The Fanboyfriend and I started watching The Big Bang Theory recently, and he was very amused by the following exchange in episode 1×02, “The Big Bran Theory.”
[after inviting Penny over for Thai food and a Superman movie marathon]
Penny: You know, I do like the one where Lois Lane falls from the helicopter and Superman swooshes down and catches her. Which one was that?
Leonard, Sheldon, Wolowitz: *One.*
[Rajh holds up one finger]
Sheldon: You know that scene was rife with scientific inaccuracy?
Penny: Yes, I know men can’t fly…
Sheldon: No, no, let’s assume that they can… Lois Lane is falling, accelerating at an initial rate of 32 feet per second per second… Superman swoops down to save her by reaching out two arms of steel… Miss Lane, who is now traveling at approximately 120 miles an hour, hits them and is immediately sliced into three equal pieces.
So, it’s funny, but the Fanboyfriend thought it was particularly hilarious because I am apparently Sheldon. See, we’ve had discussions before where I go on and on about… well, completely random, generally unimportant nerdy things. And while I can acknowledge that my habit of doing this is pretty funny…
REALLY, the fact that when Wolverine gets toasted, it bothers me that after he’s healed, all of his hair is the same length! I mean, if his hair grows that fast, he’d have to cut it every two hours! It just doesn’t make sense! Of course being able to heal massive third degree burns in a matter of minutes is beyond the realm of scientific accuracy, but even with my own powerful sense of suspension of disbelief, the hair thing just bugs me.
[cough]
So… I’m obviously not the only person who geeks out about stuff like this. What’s the geeky thorn in your side?
TDF Pamela
The Discriminating Fangirl, who is more likely to answer to Pamela if you shout it at her, is currently working on a MA in English, focusing on children's/young adult literature and popular culture. She reads voraciously, loves geeky movies and tv shows, reads comic books as often as she can buy them, and when she's procrastinating, she enjoys playing video games. She can be contacted at t.d.fangirl @ gmail.com and followed on Twitter at the link below.
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Lol, mine is kind of opposite in that I am always defending Batman/Robin when people argue about how they are subpar to, say, well, anyone on the Justice League. Because I know a lot about their skills, I can accurately come back in any argument with why they are still superior. And then people call me a dork and leave. :(
it bothers me that after he’s healed, all of his hair is the same length!
Maybe Wolvie is really an Anne Rice vampire. They can do whatever they like to their hair but when they rise the next night, it’s back to the way it was when they died.
As for my geekish peccadilloes, You know me well enough to know that I have too many to list. ;)
Claire, if someone’s talking with you about which superhero is better, frankly I think they deserve the nerd mantle, too. And I figure, if I’m going to be a nerd, might as well have a vast reserve of knowledge about superhero skills!
Deke, Wolvie as a Rice vamp would really put a cramp on the Wolvie as a werewolf thing. ;)
Characters who are immune to poison or have super healing (like Wolverine) but are still able to get drunk.
sandchigger, I always figured Wolvie just had to drink enough to kill a normal person five times over in order to get drunk. And I’d imagine the buzz would wear off pretty quickly, too.
Maybe if Rice would write about werewolves (I can’t believe I’m actually suggesting she write something!) the same rules would apply.
When you think about it though, most werewolves are follicularly problematic. Where does all that hair come from and where does it go? You can’t just tell me it’s all there just waiting to slide in and out of the skin around the full moon. And if it all falls out, wouldn’t there be HUGE hair drifts, making it easy to track a werewolf down? And wouldn’t ALL their hair be gone and have to regrow?
WHEE! I can be needlessly pedantic about stuff, too! (Though I prefer to think of it as either “magic” or “a curse” to save all the brain-hurty stuff. XD
Wolverine’s regeneration has always been kinda wonky; I saw a comic a few years ago in which he was completely burned to nothing except for his skeleton, yet he still grew back. From what?
It bugs me when they do this, especially when there are easier ways to accomplish the same thing. For example, in Superman 1, Lois Lane is killed in a landslide, so what does Superman do? He flies around the earth in a direction counter to the earth’s rotation until the earth moves backwards, apparently causing time to move backwards as well.
Huh? Wouldn’t that just like completely fuck up the planet as it was ground to pieces between gravity and Superman’s godlike grief? I mean, if we’re going to make up laws of nature and physics, why not just have Superman fly so fast he breaks the time barrier, which is a much more pop-culturally accepted way of time travelling. Why not utilize some crazy Kryptonian technology, which can apparently turn Superman’s S-Shield into a saranwrap entangling weapon and so is obviously up to the job?
How about Spider-Man? If he really got his powers from a radioactive spider, wouldn’t he be shooting webs from his butt rather than his hands?
Lord Fanny, I have trouble wrapping my brain around how skeletonized Logan could regenerate. Maybe… it’s his bone marrow? Who the frak knows? Heh. I think some writer recently explained that he can’t die unless he’s killed by this one particular sword (iirc, that was in the Wolverine: Origins title). Riiiiight.
I’m finding myself being more and more curmudgeonly about shoddy science in my SF. For example, the recent Star Trek movie, while being completely awesome, had some astoundingly bad science. Using a black hole to destroy a supernova? And creating that black hole with red matter, then not even bothering to give a cursory explanation of what red matter is? GAH!
Then again, Trek isn’t exactly known as good, hard science fiction, so maybe I should stop bitching and just enjoy it. ;)