CHANGSHA, HUNAN — While I wait for my lunch companions to show up, I will try to dash off a quick movie review.

Of course, it’s not very current. GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra opened in the USA weeks ago, but I saw it for the first time here just last week. In Chinese. With Chinese subtitles.

I didn’t miss a thing.

Some B-movies have redeeming virtues, despite poor acting, bad direction, cheesy scripts, or lousy camera work. Really bad movies (grade Z’s), though, combine all four to make a US Grade A turkey.

And being a science-fictiony kind of film, GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra, brought really bad to a whole new level with really awful science concepts.

Here’s a few glaring mistakes.

The Bad Guy (TBG) has a huge underwater lair that puts Stargate Atlantis’ digs to shame. Yet, this underwater metropolis is supposedly a secret. How? Its heat signature alone would be as bright as lighthouse beacon to a spy satellite in orbit.

For argument’s sake, let’s suppose the US government knew about The Bad Guy’s secret underwater lair. Wouldn’t the Defense Department be just a teensy bit interested in why TBG has all of that expensive hardware hidden away, especially since TBG is supplying high-tech stuff to the DoD?

(Then again, maybe not. Consider the DoD’s careful monitoring of Blackwater and Halliburton operations in Iraq.)

And he also has a secret weapons facility in the Arctic! Apparently, he hasn’t read up on global warming.

August 22nd, 2009 | Tags: China, movie, Physics, review, Science | Category: China, Commentary, Media, Physics | Leave a comment

JISHOU, HUNAN — While poking around my own posts recently, I discovered that the third anniversary of my blog had completely slipped past me. Hard to believe it’s been that long.

In the past 37 months, I have written 472 posts, or about 13 blog entries (posts in WordPress lingo) a month — roughly 3 a week. My active readership seems kind of small, with roughly one comment for each post, but my ClustrMap‘s little Mercator projection is covered with red blobs over North and South America, Europe, China, Australia and the Middle East. So somebody must be reading me, even if they leave no comments behind. According to ClustrMap, SiteMeter and my own stats application, there have at least 40,000 visits to this URL since August 2006 — a mere pittance compared to, say, ScienceBlogs superstar PZ Myers, but a helluva lot more than I ever expected.

In the beginning, the blog was just a means for me to vent my frustrations at how willfully ignorant and unscientific Americans seem to be. I also had the intention, which has yet to find its full fruition, to make the blog a place to teach physics and astronomy. As the months passed, I found myself commenting on religion, civil liberties, evolution vs. intelligent design, music, film and a host of more random issues. Since August 2008 the focus understandably switched to my new life in China. I have a wide range of interests, so I suppose the blog reflects that.

February 13th, 2009 | Tags: blogging, hosting, review, stats | Category: Commentary, General stuff | Comments (2)

JISHOU, HUNAN — It’s nice to see a movie for kids that for once doesn’t play games with scientific accuracy. While it may be a fantasy (according to Buzz Aldrin), Fly Me to the Moon keeps its physics pretty darn close to the real thing.

Granted, it’s not on a par with Pixar’s or Disney’s animated features, but this cute little kiddie movie about three young adventure-seeking houseflies is not a complete waste of time. It recreates one of the most exciting moments in US history for a new young audience, while giving them a glimpse of what moving in space is really like.

The plot is pretty simple. Three nerdy flies, Scooter (fat kid), IQ (bespectacled brainiac) and Nat (the ringleader), live in a junkyard near Cape Canaveral within sight of the Apollo 11 launchpad. They all want to have an adventure, like Nat’s grandpa did 37 years ago, but all they can do is dream.

Nat’s grandpa tells him once again his story of how he saved a sleepy Amelia Earhart from splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean by flying up her nose. Nat then decides to hitch a ride on Apollo 11, due to launch the next day.

They successfully become stowaways on the moon mission. They correct an electrical short on the outbound leg. They hide inside the Neil Armstrong’s and Aldrin’s spacesuits to become the first flies on the moon.

November 25th, 2008 | Tags: Apollo 11, Fly Me to the Moon, Physics, review | Category: Commentary, Media, Physics | Comments (1)

You would hope that Scientific American would pan Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” but the reviewer on Fox News? When the network that carries the likes of Sean Hannity can say “‘Expelled’ is a sloppy, all-over-the-place, poorly made (and not just a little boring) ‘expose’ of the scientific community,” you know the movie gotta be bad.

April 10th, 2008 | Tags: expelled, fox news, review, scientific american | Category: Media, Science, Skepticism, evolution | Leave a comment