NASA reveals Pulse-Detonation Engine demonstrator

Rickshaw

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Horribly poor journalism. Even by Fox's standards...

http://www.foxnews.com/video/index.html?playerId=videolandingpage&streamingFormat=FLASH&referralObject=1791927&referralPlaylistId=e059f7416cd3e6a978256d927c7bb152d9988581

Not much info, just that NASA say "yes, we have one".
 
This is a world full of ***** discoveries
 

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Look, the fact of the matter is the following:

In the news room there are about six people that sift through all of the wire services looking for content to put on the 24/7 news on cable TV (or the 'regular news networks'), for the news anchor readers to read aloud to the audience.

Most of these people don't know anything really about anything, that fill up the seats "in the backroom". They even misspell words. Their skill is to pull off the news wires things of "arresting interest," in that it will capture people's attention.

Sometimes these staffs will go overboard, either in providing too much, or no news at all.

An example. Last year I think it was there was an accident with a bus in Ohio, and some college students on the way to a baseball playoff series were killed. That was, in essence, perhaps a four minute story. CNN bashed it for 90 minutes, and I know this, because I had to watch it in a waiting room in a medical facility (waiting to transport a maternal ancestor). I wanted to puncture my eardrums. No ads (until 15 minutes to the end of the 90 minutes), and just lots of foolishness and jibber-jabbering on the part of the anchors to fill up the "dead air" because there was not a lot of news flowing in (actually none after the first 10 minutes), on the topic.

Just absolutely, unabashedly horrid.

But I tell you this so that our non-USA members can understand why US News broadcasts is in such a crappy conditional state.

There are other people tasked to "upload" (that is, type up) the news items into an area where the teleprompter guys can grab it. Some of these other people also type up the "screen line tags" that are put on the TV as the talking heads jibber-jabber. That's what OrionBLamBlam has the screen capture of.

I don't think any of these people really know anything about anything. They even misspell words.

Don't expect technical accuracy from any of the news services, especially FOX NEWS (Fair and Balanced! We Report, You Decide!) or CNN.

That these boneheads get it 35% right a lot of the time perhaps can viewed as a minor miracle.

My two cents, and now I am getting off of my soapbox.
 
Greenmartian2008 said:
CNN bashed it for 90 minutes...

This is due to the fact that CNN has to run 24 hours a day, stopping only for commercials. And unlike NASA-TV, CNN can't have "dead air." They have to be in a constant state of yammering. So if nothing new is happening, they have to keep going over the same stuff, over and over, using people who graduated with liberal arts degrees. The talking heads job is to, well, talk. To read off a teleprompter.

But I tell you this so that our non-USA members can understand why US News broadcasts is in such a crappy conditional state.

24/7 explains it quite adequately.

Don't expect technical accuracy from any of the news services, especially FOX NEWS (Fair and Balanced! We Report, You Decide!) or CNN.

Or, in fact, *any* news service. And keep that distrust for more than just technical accuracy, but for all news, especially if there is the remotest possibility of a political angle to it. Distrust the news until it can be verified. Especially distrust anything of a speculative nature. And go into full-blown news-athiest mode if they every say anything positive about a politician.


I'm unsurprised that Fox News' explanation for the PDE was, to say the least, clumsy. The talking head is no more educated on the concept of PDE's than your average actor, and the expert they talked to was probably unprepared. I shudder to imagine what kind of moron I'd come off looking like if I had ten minutes to prepare for an interview on something I'm very familiar with. Or ten hours to prepare. Or ten weeks.

But what's really disturbing is the BBC: they like to pretend that they are top-notch, but they get even the most basic facts on technical, scientific and American matters utterly dead wrong. For example, here is the very first Google hit when searching for "BBC" and "NASA":
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1351319.stm
For those who still think it is a face, built by an ancient race of Martians, the American space agency (Nasa) just wants to say: "look at this picture".

Very first sentence, complete ignorance is put on display. Anybody see it?
 
Technical illiteracy aside: In my experience, what you need to consider when dealing with reporters is this: Reporters do not report in order to tell people news, let alone tell them the truth.

They report in order to sell newspapers or get ratings. Now, I'm not saying that these two are mutually exclusive goals, but you ignore the reporters priorities at your peril.

Or in other words: Much like politicians, real-estate agents, lawyers and used-car salespeople, it's the 90% that give the last 10% a bad name ;D

Regards,

Thomas L. Nielsen
Denmark
 
I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed this noticeably poor case of "reporting".

From the deadhead's comments, it seems like he MAY have believed the computer-generated graphics to be film footage of an actual aircraft! That was my take, anyway –

"Check that out... did you see that go off the runway? It was GONE!"

Describing in layLAYman's terms the operating principal of the engine: "...blows itself up.."

This guy is a real idiot. Every one of his questions or comments bordered on stupidity. And his startled, wide-eyed Gomer Pyle deer-in-the-headlights facial expressions somehow fit his schoolboy demeanor.

GEE-WHIZ, CAPTAIN VIDEO!!! GOOOOLLLLY!!!

I do find it entertaining to watch them come up with different ways to say the same things over and over and over... stating the obvious, regurgitating info alllll dayyyy lonnnnnngggggg. Now THAT is a true art form.

By the way, why do they still use the term "jet fighter" for just about any news item that involves military aircraft. Were they known as "piston-engined fighters" before the advent of jet propulsion?

Ray.
 
You guys are a tough group!

How many of us know everything about everything?

They did their best given the constraints.

The word did get out.
 
shockonlip said:
You guys are a tough group!

How many of us know everything about everything?

They did their best given the constraints.

The word did get out.

Well something got out. ;D As for people here having to know everything about everything we're not being paid to be accurate. I'd hope accuracy is in the job description for a news agency.
 
sferrin said:
shockonlip said:
You guys are a tough group!

How many of us know everything about everything?

They did their best given the constraints.

The word did get out.

Well something got out. ;D As for people here having to know everything about everything we're not being paid to be accurate. I'd hope accuracy is in the job description for a news agency.

People are human, even if they are paid!
 
Orionblamblam said:
But what's really disturbing is the BBC: they like to pretend that they are top-notch, but they get even the most basic facts on technical, scientific and American matters utterly dead wrong. For example, here is the very first Google hit when searching for "BBC" and "NASA":
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1351319.stm
For those who still think it is a face, built by an ancient race of Martians, the American space agency (Nasa) just wants to say: "look at this picture".

Very first sentence, complete ignorance is put on display. Anybody see it?

Hmmm...the use of 'American' instead of 'United States'? Incomplete capitalisation for NASA?

Do I get a cookie? ;)
 
Orionblamblam said:
starviking said:
Incomplete capitalisation for NASA?

Ding ding ding! We have a winner!!!

What the hell is it with the Bbc over there in the Uk? Do they do the same with the Raf?

It's just that the 'spellchecker generation' have entered the workforce. Lots of them... :mad:
 
So the Blackswift is a PDE? Is that why it's ducts are longer than would most waverider designs?
 
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