NASA Attempts To Assuage 2012 Fears 881
eldavojohn writes "The apocalyptic film 2012 has dominated the box office, taking in $65 million on opening weekend. But with all those uninformed eyeballs watching the film, NASA has found itself answering so many common questions that their Ask an Astrobiologist blog offers calming, professional reassurance that there is no planet Nibiru, nor will it collide with Earth (although I do recall a massive solar storm forecast). NASA's main site even offers a FAQ answering similar questions. NPR has more on NASA scientist David Morrison and his efforts to calm the ensuing public hysteria, but survivalists are already planning for the big one. Pretty funny, right? Not according to Morrison: 'I've had three from young people saying they were contemplating committing suicide. I've had two from women contemplating killing their children and themselves. I had one last week from a person who said, "I'm so scared, my only friend is my little dog. When should I put it to sleep so it won't suffer?" And I don't know how to answer those questions.'"
How Histery Repeats .... (Score:5, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(radio) [wikipedia.org]
Quote: "Some listeners heard only a portion of the broadcast, and in the atmosphere of tension and anxiety leading to World War II, took it to be a news broadcast. Newspapers reported that panic ensued, people fleeing the area, others thinking they could smell poison gas or could see flashes of lightning in the distance."
CC.
I wonder... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How this scam works (Score:5, Interesting)
Flattering, I guess... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the first film I've worked on that caused actual general panic. Grudge 2 scared people, but it's actually a little gratifying to think that work I did is scaring people even AFTER they walked out of the theater. At the time we were making it I knew the whole black president/conspiracy thing was definitely going to push a lot of buttons, just considering the way things are right now, but to be honest, the whole scientific backstory of the film is so thin I never actually considered that people would genuinely fear a cataclysm as depicted in the movie. "Mutating neutrinos"... really?
ps. I was the lead sound effects editor on the show. Along with blowing up Yellowstone and other sundry destructions, I personally cut about 80% of the computer screen beeps. And I cut every one of them just for you guys, because I know you love them so much :D
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's easy (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Flattering, I guess... (Score:3, Interesting)
You put the beeps in for the same reason the male actors wear makeup, and scenes at night always are in blue light. It's a convention. If you make things blink on a 100 foot projection screen and they don't make a sound, people's get distracted by the absence somehow.
As someone who does this for a living but also is a hobbyist Objective-C/Cocoa/Ruby developer, I do find myself thinking about whether the beeps are triggered by key events, or if they should be emanating from windowserver, and we absolutely put some thought into the design of "Informational" versus "Alert" versus "Fatal" indicator beeps...
Also airplane cockpits are a whole other deal!
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Interesting)
Stupid people raise stupid people.
Whatever the genetic component of intelligence may be, it is clear that environment and education make a huge difference. These kids would end up a lot smarter simply by being brought up by someone other than their stupid bitch of a mother.
Re:Wow. (Score:3, Interesting)
(No I am not going to tell you what my beliefs are or those of my parents, I want to leave this intentionally ambiguous.)
Re:Wow. (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember from my psychology class that what religion you follow has no heritability, but how religious you are is at least partially heritable.
Also, Intelligence has a negative correlation between children and parents, at least according to Wikipedia.
Re:Flattering, I guess... (Score:3, Interesting)
I always saw the whole "destruction of the world" as sortof an excuse to have a movie about a "conspiracy to save humanity." The interesting part of the movie isn't necessarily how Los Angeles is destroyed as much as why people in government and in echelons of the super-wealthy keep it a secret. That's what the movie is really about, and it's something that will probably get more examination over time, as the film settles into its place in film history.
When I started on the film last year, the election was still going on and the whole "conspiracy" of 2012 seemed very redolent of the TARP bailout, and of typically American debates about state power and prerogatives in general (note that the film was written and shot long before the October crash, or Lehman Bros. or any of the government responses to the Great Recession). Roland E. is quite liberal, and his way of squaring the circle of the state-individual conflict is by offering altruism as the only way of escaping (1) zero-sum battles for survival on the one hand, as personified by the Yuri character, and (2) state coercion, as personified by Anheuser/Oliver Platt. In the end, the conflict created by the destruction of the Earth becomes a means for the government to become secretive and corrupt, and for the wealthy to settle their personal grudges with people not-so-wealthy; the conspiracy to "contain panic" appears rational from thwe outset, but once it becomes clear it must be implemented, it's revealed to be nakedly inequitable and evil, and a complete abrogation of universal human values.
Yes, I've watched this movie several hundred times now and have had a lot of time to think about it.
Re:I see potential in this (Score:5, Interesting)
And if the "ritual" have been performed in the right way (after some training of course) the planet never shows up. So you were right, weren't you. And so you are a real Mao Shan Master.
Re:Wow. (Score:2, Interesting)
Apart from Judaism, they consider it inheritable on the mothers side IIRC.
Re:Easy strawmen to knock off?.. (Score:2, Interesting)
The scale compared to defense spending implies the amount of resources necessary just to keep humanity from destroying itself, before NASA can keep nature from doing it for us.
Funny part is I give NASA better odds, though the people in charge of our world's various militaries also have a lot of personal profit to gain and lose by ensuring general continuity of human inhabitance, so they aren't as likely to push the "annihilate" button as some might think.
Re:Flattering, I guess... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, oh well. I added them, and then the re-recording mixer tossed out gobs of them, circle of life.
"Cut" means I added it, in the sense that "I found these sounds in the library and then I 'cut' them so that they would sync up with the picture." Something about CGI special effects is that if you used the literal on-set sound of every shot in the movie, 2012 would be about 50% dialogue, 50% render farm fan hum.
Re:Wow. (Score:3, Interesting)
wormwood can also be meant to imply poisoned or rotten. thats what (allegedly) makes true absinthe dangerous, in that pure wormwood oil is poison.
Re:Wow. (Score:2, Interesting)
Absolutely.
Knowing nothing about science, astronomy, logic, or reality = ignorance.
Buying into the 2012 claptrap = gullibility.
Seeing an action movie and thinking it's real = stupidity.
I'm glad we could clear that up. (seriously though, I agree with your assessment that magical thinking is a cultural thing, and we should all have far less tolerance for it.)
Re:Wow. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Flattering, I guess... (Score:3, Interesting)
What's wierd is it's the same chucka-chucka you hear in Alien when the Nostromo computer receives new orders, and it also pops up in various parts of Brazil, The Black Hole, Logan's Run etc. I think it's an old Bernoulli drive or some kind of dishwasher hard disk. You can hear what we're talking about it on the Amazon.com website, just audition track 1 of the Blade Runner soundtrack.
Re:not close (Score:3, Interesting)
The 6 "days" of the creation are actually representative of 6 "creative periods" the duration of which has not been revealed, but is suspected to be between 1-2 billion earth years each.
That still doesn't make any sense, the bible has earth, daylight and plants made before the sun and stars.
Re:Wow. (Score:2, Interesting)
So despite living in a country completely dominated by Christian beliefs, to the point where even HINTING that a Presidential candidate isn't Christian is a viable campaign tactic, some people (such as the parent) will insist that Christians are persecuted and looked down on for their beliefs. For people who hold religious beliefs that are ACTUALLY in the minority, this is incredibly irritating and not a little bit self-promoting. And it's worth noting that a post filled with whining and putting words into other peoples' mouths, despite predictions of getting "modded into oblivion" is actually 3: Insightful as I post this.