job. Knowledge jobs. That is what really scares me.
This article, and this practice, seems like nothing but a smoke-and-mirrors trick to divert money from the real problem. You will inspire far more students to take up careers in science and engineering if you pay to hire good teachers (like those that I was fortunate enough to have) than by making Tom Cruise a rocket scientist. It may cost more, but the raw returns are much greater. This should be a supplement to widespread greater science and engineering funding, NOT a replacement. It would work much better that way -- to have students see it on TV as a catalyst, then go to school where their teachers make the subject interesting and fun.