Comments on: Flip the Grip, Fileboner!

By: DoktorAndy

DoktorAndy — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 17:20:02 +0000

I just want to say that everything about this post is awesome.

The part about the comet kills me, but that might be because I was such a fileboner in science.

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:09:33 +0000

I sense the hand of Haney in all this Teen Talk jazz.

By: Tiina

Tiina — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:09:07 +0000

The title “SCIENCE SAYS YOU’RE WRONG…” is of course referring to Bill Science, who was the fileboner of the DC offices at the time. He also said you’re wrong if you believe that it was him who finished the last of the coffee and didn’t make a fresh pot.

By: Wrye

Wrye — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:12:05 +0000

Ah, that makes sense. It was the age of Asimov, after all! We’ve gone from moon landings to moon-landing hoax conspiracy believers since then.

And it looks like it was Halley’s Comet, in 1910, that started the first panic, with one of the earliest uses of spectroscopy to detect elements in cometary tails.

http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/05/dayintech_0519/

The NY Times reported it at the time:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9803E0DC1530E233A25752C1A9639C946196D6CF

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9803E0DC1530E233A25752C1A9639C946196D6CF

By: Johnathan

Johnathan — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 04:09:26 +0000

Oh, there’s nothing wrong with a rock-solid belief in science, but it ain’t what we have now - that and the comet thing were kind of meant to be a bit of a contrast with the state of thinking nowadays but I drifted a bit too much.

It’s not so much that the comet thing is too ridiculous to believe, it’s that nobody concerns themselves with it any more. Likewise, you have not seen someone scoff at the supernatural like a 1960s DC character. Such thinking is not nearly so prevalent today as it was then.