No, Really, That's Enough

TV has really gotten on my nerves today. It usually does, but this time, it's gotten in my nerves in two very specific ways.

The first is an ad for the TV show Brink, which strikes me as a sort of gosh-wow science show for the people who don't know much about science. Brink as a word is apparently a neologism intended to convey a sense of cutting-edge science-ness, or, for lack of a better set of words, gosh-wow-ness. And here's the bit that really gets under my skin. "A lunar rover? Not brink. A Mars rover built in someone's back yard? Brink!"

Wait a goddamned minute here. You design and build a lunar rover that not only meets certain critical weight and space requirements, but folds up so it can be stored in the descent stage of the LM and survive the vibration and gee forces of flight on a gol-durned Saturn V, but can be unfolded and deployed by only two men wearing highly restrictive spacesuits, and it works and allows the astronauts to travel a much farther across the moon's surface while providing excellent-quality TV pictures and telemetry, and that's not brink? But some guy builds an obvious clone of Spirit and Opportunity in his back yard and drives it across his lawn and it hasn't so much as been near a booster and that's somehow brink?

Oy. In other words, Brink isn't brink. No need for me to waste time with that clinker. I anticipate that watching it will only cause me to hemmorhage.

The second item is when Michio Kaku asks the plaintive question "What the heck is a parallel universe anyway?" Oh, I know what they're thinking, but I also know what I'm thinking, which is "A parallel universe is really a fanciful bit of fiction intended to buttress a particularly messianic interpretation of the superstring guess (it doesn't yet qualify as a theory) but since a parallel universe can't (as far I know) be measured or accessed in any way, it's just as much fun to imagine that my garage is occupied by invisble, massless blue Hungarians who dance and cavort and would be great fun to watch if we could figure out a way to actually see them or hear their multi-dimensional accordions."

He's better off asking "What the heck is a misleading question anyway?"

Back to my book. At least Brian Lumley hasn't yet employed the word "brink" or demanded an accounting of me about the nature of parallel universes.