RE: New 007 movie

["Franta, Jaroslav" <frantaj@aecl.ca>]

> Weiner, Ruth[SMTP:rfweine@sandia.gov] wrote on Wednesday, November 24,
> 1999 2:46 PM
> 
> Agreed! And since when was ANY James Bond good (or even reasonable)
> science?
<><><><><><><><>

Personally, I thought that the depiction of a pool-type nuclear reactor in
the very old film "Dr. No" was fairly convincing - just that it was botched
with an unlikely connection to an (electric ?) powered laser of very high
intensity (there was no turbogenerator in sight, if I remember correctly,
and no way to operate at high power in an unpressurised reactor..), and the
explosion at the end was also uncharacteristic (compared to BORAX or SL-1).
In "Thunderbolt," the flying rocketbelt was an actual, working piece of
(hydrogen-peroxide-fueled) equipment - no simulation... and there did not
appear to be anything unrealistic about the Vulcan RAF bombers, or the
nuclear bombs they were carrying...

...the "realism" of these 007 movies has generally declined with their
overall quality and entertainment value over the years - no doubt because
there is a direct relationship (audiences resent being taken for a bunch of
idiots..). Today we have reached the point of an unending stream of
rediculous absurdities. Its the kiddies that are shelling out G$ for this
silliness.

((in contrast to comments in a previous posting on this list however, I
offer the following, from Charles L. Owen, Institute of Design, Illinois
Institute of Technology:

"Imagine very complex materials which--in a funny sense--are not materials,
but collections of machines, except from our scale they look like a
material. And yet...because they're machines they can sense and act, so that
the material itself in our scale can change in sophisticated ways. You can
image some of the things in movies like Terminator II really
happening--materials 'morphing,' changing into different forms."
...posted at http://www.foresight.org/Updates/Update20/Update20.3.html ))

jaro
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