Dim Brits think TARDIS IS REAL In the BBC series How TV Ruined Your Life, one-time games reviewer Charlie Brooker talks at length about the British public literally believing what is seen on their screens. This has now been confirmed with some investigative numberwang which shows that a large percentage of Brits are convinced fictional technology from …
When they take some hugely elaborate experiment that can sometimes synch up the spin of a couple of electrons a few atoms apart and claim they've invented teleportation, even in supposedly scientific journals and magazines.
Or find that a particularly focused laser can ping a few photons onto the back of an object they're shooting it past and get headlines saying they've invented the tractor beam.
Although there are alot of fuckwits out there...
My 5 years old knows light sabres are not real, although he does wish they were 9he has an 8 year old brother and 2 year old sister - not sure who he would take out first)
There are a lot of dim people, just like there are lot of smart people, in all corners of the world. Is there an equivalent survey, for example, taken in America (I'm thinking somewhere in the deep south)
... remember that's a Yankee myth based on Saint Nick that unfortunately caught on worldwide... I believe it really caught on after those pre WWII coke adverts.
Society and culture truly evolves.
Nowadays, Christmas isn't about the big guy in the sky anymore but that fat arsehole and his reindeer. And decadence and consumerism.
Makes you wonder what's truly important
The only thing worse than a poorly written research report, is an article accepting it without any evidence of critical thought! Having just read the original "news" release from Birmingham Science City (whatever that is), I'd like to see details of how they chose their 3000 participants: based on the ridiculous and vague questions they used, I think I can guess at the quality of their sampling!
"Seven out of ten adults questioned thought it was impossible to move objects with their mind" - I think I'd probably agree. But apparently, that's wrong because technology exists that can "read analogue electrical brainwaves and turn them into digital signals". Huh?
And I'd commend the 30% who agreed that "time travel is actually possible" due to their clearer understanding of relativity! We time travel forward in time without any difficulty, and furthermore, not at a fixed rate - the Discovery astronauts will have travelled forward very slightly in time from our reference frame. And so do you every time you get in a plane.
Time travel _is_ possible. Going backwards is a significant problem, however.
So is memory erasure, at least in rats. There are reports out on the interwebs going back 5 years or so about a team at NYU who have done so.
"Can stars sing?" - apparently the answer is yes because stars vibrate at characteristic frequencies related to their size and age. Sorry, but in my book singing are sounds of a musical nature that are produced by animals. Saying stars sing is akin to saying that rocks sing when they hit each other.
If the other questions were as vague as the few up on their website it's of little wonder that so many answered "wrongly", even allowing for micturators.
I'm fairly sure there's no inherent need for a sound to have been produced by an animal for it to be described as singing. Dictionary.com has quite a few definitions that wouldn't meet that criterion.
But to be fair, that does make your point. Stars 'sing' in pretty much the same way that a river runs. It makes the question a bit meaningless.
I just saw a tweet from Channel 4 News reporting that the state of Oregon had issued a warning to citizens regarding the possibility of a tsunami.
They had to mention that Oregon was in the USA. I can't think of there being another Oregon (just checked Wikipedia, and while there are several Oregons, there is only one state named Oregon. All the other Oregons are towns in various other states).
I need a drink.
In the TV coverage of the tsunami in Indonesia, a Coronation Street actress who was holidaying there told the interviewer that she had been OK because "fortunately our hotel was uphill from the beach". Ever since, I have been trying to book a stay at one of the other hotels, that are downhill from the beach. It seems to me something that one ought to experience.
Time travel *is* possible - did it specifically ask about time travel into the past?
It's unclear whether the questions were asking specifically what technological inventions people thought existed, or was more broader than that. I mean, you get people thinking that time travel, teleportation and levitation is possible, through supernatural means. Still rather depressing - but then, we get a large proportion of the population thinking we can have virgin births and ressurrection from the dead...
And if we're going to mock, let's pick up the point that the link claims that stars can sing, based on that oscillations can be converted to noise. If you're going to allow that sloppy twisting of definitions, it doesn't seem unreasonable to claim I can see gravity, because I can see apples falling, or that alcohol counts as erasing memory.
What's more shocking is how many journalists think that Britons think that the TARDIS is real - the survey doesn't claim that at all.
A lot of Brits believe that they have special magic invisible friend - one that lives in the sky forever and ever and he done made everything just by thinking about it! And if you say that he doesn't then he do make you go to a bad place under the ground where you will burn and burn and nasty men with horns will prod you with sticks FOREVER - it's true!
I'm pretty sure this is possible with our current level of technology, just not particularly cost effective.
It's the same principle as mag-lev trains, a board shouldn't pose too much of a problem. The rollout of a superconducting infrastructure to support it might be a bit of an issue though.
What is this complete and utter wank?
It's like I don't even know where to start with the flaws in this "story"
"Almost a quarter of us believe teleportation can be done."
CAN BE DONE != IS BEING DONE
I don't understand what is going on here. Is this a joke? Are you trolling? Are the apes running riot while the editor is out?
Appropriate icon, if time travel isn't possible, how did the terminator get back to '84?
I googled hoverboard and the third result was this .....
"The hoverboard uses high performance hovercraft technology to lift a 200+lb rider 1 inch above the ground. A 6 horsepower 4-stroke gasoline engine spins a multi bladed propeller to force air under the craft.
A special flexible skirt (which acts like an air bag) is used to help trap air under the craft to increase efficiency. There is a slight gap between the flexible skirt and the surface while it's hovering. When hovering, the craft is virtually friction free and only requires a small thrust to move at high speeds. The craft hovers best over smooth flat surfaces.
* Uses high performance hovercraft technology
* Can lift a 200+lb rider 1 inch above the ground
* Has been used over a variety of terrains
* Handheld control allows for steering and speed
* 5ft long by 2ft wide
* Can move forward at high speeds
Although we have been designing and building Hoverboards since 1997, we have finally decided to offer construction plans for anyone interested in building their own. This design was one of our most successful and easy to buils. The plans are easy to follow and a working Hoverboard can usually be built for under $500 including the engine.
This design uses a single vertical shaft lawnmover engine. It can hover and can move forward and turn left and right. Handheld controls are used to steer and change engine speed. It can be built in approximately 24 to 36 hours depending on the builders skill"
Yes it's been done for a LONG TIME, first heat the water, often this was achieved by use of a coal fire. When the water reaches a suitable temperature it undergoes a change of state to become a gas, and can be used, under pressure, to drive pistons back and forward, or turn a turbine.
Of course today the heat might come from a small nuclear reactor.
There are also reports of a medical company having exxposed salt water to some radioactive source causing it to be combustable much as petrol (gasoline) is, althogh as yet they don't quite know why.
Pretty sure I read a study where some boffins managed to "teleport" an atom by cloning its information into another atom and destroying both the original atom and the destination atom info, allowing it to have technically teleported across a distance - it wasn't teleport in the Star Trek sense, but it was teleporting.
I remember some time ago a survey showed that about 1 brit out of 3 believed the Everest to be located in the UK.
At the time some scholar attributed that to Mt Everest being a very "British" mountain, as far as climbing it goes, and also to the fact that the British education system is based more on the "building "of individuals than on the acquisition of knowledge (in the lower grades at least). Although, being of French descent myself, I won't just yet dismiss the possibility that English people are just dimwits, and dragged the rest of the UK down (as opposed to, say, the Scots, who are fine chaps and at least have the decency to lose rugby games).
If people did not believe in the impossible, we would not have the wheel, engines, electricity, flying, space travel, mobile phones (imagine that).
Microchips need quantum physics to work, something Einstein thought was impossible at first.
Great discoveries come from people who believe in the impossible. Though I must admit, most of them are wrong.
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