Probably true of him too, but I've only read Brave New World so I'm not really qualified to comment.
I saw that episode of QI and was suitably amused by Fry's authoritative waffle. In the same episode he also touted the usual urban myth about the origins of the concept for Snakes on a Plane. He seems to be the interweb embodiment of the expression, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing."
Sadly the internet is proving to be his downfall as well as his saviour, as it's very easy to refute the stuff he comes out with, be it misinformation about the world or about his own socio-political faux-pas.
Mind you, you can't fault him entirely for his mistakes on QI. His perfomance on there, let us remember, is not so much "The brain of Stephen Fry" but "The brains of Stephen Fry plus those of the behind-the-scenes research team in his ear."
He should stick to history and history of music. I've never heard him go wrong on those.
I guess this is the problem with non-technical people trying to explain technical things, it's very easy to get a vital facet wrong (GPS signals go from satellite to handset, not vice versa. A microsecond of difference equates to about 300m of accuracy), and then when you simplify things for the studio audience you've got things really quite wrong. If you're simply repeating a bit of history then the chances of you misunderstanding are presumably significantly lower.
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I saw that episode of QI and was suitably amused by Fry's authoritative waffle. In the same episode he also touted the usual urban myth about the origins of the concept for Snakes on a Plane. He seems to be the interweb embodiment of the expression, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing."
Sadly the internet is proving to be his downfall as well as his saviour, as it's very easy to refute the stuff he comes out with, be it misinformation about the world or about his own socio-political faux-pas.
Mind you, you can't fault him entirely for his mistakes on QI. His perfomance on there, let us remember, is not so much "The brain of Stephen Fry" but "The brains of Stephen Fry plus those of the behind-the-scenes research team in his ear."
He should stick to history and history of music. I've never heard him go wrong on those.
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