That Bleeping Movie

slingblade

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I ran into another member of my college cohort at my school yesterday. She's doing her pre-internship, and will student teach in the fall.

She loves that Bleeping movie, and I have a painful admission to make: I saw part of it before I took my class on skepticism, and there was just enough "truth" in it to fool me. I also didn't have any baloney detection kit. As soon as I figured out it was a load of premium horse hockey, I told this woman, who was simply enraptured by the film and bought every word of it, that it was just so much bull. She rejected my argument completely.

Yesterday, she reminded me about the movie, and I sighed to myself. Then she asked if I remembered the part about the water crystals. Yes, I remembered. Well, she's getting ready to put a lesson plan together about it.

Imagine how thrilled I am that a teacher is about to spread this nonsense to a bunch of kids who don't have crit thinking skills, and will probably swallow every word.

I'm very sad. Here I am, trying my best to teach skepticism to my students, while she is teaching them to be gullible and accept nonsense.

I despair.
 
Why don't you offer to help her put her lesson plan together? In particular, suggest that she demonstrates the "Emoto effect" practically with an experiment involving freezing various types of water - distilled, tap, stream water etc - with various labels on the bottle, then getting the students to decide which set of crystals came from which bottle.
That way, you might just persuade even her how silly the whole idea is! Certainly, it may kick-start some of the students into thinking critically, when they can see for themselves that thee's no difference in the crystals.
 
I feel your pain, but take heart; there is hope left in the world:

I'm currently teaching university sophomore-level physics. Last week, we had begun introductory Quantum Mechanics. During a discussion session (where students are arranged in groups of 4 to answer some non-trivial questions), one student asked me about That Bleeping Movie. I immediately told him that it was crap. Pure and total crap. This piqued the interest of some other students, and they began listening to me. I told them that it got the physics all wrong. I went on to explain the difference between Quantum Mechanics (mathematical description of reality) and the Copenhagen Interpretation (wordy interpretation of QM).

I went on for awhile, decribing how the Copenhagen Interpretation is useful in certain situations, while other interpretations exist but have their own uses. In the end, however, it doesn't matter: even if we don't "understand" QM on a wishy-washy philisophical level, it's still a correct theory.

To clinch it, I talked about some weird results of QM. The students always like hearing tidbits of advanced physics. I think that was the draw of the movie for most of them (they are engineers, after all).

But now they've heard The Real Scoop from a (hopefully) knowledgable and (even more hopefully) trusted source. From reading their faces, it looked like most of them took what I said to heart, and may think about that movie (and future incarnations) more critically.

The end.
 
sophia8 said:
Why don't you offer to help her put her lesson plan together? In particular, suggest that she demonstrates the "Emoto effect" practically with an experiment involving freezing various types of water - distilled, tap, stream water etc - with various labels on the bottle, then getting the students to decide which set of crystals came from which bottle.
That way, you might just persuade even her how silly the whole idea is! Certainly, it may kick-start some of the students into thinking critically, when they can see for themselves that there's no difference in the crystals.
Click to expand...

I frankly don't have time to do my own planning, much less help her, although it is a good idea. In fact, it's a very good idea, and I only wish I could do it.

I also can't figure out how she plans to work this into an English class. I can't see how she could make it fit into that context.
 
A friend of our is a lawyer and an excellent cook. We had just finished consuming one of his fantabulous meals, when my wife noticed "What the..." from a movie rental place on his endtable. She asked what he thought. He said it was the best movie he'd ever seen.

Hoping for many more exceptional meal invites, I kept my big-fat trap shut.
 
I have heard too much about this movie. I guess I am going to have to watch it just so I can respond to others. The fact that it has "Ramtha" on it makes me want to hork.:sour: How bad is it???

glenn:boxedin:

jimbo07...was the food that good????
 
glennmr78 said:
jimbo07...was the food that good????
Click to expand...

Some things in life just trump the heck out of skepticism.

He also throws really good parties (attended by doctors, crown prosecutors, etc. and l'il ol' me), at which he also serves good food.

He doesn't need to know how terrible I thought the movie was. I mentioned this to my wife later. Also, I no longer talk to my Dad regarding Crystals, the Knights Templar, etc. Fighting with woo-oriented middle-aged men hasn't been doing anything for me lately...
 
What movie are you talking about? Is the title "Bleeping" or are you just using a euphemism?
 
TV's Frank said:
I feel your pain, but take heart; there is hope left in the world:

I'm currently teaching university sophomore-level physics. Last week, we had begun introductory Quantum Mechanics. During a discussion session (where students are arranged in groups of 4 to answer some non-trivial questions), one student asked me about That Bleeping Movie. I immediately told him that it was crap. Pure and total crap. This piqued the interest of some other students, and they began listening to me. I told them that it got the physics all wrong. I went on to explain the difference between Quantum Mechanics (mathematical description of reality) and the Copenhagen Interpretation (wordy interpretation of QM).

I went on for awhile, decribing how the Copenhagen Interpretation is useful in certain situations, while other interpretations exist but have their own uses. In the end, however, it doesn't matter: even if we don't "understand" QM on a wishy-washy philisophical level, it's still a correct theory.

To clinch it, I talked about some weird results of QM. The students always like hearing tidbits of advanced physics. I think that was the draw of the movie for most of them (they are engineers, after all).

But now they've heard The Real Scoop from a (hopefully) knowledgable and (even more hopefully) trusted source. From reading their faces, it looked like most of them took what I said to heart, and may think about that movie (and future incarnations) more critically.

The end.
Click to expand...
So everything in the movie was all wrong? :confused:

What about all the information about renewing or reordering the mind by realizing that chemicals or neuron firings in the brain (?) flow in correspondence with past experiences and that we can shape our world and our attitudes more than we may be aware? What about these aspects of the movie?
 
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slingblade said:
I frankly don't have time to do my own planning, much less help her, although it is a good idea. In fact, it's a very good idea, and I only wish I could do it.

I also can't figure out how she plans to work this into an English class. I can't see how she could make it fit into that context.
Click to expand...
I can - something to so with the transforming power of words/language, I imagine. Though how she's going to demonstrate it, I haven't a clue.
 
Sophia, that may be what she plans. Funny thing: she almost took the skepticism class, too, since the class description said it was about magic and miracles, fairies, witches, and UFOs. She thought we were going to study those things, not debunk them.

She was glad later she didn't take it, as she would hate for anyone to disabuse her of her beliefs. In fact, several of the students in the class were unhappy with this, as they thought the same thing.

She also told me in one of our shared classes that she was psychic. "No, really!"

I have attached custom wheels to my eyes. Makes it easier to roll them.
 
slingblade said:
She was glad later she didn't take it, as she would hate for anyone to disabuse her of her beliefs.
Click to expand...

This is the aspect of the woo mind that I will never understand. It's like they pick what they believe and grow attached to that belief, and like it so much they don't care if it's really true or not. I just don't get that. I don't choose what I believe. My brain processes whatever data it gets and spits out a theory. My conscious will is not involved. How I feel about what I believe is irrelevant to whether it's true or not. I would never say "I'd hate for anyone to disabuse me of my beliefs", because if they were able to it would be because they had better evidence, and my view would alter to a more-likely-correct one, and I'd be wiser for it. It would be crazy to just refuse the opportunity to confirm or correct knowledge.
 
I always find it ironic when a believer tells me that my mind is closed.. it's usually after I've thoroughly given mundane explanations for every anecdote they've thrown at me.

Yep, my mind is closed, yet they ignore all explanations that don't support their beliefs.
 
ruach1 said:
So everything in the movie was all wrong? :confused:

What about all the information about renewing or reordering the mind by realizing that chemicals or neuron firings in the brain (?) flow in correspondence with past experiences and that we can shape our world and our attitudes more than we may be aware? What about these aspects of the movie?
Click to expand...

They were probably oversimplified, you really cannot shape your world, just your reactions to it. I have not seen the movie, but I read this: http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2005/04/what_the_bleep_.html

I was also told by a "What the Bleep" fan that the natives literally did not see the ships Columbus sailed in because they had never see ships. The natives (Carib indians) were on islands, and they traveled between these islands in canoes... some which were large enought for 60, sixty! people. The idea that they did not see what would have been (slightly) larger canoes with bit sails coming ashore is totally ludicrous.

I tried to explain this to the person who told me this (also explaining I had spent a good portion of my youth living in Venezuela and Panama, which including learning some of the history, including the eventual genocide of the Carib... our "Venezuelan History and Social Studies" teacher did not hide any of the nasty stuff, and she was Venezuelan). There was no convincing her. She responded by taping it off of her cable service and giving me a copy because this movie makes her happy. :boggled:
 
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