As for the supercomputers, I know what you mean. We used to joke about the capabilities of TV Geographic Information Systems at work, too (The program “DC” was particularly bad about this.). It takes so much data aquisition and manual entry and software development, not to mention expertise with the programs, to use GIS to reveal areal relationships between tabular information and geography. We would spend man-months coming up with a single map of say, school districts and census data, and on TV they could not only come up with detailed graphic analyses of entire cities, and instantly relate them to building blueprints, underground utility networks–you know what I’m talking about: “There’s a ventilation duct here we can use to gain access to where the hostages are being held.” Yeah, right. And all you need is a geeky goth chick who can make all the connections in seconds, from memory.

Of course, it was fun explaining it to the boss when he said “Why can’t you just have the computer map it out?”

My favorite was the show where they got a security cam video and enlarged the victim’s face (across the street from the camera!)to show the murderer’s face reflected in her glasses. Most of the security cam video I’ve seen on the news is so bad you can’t recognize the features of the perp when he walks up to spray the lens with paint.