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[Phys-L] Re: The West Wing



Does this meen we won't find out whether Russia and China go to war?
My wife refuses to watch tv with me if there's a science aspect involved; I yell at the characters when they do something like this. I was also troubled last night when the steam vented into the "auxiliary room" wouldn't condense to relieve the pressure.
skip

-----Original Message-----
From: Forum for Physics Educators [mailto:PHYS-L@list1.ucc.nau.edu]On
Behalf Of Leigh Palmer
Sent: Monday, January 23, 2006 12:04 PM
To: PHYS-L@LISTS.NAU.EDU
Subject: The West Wing


Last evening I watched my favorite soap opera, "The West Wing", on
NBC television. The episode's focus was on a catastrophic incident at
a nuclear rector "near San Diego", presumably at San Onofre, though
it was fictionalized to "San Andreo" in the story. The events that
transpired at the reactor during the episode were only reported in
Washington; there was no effort made to simulate the incident itself.
Many distortions of scientific fact followed during the few hours
between the first report of the incident and its final resolution,
including a death from "radiation sickness" of an engineer,
ostensibly from a dose of radiation of order of magnitude 10 rem
(roentgen effective man*). (The script didn't seem to discriminate
between radiation dose, dose rate, and quantity of activity, so it
would be difficult to justify the calculation which led me to that
conclusion.) I won't belabor the details, too numerous to recount,
but it is very clear that the series pays no attention whatsoever to
verisimilitude when it comes to science. The message which was
delivered is the PC liberal dogma that anything nuclear (or should I
say "nuculer"?) is evil, and scientific accuracy could be justifiably
sacrificed given the unquestionable nobility of that message.

I was not at all unhappy to read in this morning's paper that NBC
will cancel "The West Wing".

Leigh

* I wonder if the writers know that the "m" in "rem" stands for
"man"? A PC scientific advisor might have steered them to grays and
sieverts, or else invented on the spot a new gender neutral unit, the
"rep"!
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