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August 09, 2004
"It's cold and there are wolves"
Some might consider it cruel to send a paleoclimatologist to see The Day After Tomorrow. The denizens of rec.arts.sf.written aren't so much cruel as mischievous: they did at least have a whip-round to pay for Dr William Hyde's ticket. The good doctor did manage to find some praiseworthy elements:
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The movie is at its most stunningly accurate in its portrayal of paleoclimatologists.
Paleoclimatologists are notoriously brave and of course very fit. Nary a one of us would hesitate to jump a widening crevasse - twice - while wearing arctic gear - to recover some ice cores which would take 2-3 hours to re-drill. We're watching out for *your* tax dollars. Score one for the movie.
Paleoclimatologists are also notoriously handsome/beautiful, indeed, the envy and despair of other scientists (because frostbite gives the skin such a youthful appearance). I cannot fault the producers for failing to cast realistically good-looking people in these roles (Dennis Quaid barely qualifies as handsome enough) but I suspect that there just aren't enough good looking actors in Hollywood to populate a typical paleoclimatic working group.
Also, we think nothing of writing 50,000 lines of flawless code in 48 hours. Unlike Jeff Goldblum we don't do it while drunk. We could if we are allowed to, but NOAA has fallen victim to "alcoholic correctness".
Now I'm through saying positive things.
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Posted by John at August 9, 2004 11:35 PM
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