Heads up! Skeptical TV!

[onager]

The excellent series "Is It Real?" is running marathon-style today on the National Geogaphic channel.

Bigfoot! Ghosts! Feral children! Chupacabra! Bermuda Triangle!

And much more, all exquisitely eviscerated and debunked for your viewing pleasure. James Randi makes several personal appearances.

Two more episodes (new??) will be running on 9/24. They deal with UFOs and super-human powers, which sounds interesting.

[Warpy]

1. Just before 9/11, they ran a conspiracy theory debunk

including an experiment to see if thermite would chew through a structural beam, sort of going above and beyond. They used over a hundred pounds of thermite poured into a hopper welded onto the beam and lined with clay to keep the thermite in contact with the beam at all times, conditions far superior to anything a conspiracy nut theorist has suggested. In addition, the beam was only a quarter the size of the ones in the WTC. Of course, the thermite only singed the outside and the beam remained structurally intact.

The rest of the debunks were equally fascinating, although not as pretty as the thermite reaction.

National Geographic is one of my favorite channels these days.

[semillama]

2. NatGeo is the only educational-themed channel

that has stayed true to its roots. Everything else has strayed really badly: History, Discovery (for the most part), TLC, Bravo. A&E....

[onager]

4. Science Channel was great last night.

They had a show about a doctor who researches infectious diseases. With a serious personal bias - his brother died of an AIDS-related disease.

The doctor studied the London Plague of 1665, and wondered why some people survived. He theorized they had a natural immunity passed down thru their DNA.

Eventually he found a village 120 miles from London that quarantined itself during the Plague, after an outbreak. He was able to trace people living today back to their ancestors who survived the Plague. Sure enough, all of them had the same "Delta 32" marker in their DNA.

His theory was correct, though research on it is just starting. He talked about how it might eventually lead to treatment for Alzheimer's and other horrors.

That kind of story is just so much more entertaining than any claptrap about ghosts or psychics etc. Well, to me anyway. It combined history, a scientific mystery and hope for the future. And I'm supposed to be impressed by some idiot sitting in a dark room making shit up? Bah!

[frogmarch]

3. I watched several episodes yesterday, and

I found the one on crop circles to be the most entertaining. I learned there are not only people who, despite confessions by crop circle creators, cling to the belief that some of the circles are made by aliens.

Even among those who know that humans make the circles, there are some who believe the circles have magical properties. :wow:

[SemiCharmedQuark]

5. Damn, I don't get NGC. History channel has been running Templar claptrap nonstop

TLC is almost unwatchable and Animal Planet is almost entirely dog training shows or variations on "When Animals Attack".