I used to be shocked when the Hitler Channel showed something other than WWII in Europe… but now its hard to find much of anything that has to do with history. Dogfights is ok… But there’s only so many times you can hear a vet say “Well four of 'em came flying around the rear… and I swooped to the left… and they swooped to the right… Then I gave 'em a burst of fire… and they crashed.”
Modern Marvels… interesting. Often they’ll go into some good history behind a topic… but a few barely skim over the history and just go through a documentary of whatever factory or mine or whatever it is they’re showing. Mail Call used to be on a lot more often… that was some pretty good history programming.
Sometimes I’d be happy to just hear an hour of plain history behind general WWII strategy that was used through a period of the war… Not everything there is to know behind a specific plane, not everything that there is to be known behind a specific boat… Just history… As opposed to a tour of a candy factory with a two minute intro on the history of the company.
To be fair, there’s no word in English for the German ‘denksport’, which means ‘mental game’.
Poker is largely skill and does have the excitement of playing for money.
Chess is a deep game of pure skill, in which there are many clear levels of ability (beginner, club player, regional player, national expert, International Master, Grandmaster).
Human beings are only now being overtaken by computers analysing billions of positions per minute. This shows amazing pattern recognition and judgement by us carbon-based lifeforms.
These two are competitive mental sports.
Spelling bee is a way to encourage kids, but can be taken too far.
Certainly hot dog eating is silly (and may cause health problems).
…on the SciFi Channel? What complete utter crap! I’m amazed that stuff this stupid gets made and broadcast! I saw the episode where they went to the old lighthouse in Florida-and decided a shadow in the tower was a ghost! also, a faint noise on the tape sounded like “help me”-yeah-clear proff of a haunting, boys! Of course, as marshall McLuhan predicted, as the amount of broadcasting increases, the quality will decline-what garbage! I have an idea for a new reality show-it woul be based upon visiting people’s cellars-and showing everybody (in excruciating detail), what we found! i can see it now: (walks into an old person’s cellar…" now here we see an old lamp-looks like from 1950 or so-and here’s a pair of old football s pants (those were my grandson’s); and here is an old blender-gee-this is a treasure…" Hey, people might like it-It could be called “What’s In YOUR Cellear”
I can see where you’re coming from, but your complaint about Ghost Hunters is off. Ghost Hunters is a SciFi Channel original series, not Discovery. I’ve personally never seen Ghost Hunters air on Discovery.
Yellowval, I think you may be correct… I just looked up the Wikipedia article on Ghost Hunters and they do mention something about a show that was once on Discovery entitled Ghosthuters, but not of Ghost Hunters, the current show, being on Discovery. I may have vaguely associated the new show with seeing the old show many years ago on Discovery but I don’t recall ever seeing it…
In any case… Half my OP is null and void. SciFi is where it belongs.
I still don’t like the show… My roommates are hooked on it… But it apparently is on the channel it belongs on.
Damn straight. I wish they’d get back to their roots – Like shows about people redecorating other people’s houses.
Even How it’s Made is pretty bad crap, IMO. I had to stop recording it. “First, they stamp a widget out of putty. Then they do some technical stuuf to it. Then they shrink wrap it, and it’s off to the consumer.” In all of that, I have learned absolutely nothing about something that interested me.
TVLand Myths and Legends. It’s a new show (and thus subject to future suckitude), but already it’s tackled things like The Amityville Horror, the Three Men and a Baby “ghost”, the hanking Munchkin, Zsa Zsa’s “pet my pussy”, and a handful of other legends. According to them (and all sources I have found), all but two legends they have covered proved to be false. The experts that have appeared so far include Snopes, Penn & Teller, and a former member of the Lollipop Guild.
I don’t know about that. I recall watching TLC in the early late 80s/90s and seeing “Castle Ghosts of England” (and Ireland, and Scotland) and wondering just what in the hell that had to do with learning. Of course, I still watched 'em.
Yeah, as mentioned above, Ghost Hunters is a SciFi Channel original series. And while I agree with the OP’s statement of these guys still, deep down inside, wanting to see something, I think they do a pretty decent job of not jumping to conclusions. Nine times out of then, they just come up with a handful of noises they weren’t able to come up with normal explanations before, and many that they were.
Compare this to Most Haunted, on the Travel Channel, where they start each show with a medium or two, talking to their spirit guides and revealing, room by room, the haunted hotspots of the location, along with names, dates, etc. A lot more cheesy, and I’m still surprised the Travel Channel hosts it.
There was a pretty good Ghost Hunters episode where they visited the Stanley Hotel (upon which the Overlook Hotel in The Shining was based). I actually got pretty freaked out when they were under the foundation of the house, and a sound somewhat like laughter was responding to their questions…