Posted by
Steve on Friday, August 04, 2006 2:56:50 AM
Tonight, my wife and I were laughing about the exciting TV that we watch in the evenings. That got me to thinking about what do I watch?
I watch four types of TV. The first is to expand what I know about science. For this, I watch the Discovery Science channel and other channels that may have a science program on. The second is to expand my knowledge of history. For this I watch the History channel and History International. I will watch other history programs. The third is for entertainment. For this, I generally watch programs that portray history or science. The fourth is news. For this, I generally watch Fox News. With the amount of driving I do and the internet, my news watching has greatly diminished. I get most of my news from the internet. I get analysis by listening to talk radio, Hugh Hewitt, Laura Ingraham and Michael Medved are the ones I listen to most. I occassionally get to listen to Dennis Prager and Rush Limbaugh.
My three favorite TV shows right now are Sharpe on BBC America, Mythbusters on Discovery Science and Eureka on the Science Fiction channel. Sharpe is set during the Napoleonic wars. The star of the show is Sean Bean. Sean Bean was Boromir during the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He is a sergeant that saves the life of the Duke of Wellington by killing three French cavalrymen. Wellington then makes him an officer. The series then follows his advancement to Major (right now) of the 95th Rifles of the South Sussex regiment. The show highlights the amount of incompetence that was in the English army during that time period. Officers would purchase a position. Advancement was generally by purchase, not by competence. Major Sharpe is the exception to that rule. He is highly competent. But, he is resented by the regular officers because he is not of the upper class.
Mythbusters is a program where two guys take myths and try to determine if they are true, false or plausable. They build various devices to test the myth and then determine if the myth is true or not. My favorite one was the story of the only person documented to have gotten pregnant without the benefit of sex. During the Civil War a lady claimed she got shot after receiving a bullet in the abdomen that had struck a soldier in the family jewels. It was written up in a medical journal of the time. The Mythbusters ran some tests and determined that the story had to be false. I use this story in my class at school.
Eureka is a new show on the SciFi channel. It is set in a small town where nobody is as they seem. Everybody works for "GD" and is trying to develop something new and different. The star is a US Marshall that got into a wreck outside of Eureka. He helped solve the problem that week and when he got back to LA, got a promotion to Eureka. He is now the Sheriff of Eureka. He has to use street smarts to solve crimes by high tech bad guys. This appeals because of the science and because I was a Deputy Sheriff for 4 years in Jefferson County Colorado.
My TV watching may be boring, but I do get to use many of my programs as information for the classes I teach. My highly selective TV watching prevents me from watching much of the junk that is on the TV most of the time. If others did the same, they would have less complaints about TV.