[plug] Re: [OT] Television

[Cameron Patrick]

James Devenish wrote:

| In message <20040202042322.GC19927 at patrick.wattle.id.au>
| on Mon, Feb 02, 2004 at 12:23:22PM +0800, Cameron Patrick wrote:
| > Hmm.  Most of the time I regard the TV as a form of mindless
| > entertainment rather than of being any real use.
| 
| Have you never heard someone's name pronounced correctly during Behind
| the News, never watched wild animals hunting in a David Attenborough
| documentary, never seen an episode of Dr Who taking good care of his
| companions, never been inspired to make a game out of something you saw
| on Play School, never seen an impractical-to-replicate experiment on The
| Curiosity Show, never seen a telecast of an event you couldn't attend,
| and never understood the allusional satire of The Simpsons? Well, maybe
| you haven't. <shrug/>

Some valid points.  (Although I've never even heard of The Curiosty Show,
I've watched other scientificky-educational programmes such as Acme
School Of Stuff and Scientific Eye... probably mangling titles here but
oh well.  I also can't stand Simpsons - and never really have -
regardless of whatever satirical value it may possess.)

Despite this, I stick by my claim that most of what's on TV is pretty
mindless; certainly most of what I watched falls into this category.
The overwhelming majority of TV aimed at children seems to be designed
to keep them placated and out of their parents' hair, and possibly even
providing some minimal educational element.  Play School, Sesame Street,
and Bill and Ben all fit this category from what I remember of them.
Sure, watching mindless TV every now and again won't do any harm, and
I'm not denying the existence of stuff worth watching on TV, but I think
that it is better to treat it as something moderately special rather
than considering watching telly to be the normal way for kids to kill
time between arriving home from school and eating dinner (or whatever).

| > | So are some prominent nutriment-deprivation disorders.
| > 
| > What's a nutriment? ;-)
| 
| I'm too dim to work out what the joke is, so I'll just respond with a
| quotation from a dictionary:

Ahh, thanks.  The smiley was in fact due to my own dimness, thinking
that it was a typo of "nutrient".  Now I'm not sure what, if any, is the
difference between the two words...

Cameron.