The History Channel is interesting when taken with a grain of salt, but this is too much. Right now as I type this they are doing a feature on the Philadelphia Experiment, and the commercial breaks begin and end with the name of the show: Incredible But True.
No, it’s not true. The Philadelphia Experiment is about as credible as the aliens at Roswell or the missile hitting the Pentagon, which is to say that it’s not credible at all. Not one iota. These events survive in popular lore because they are foisted off on a weak-minded public on shows with titles like Incredible But True.
Now, as I’m watching this, I hear words like “claimed” and “alleged”, but I see no facts, just the standard bunch of conspiracy theory mumbo jumbo. As evidenced by the other conspiracy theories that I mentioned above, this stuff is enough to convince a large number of imbeciles of its veracity, especially when the title of the show implies that it is.
I thought the History Channel was supposed to explore history, not perpetuate bullshit. Of course, I know better. The channel has been doing shows like this for years. It just annoys the hell out of me. If I were on active duty right now I would have to go into work tomorrow and tell some of my people to forget everything they saw on the show and then have to argue with them for an hour to prove it to them. Even then they would still spread this kind of bullshit for weeks, and I’d just give up trying to debunk it, just as I had to with the 9/11 missile thing (which I posted about a long time ago).
Morons. That’s what we have to deal with. They believe everything they see on TV, and the networks perpetuate the nonsense with shows like these. It’s enough to make my head hurt.
Yes, I know, I can change the channel. But I can’t change the drooling idiots that believe this stuff and spread it as fact. It’s just depressing.
'Member when they used to show that old Leonard Nimoy show about the UFOs? Drove me batshit, it did. It still frustrates me somewhat that all they show these days is History Lite, but I know they have to keep a delicate balance-- they want to please people like me who would actually like to learn something, and the more numerous viewers who want to be entertained.
Yeah its p***es me off the amount of stuff on “factual” documentary channels (discovery, history, etc.)that is just plain made up (UFOs, "crypto-zoology, etc)… I realize they are just catering to the audience but still…
Also the biblical “archeology” shows that feature 5% real archealogy and 95% bible stories that are clearly not supported by the real archelology.
I recently watched an episode on one of The History (Flavored) Channel about the pyramids. Alright- ancient Egypt, there’s hardly a way to make it boring: you’ve got megalomaniacal rulers (including women masquerading as men, incredibly inbred men turning into women [e.g. Akhenaton’s breasts]), power mad priests, intrigues galore, men with harems of thousands and hundreds of children, obsessions with an incredibly rich afterlife pantheon, super wealth, advanced science serving divine egos, etc… Very hard to make it boring and no need to embellish or stretch to make it interesting and yet they managed by, of course, delving into the “did UFOs build the pyramids?” crap.
My favorite comment ever made on the subject was from an Egyptologist who’d clearly been asked this one time too often and opined “Yes, that’s exactly what I think. I believe that around 5,000 years ago a race of super beings millions of years more advanced than us crossed several galaxies, made themselves known to the dwellers of a fertile strip of floodland surrounded by desert, and thought to themselves 'shall we teach these people how to treat wounds or deliver children more effectively? Or about antibiotics? How about preservatives or superior agriculture methods, or maybe even about the people on the other side of the Earth? Nah… I’ve got it, we’ll teach 'em how to put really really big rocks on top of each other in triangle shapes!”
On this particular episode one of the interviewees was Arab with the first name Muhammad who was not an Egyptologist but a cab-driver tourguide. When the hostess of the program (a she-American) asked the inevitable Edgar Cayce/UFO questions, he politely smirked and said “I really do not think we have to stretch that far for explanation” and concisely (moreso since he was cut-off) described the building techniques.
Politically incorrect comment to follow in 5… 4 …3 …2 …1…
When you’re standing with an uneducated Arab Muslim in the middle of a desert and he is the voice of gentle reason and quiet ration and with complete justification and bemusement regarding you as an idiot for the silliness of your beliefs, you really should examine yourself.
Hah. In terms of the Discovery Channel, that’s small fucking beer. They did a show that asserted that the pyramids were actually 30,000 years old, based on the level of wind erosion. And of course there is no erosion that is not caused by wind.
Deep breath. Read, comprehend, post. Watch out for sarcasm, it might could getcha!
I thought that the faux hick-speak might’ve aided in the recognition of sarcasm in my post, guess I was wrong.
Maybe I’m considered to be a dumbass. That would explain an IMDB reference being my cite, my poor grammar, and the fact that I think John Tesh is a supreme Deity. He is, I know. But you seem to have misunderstood me. Tesh is angry.
Good God, I had the displeasure of watching part of that before I thankfully fell asleep. What gets me (among other things) is that they’re claiming all this stuff happened as a result of ::cue spooky music:: electromagnetism.
Geez, I could have debunked that when I was 8 years old, playing around with my Radio Shack experiment kit. This stuff wouldn’t even pass muster as science fiction.
It makes me wish they’d just go back to being the Hitler Channel. ::barf::
Ah the History Channel, dubbed the Sharks and Nazis channel by british comedian Eddie Izzard
One of the joys of the publically funded BBC, great documentaries. A cable/satellite channel UKTV Documentary here in the UK repeats a lot of them too.