Seek to Misconstrue + a
Failure: The Blog 
October 2012
- 'Goldeneye' Creators Had Almost No Experience
- Flushing Away an Enormous Problem
- The Little Lie About the Biggest Mountain
- You Should Unfriend 10 People on Facebook
- Inventor of Most Popular Guitar Could Not Play Guitar
- TV Show Star And High School Dropout
September 2012
- In Praise of Mediocrity
- The Failure to Patent a Billion Dollar Formula
- This Bus Stop is a Fake
- [VIDEO] A Hollywood Camera Move Made From Junk
- Productivity Through Self Denial?
- Harvard Business Review: Get Ready to Fail
August 2012
- The Innovative Power of Lying
- [VIDEO] You're Not That Great
- The Failure of a Great Singer
- James Cameron was Homeless
- Something Worse Than Failure
- Jackie Chan and the Plan to Fail
- On Failure and Baseball
July 2012
- Failure on the Radio
- Complaint Calls Can Be Useful
- The Terribly Useful Terrible Movie
- FedEx's Big Gamble (No, Really)
- Positive Fail, Dot Com
- How Boring Attire Wins
June 2012
The Terribly Useful Terrible Movie
You don’t have to be a huge movie fan to have suffered through a few stinkers. So why does a major government agency use an awful flick as part of their management training program?
The story comes via New Scientist magazine. They explain:
WHY does NASA show the movie Armageddon as part of its management training programmes? We’re talking about the thriller in which Bruce Willis saves the Earth by nuking an asteroid the size of Texas into dust just moments before it wipes out the home planet…
In reality, the screenings are just a game for NASA’s space geeks: who can find the highest number of impossible things in the movie? The record…stands at 168.
You might be a fan of this particular movie, but there’s not much debate about its scientific accuracy. Even the director, Michael Bay,
told Entertainment Weekly that the idea that NASA “could actually do something in a situation like this” just wasn’t possible (source). When it comes to being reasonable, pretty much everybody agrees that the film is just supposed to be fun.
But once again, we see that failure is the secret to success. Management trainees at NASA get to watch the film and try to find the inaccuracies. So what would normally be a terrible movie that the agency might try to forget has actually become a key part of their progress. Error leads to discovery. Bad moviemaking leads to better science for everyone.
Related Posts
- Your Business Card is TerribleAn Indianapolis-based marketing company is running a monthly contest. They are highlighting some truly awful business cards for a makeover.
- Use Errors, Make Training EfficientAn Indianapolis training company recently highlighted an article about mistakes. Their tagline: Focus on Observed Errors to Make Training Efficient.
- A Case For FailingIf you are interested in experiencing failure on a daily basis, consider a career in sales. You have to get a bunch of “no’s” for every “yes” if you want to succeed.