I hate them.  Got the TV on in the background, and there's a could-be-interesting documentary about an autistic guy.  They just said pi "appears to be infinite", though, which for some reason has really irritated me.

For sufficiently small values of "infinite"

The worst is the "true-life" alien stories or the pseudo-scientific psychic shows.

PI.IsVeryInfinite()

For those who know math, I got a question.

Is proved that PI is an irrational? Can you proof that?

Great stuff. I'm forgetting my math classes. I got to back to study again.

well, circles are curved, therefore they're female, therefore ...

I too hate them. They have the trappings for what looks and sounds scientific on the face of it. I wonder if anyone can make a good documentary without it being pseudo scientific.

In a similar way, I remember a scene that irritated me in Dante's Peak. I think as a movie it was much better than Volcano. I don't remember the scene well. A colleague of Brosnan or his senior explains some data and says why a volcano is not possible. It was scientific and serious, something Brosnan should have better told. But later Brosnan says something like he doesn't know why but he's got an ability to predict a volcano. The colleague then apologizes. Like he apologizes for being scientific.

People can get lost in data and the process and make mistakes but there's a lot of progress when people do it correctly. There are more chances that Brosnan's colleague may be right more times than one who is not scientific. But how do we show such a thing on screen?

Any moron can have the facts, but having an opinion is an art.

Many proverbs or pithy phrases have an aura of authority more than they deserve. And they go by opposites. If someone says one, you quote the other.

Having an opinion is an art but like Mark Twain said, "Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please."... :)

Not directly related to what's discussed above but Satyajit Ray liked detective stories but he said that whodunits don't lend themselves for being shown on screen. The main part where the detective unravels the whole mystery towards the end would show up very bad on screen, he said.

Avoiding such a big narrative something akin to a detective story can be made on screen. I feel that Hitchcock's 'Dial M for Murder' is a good example that such a thing can be done. They discuss details of where the key was placed and how someone who knew the fact would react and all. But there is no one lengthy movie and it's good to watch too.

I believe something similar can be done to bring in scientific thought to to screen. Or may be it was done and am not aware of it.

"and says why a volcano is not possible."
Wha...???

I'm not sure what you are asking John. I don't remember the scene exactly. Brosnan predicts volcano and the other person says it is not likely. Not any volcano but the one which erupts then. Basically, it shows how good the hero is.

Ah.  A particular volcanic *eruption*, as opposed to volcanos-in-general.