There is nothing like an inane fear of sharks to channel our behavior.
How lucky do you feel, or are you afraid of flying also?-Tom
Crummy science is what Scientific American is all about these days - they should love ‘Jaws’. Not enough left-wing posturing?
Love the movie...just love it. I don’t really care that it is “bad science”...:)
The characters in it are wonderful. I watch it about once a year just for kicks, even when you now see how hokey the shark looks at the end of the movie.
If you put the choice to people “Would you rather be eaten by a giant shark, or fatally hit by a bolt of lightning?” most people would run to the nearest open field in a thunderstorm!
Love sharks! Went on special scuba diving trip to see them. Spent two nights on Long Island, Bahamas. They had shark night dives and feeding frenzy dives. Not fond of night dives but the feeding frenzy dives were fantastic.
LOL. Crummy science. Like undetectable matter and energy that just “have to be there, though we can’t find it?”
We watch movies to be entertained, not to learn the ultimate secrets of the universe. Which scientists don’t have, anyhow.
In the novel, Amity was on Long Island, not in New England.
Can’t wait for their review of Godzilla, Mothra and King Kong.
It’s quite common to have a fear of open ocean swimming, whether irrational or not.
I do it, but I get freaked out every once in a while.
I saw Jaws when I was 6, totally scared the shit out of me.
Only The Shining was worse for me as a kid.
I vividly remember seeing that movie with my father as a 12-year-old. The crowd outside the theater was enormous and my father fought his way to the ticket booth, dragging me with him. It was a PG-13 movie at the time and anybody younger had to have an adult with them. People who couldn’t get in waited the 2 hours outside for the next showing. It was insane, the box office that movie did that summer.
Peter Benchley said before he died that as a matter of conscience, knowing what he learned about sharks since he wrote his novel, he could not have written that book again.
I have never understood scary movies that featured monsters or threats from creatures who live in the ocean. Um, just stay out of it. No giant octopus is going to crawl up to Iowa any time soon.
Oceans? Shark attacks have occurred up the Mississippi River to Minnesota and on the Great Lakes. Far up rivers on the Gulf & East Coast rivers.
“How lucky do you feel, or are you afraid of flying also?”
I did most of my sky diving at a company that had the highest injury and death rate anywhere in the US.
It’s a good thing we have scientists around to explain to us that a fictional movie is ... well, fictional.
Right off the bat, they piss me off by complaining that the shark in Jaws was too big. How could they write an entire article on Jaws without appreciating THE Jaws meme, “You’re going to need a bigger boat”
What do they mean, crummy science? I saw the shark for myself. In the water. At Universal Studios.
Can't wait till they analyze Sharknado and try to convince us it can't happen..............Sheesh!
Why are you driving traffic to Scientific American?
You are a troll.
When Jaws came out, “relatively little was known about the white shark. We know a lot more now about white shark ecology, distribution and natural history,” says Skomal.
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Now we know Great White Sharks are mostly peaceful. Except if you splash the water. Or there’s any blood in the water. Or the shark is hungry. Or it’s nighttime. Or very bright and sunny.