Classic Simple George suckage last night. An hour with Robert Felix, the really boring "We're heading into another ice age" guy. Please, no more of this clown either, at least until the ice on Seattle is back to 4000 feet thick.
The main guest was Jeff Wise, an interesting guy who writes for several magazines about a variety of subjects. He was on to talk about his new book about fear, but the first hour (I assume it was at Noory's direction) was about the 2009 Air France plane crash. Despite the guest's best efforts, Simple George never did grasp the concept of aerodynamic stall and refused to understand that the plane didn't fall into the ocean nose down. He did ask a couple of times if the passengers knew if the plane was crashing, and how they must have felt. I'm amazed he didn't badger Wise about how many children were killed in the crash. Noory's ghoulish rubbernecking-from-a-distance is really starting to creep me out - I think he's getting worse.
My favorite moment of the interview - Wise was describing how a stunt pilot saved his plane (and himself) when a wing started to come off at 1000 feet:
Wise: "... because he was essentially a super-star athlete of flying, because he had learned the systems and the behavior of the aircraft so well, he knew it so deeply and intuitively he was able to, his x-system [the part of the brain that stores habitual learned behavior] essentially had become an expert, so in an instant, you know, you see this sort of thing with chess masters. They're able to just look at a board in an instant and know exactly what's going to hap-"
Simple George (interrupting): " Bobby Fischer - he was one of the best!"
I wonder if SG ever says to himself later anything like, "That was dumb."