Google Analytics

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Banjo on - Discovery Channel's lack of Science

A couple of things really bug me, and when it occurs on the Science Channel or Discovery Channel, it bugs me even more.  The fact that it happens on the Daily Show isn't a surprise at all.  And of course, all channels are guilty - it just seems to me that those channels that infer they pertain to science, should make a better attempt to do so.

Here they are:
 1 - When showing a sunrise and/or sunset in the Northern Hemisphere, they show the sun rising/setting at the wrong angle.  Here's what I mean by that: In the Northern Hemisphere, on every day of the year, a picture of sunrise will show the sun traversing at an angle to the right.  Sort of like this ___/ ___  , where I'm trying to show, by the '/' the correct angle the sun takes as it rises above the horizon.  If you are watching some dumb show and it shows sunrise like this ___\___ (traversing to the left) then you know they don't know their butt from a hole in the ground.  Conversely, when they show a sunset like this ___/___, instead of the correct setting angle of ___\___, then again they don't know their butt from a hole in the ground.  What they are doing is being lazy.  They don't want to get up and set up early enough to show a real sunrise, so they film a sunset and run it in reverse, and they are either too stupid to realize there's a difference, or else they think you are too stupid to notice.  In either case, they are pushing inaccurate information at you.

2. On the daily show, and occasionally on other shows as well, they show the earth rotating in the wrong direction.  When you look at the typical globe (and as done on the Daily Show), the Northern Hemisphere is shown at the top of the globe (note that in space, if you were looking at the earth, depending on where your head and feet were, either pole could be at the top, so the Northern Hemisphere is shown at the top by convention).  So, with that in mind, if you were oriented in space and looking at the earth so the North Pole is at the top, then locations on the earth will appear to you to be moving from the left to the right.  If you were looking down on the earth from directly above the North Pole, then the earth would appear to be turning counterclockwise.  The Daily Show opening has the earth spinning clockwise, and moving from right to left.  So, is this a political statement from the Daily Show, where they show everything moving from the right to the left, instead of the accurate movement from left to right?  Or are they simply too stupid and too lazy to check it out before publishing it in front of millions? 

No comments:

Post a Comment