Must See Movie List for Engineers

Have you seen “Primer”? And you call yourself an engineer or a film maker? Hah! They made it for $7000 bucks, its about engineers and time-travel. There’s a long-hanging question for a while: “You know what they do with engineers when they hit 40 (30?), don’t you?”.  Spoiler alert: STOP READING HERE! It might be a reference to how all great scientific advances are made by age 25 or so, tops, but the long wind-up punch-line is “They take them out and shoot them”. The line is delivered dead-pan by a kind of lovable old engineer. Reminded me of the old grubby guys that trained me, back in the day.

Anyway, it’s a great flick, and it inspires my own “Movie Classics That Every Engineer Should See!” list:

“Hardware“,  just because it’s so damned weird!  While it does stress proper re-cycling techniques (1. MAKE SURE THE DAMNED THING IS REALLY DEAD FIRST!!!!… ). The weirdo breather video-calls were a fun kink, taken here to it’s highest form and a typical end for the caller-perv. The rest is just fun and weirdness and fighting a robot that looks creepy as Hell and the wingman is on acid and trying to keep to together and help out, but, well, you know. Probably Slightly Less Boring Than Working life/death struggle and Iggy Pop as the DJ on the radio in the background. Nothing better than that, eh?

Okay, a movie with class? You know “2001: A Space Odyssey” would have gotten first place is I weren’t so curmudgeonly lately. It explains nothing and, ignoring some brand-names (sorry Pan-Am), a lot is starting to line up, if only a little late. Futurists tend toward either way optimist or way pessimist I find. Maybe no-one writes down what the vast normal crowd in the middle says enough to write it down. Largely, that’s an irony of history.

You can watch “City of Ember” with your kids, and see if it hold their attention more than yours. The scary parts are just scary enough and very brief. I love it, myself. “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” is still a classic! This may be considered a seminal work in the steampunk media canon. Of course, “Modern Times” brings in the warm human heart of the Little Tramp, who lived through a wave of this ‘progress’ mess.

“3 Idiots” is a Bollywood slapstick import centering on the search for a lost classmate. This one is a must see. Best movie I saw the year it came out, in fact.

Nothing more fun for engineers than “The Flight of the Phoenix“. Yes, I do prefer the Jimmy Stewart version, in fact. The later one, not so much.

Talk about your chess club nerd wish fulfillment, I still get a kick out of “Explorers“. It’s much more dignified than “Weird Science“, in which Ms. LeBrock’s best assets and efforts combined to make it a memorable performance, but not what you’d call “Art”, but amusing anyway.

A lot less fluff in “Apollo 13“, which captured the  heroic guys in short hair and white shirts using slide-rules to save the guys with ‘the right stuff’. It’s inspiring.

 These are listed in no coherent order as yet.
You got any candidates? Leave them in the comments.

It’s “Whack-a-Mole” Wednesday!

“Anybody who watches Fox News knows that there is an inherent anti-Muslim bias in their reporting and has been for quite some time,” Reza Aslan said on Wednesday. “I don’t actually blame them for it. They’re a commercial enterprise. They know how to sell a product and, frankly, fear sells a product.” Lauren Green’s interview with Aslan set a new low for television interviews, even for Fox News, and Aslan says he feels really bad for her.

National Security Agency director Gen. Keith Alexander was met with jeers and heckling Wednesday at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, and for good reason.

Oklahoma native Bradley Manning faces up to 136 years in prison, despite being cleared of the “aiding the enemy” charges brought against him. The sentencing phase of his trial began today. I say we bust him out!

The Real House Thieves of New Jersey: David Dayen points out the absurdity and hypocrisy of the Obama/Holder Justice Department. Wall Street banksters illegally foreclosed on 244,000 customers for an estimated $48 billion, defrauded mortgage investors, manipulated energy prices, and fraudulently tampered with lending rates at a total cost that may well run into the trillions. How does the Obama/Holder DoJ indictment count reflect the magnitude of criminality? Let’s look at the record.

Indictments for reality TV stars who accused of defrauding banks in order to obtain approximately $2.4 million in loans: 2.

Indictments of bankers who falsified millions of loan documents, defrauded homeowners and investors, evaded local property sales taxes, and committed multiple other frauds large and small: 0.

Sometimes we do see a glimmer of justice: Judge to serve 28 years after making $2 million for sending black children to jail.

Craven senators Max Baucus and Orrin Hatch want to use this one weird trick to shield authors of toxic tax giveaways from the public view.

A new analysis of the writings of mass killers reports they suffer from an intense form of paranoia.

On the occasion of Stanley Kubrick’s 85th birthday, explore the director’s favourite films.

Avondale (AZ) police say they arrested a man Monday afternoon who allegedly started a fire in his bedroom closet because he was trying to rid his room of demons. Haha- demons LIKE fire, you whacko!

Looney Pat Robertson tells viewer with ‘demons’ to ‘burn the house down’ or get exorcism. Haha- demons LIKE fire, you whacko!

Aleppo rebel religious committee forbids ‘colonial’ croissants.

Dog eats paralyzed man’s testicle.

Here’s Boris Karloff’s sherry-infused guacamole recipe, because it’s AWESOME that Frankenstein liked guacamole.

Donald Duck teaches us about family planning, a dozen years before this bizarre ‘abstinence only’ horseshit took hold: