TV
gregladen | June 27, 2016Television and movie producers currently have a good deal in Great Britain, not in small part due to stability in various markets and some funding. For example, Game of Thrones, an HBO production, is filmed in Norther Ireland with funding from the European Regional Development fund.
Both the stability and some of the funding for various productions is now at risk because of the Xenophobic whiny baby Leavers.
This may be on the smaller end of negative effects of the UK leaving the EU, but it is a microcosm of the bigger problem, and likely to get a disproportionate share of attention if The…
jstemwedel | February 8, 2010Here are some of the thoughts and questions that stayed with me from this session. (Here are my tweets from the session and the session's wiki page.)
This was sort of an odd session for me -- not so much because of the topics taken up by session leaders Tamara Krinsky and Jennifer Ouellette, but because of my own sense of ambivalence about a lot of "entertainment" these days.
The session itself had lots of interesting glimpses of the work scientists are doing to help support filmmakers (and television producers, and game designers, and producers of other kinds of entertainment) who want to…
ddobbs | December 18, 2009
I wanted to rig up an electrified fence around the falsehood to keep the producers from sneaking back to it
via blogs.discovermagazine.com
Carl Zimmer on just how damned bad much science TV is. I've not advised programs, as Carl has, but the times I've seen subjects I'd written about covered on TV -- DBS for depression, and Williams syndrome, which I'd written about for the Times Mag and both of which were subsequently covered by 60 MInutes -- the TV results were truly appalling. And that was the hallowed supposedly best-of TV 60 Minutes.
It's nice when you see it done better. Too bad it's…
edyong | December 17, 2009Those of us who have been on the receiving end of racial abuse know all too well that words can hurt. But they're also the tip of the iceberg. According to a study of popular US television, we're exposed to the spectre of racial bias on a regular basis, all without a single word being uttered.
When scenes are muted, body language and facial expressions are enough to convey more negative attitudes towards black characters compared to white ones. This bias is so subtle that we're largely unable to consciously identify it, yet so powerful that it can sway our own predispositions. In some ways…
zooillogix | October 6, 2009A ridiculously cool dinosaur encounter on a German TV show. Part animatronics, part puppet show, and part Sprockets. Some great Halloween costume ideas.
grrlscientist | August 18, 2009tags: Walk On The Wild Side, animals, behavior, humor, streaming video
Walk On The Wild Side is a brand new comedy series that seeks to provide a long overdue forum for the views and opinions of the animal kingdom [1:54]
sciencepunk | July 12, 2009The much anticipated revival of BBC's popular science slot (last held by Tomorrow's World) looks imminent with this trailer for Bang Goes the Theory. At a glance, it looks like Blue Peter crossed with The Gadget Show, which could fit the bill nicely - even if it's not something I'd watch myself personally.
Science on TV is a mixed bag these days, as I pointed out in the Guardian a while back. On one hand we have fabulously expensive and epic documentaries such as Planet Earth, while at the other end of the spectrum, there's "entertainment television with a science motif" such as the…
ddobbs | June 12, 2009
Jim Schnabel has an interesting story at Nature, free to all viewers, on the tetchy difficult of assessing how TV affects kids. I've often wondered whether the rise in ADHD diagnoses was due at least partly to TV. This story looks at a researcher who -- amazed at how riveted his infant son was by TV -- found this seems to be the case.
Christakis decided to try to address these questions with research. Together with several colleagues, he examined a database called the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. After analysing some 1,300 children for whom the appropriate data were available, they…
grrlscientist | February 4, 2009tags: David Attenborough, nature, evolution, environment, streaming video
British broadcaster Sir David Attenborough presents his views on Charles Darwin, natural selection, and how the Bible has put the natural world in peril in an exclusive interview for Nature Video [4:27]
grrlscientist | February 1, 2009tags: David Attenborough, nature, evolution, environment, streaming video
David Attenborough is a reality-based person. For example, he sees evolution as the cornerstone of all the programs he has ever made. In this upcoming one-hour special that airs tonight at 9pm on BBCOne in the UK, David shares his personal view on Darwin's controversial idea. If you are one of the lucky ones to see this program (it airs in a few minutes, so turn on that TV!), please share your thoughts about it here, as I am sure us Americans would love to know a little more about what we've missed. [2:01]
grrlscientist | February 1, 2009tags: unusual pets, humor, Superbowl 2009 commercial, pedigree dog food, streaming video
Ever think about getting an unusual pet like a bison, a boar, an ostrich or a rhino? See what happens to the pet owners in our Super Bowl ad, and then you'll know why you should get a dog. [0:30]
purepedantry | December 4, 2008CNN is shutting down their science-and-technology unit. Not that it was much of a unit considering there was only one reporter:
CNN has decided to shutter its science and technology unit -- a move that will result in the loss of seven jobs including veteran space correspondent Miles O'Brien.
The other six jobs are producers, the Atlanta-based cable news network said Wednesday.
"Miles has made many contributions to CNN over the years. He is a terrific reporter, and we wish him all the best," the network said in a statement. His departure date has not been set.
The decision to do away with…
purepedantry | March 3, 2008I don't know if you have seen these, but Florida Orange Juice started a new ad campaign featuring commercials with the voice of Tom Selleck. (Magnum PI does like his orange juice.)
Anyway, the commercials show a beaker into which is being poured OJ. Tom Selleck then proceeds to say:
"Food scientists have spent years with their beakers and flasks and chemistry sets, trying to come up with something as good for you as Florida orange juice," says Selleck's deep baritone. "But they've never come close. Start your day with almost 25 percent of your daily recommended fruit and vegetable servings…
purepedantry | January 30, 2008I took the Jeopardy contestant search exam online last night on a whim, and quite frankly it kicked my ass. Did anyone else take it?
The format of the test is 50 multiple choice questions for which you have 15 seconds to respond. Let me just tell you that 15 seconds is just enough time to choke and but not enough time to answer.
The questions are obscure (expectedly)...
Who was the only bachelor president? Buchanan, but I guessed Andrew Johnson
What is the longest river in Asia? Yangtze (guessed right)
Who painted Nude Descending a Staircase? Duchamps (which is one that I knew but choked…
purepedantry | December 5, 2007The absence of historical education in this country hurts me here. (points to heart)
Exhibit A: The View (see below fold)
Ow. It burns! It burns!
And don't tell me that the majority are better than The View, because you know that half of America was nodding their heads to this conversation.
Hat-tip: The equally offended Crooked Timber
purepedantry | June 25, 2007So I don't know if other people were into this show, but since college I have been a big fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000. It was a show on Comedy Central and then on SciFi that made fun of old bad movies. The show itself was hysterical.
Anyway, I was watching one of the old episodes (a substantial number of which are now on YouTube), and I saw this one where they made fun of a clip of Commander Cody -- a serial from the 50s about this scientist who flies around in a rocket suit fighting crime and the like.
The plots of these things are just ridiculous. Like in this one entitled Radar…
purepedantry | June 20, 2007Boooo, I say!
FOX and CBS have rejected a commercial for Trojan condoms on the grounds that they believed the ads stressed pregnancy prevention over disease prevention. From the NYTimes coverage:
Fox and CBS both rejected the commercial. Both had accepted Trojan's previous campaign, which urged condom use because of the possibility that a partner might be H.I.V.-positive, perhaps unknowingly. A 2001 report about condom advertising by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation found that, "Some networks draw a strong line between messages about disease prevention -- which may be allowed -- and…
purepedantry | April 18, 2007Reason magazine has a great interview with Jackson Publick, the co-creator of one of my favorite shows The Venture Brothers. For those of you who haven't seen it, it is sort of a parody of all the cartoons from the 60s like Jonny Quest where supergenius kids fought crime and had archnemeses. (The word "archnemesis" has a plural, right?) Money quote:
Reason: The cliches of this material, though, like the mystery-solving whiz kids and the Dr. Evil character, aren't ever treated seriously anymore. Not even in the stuff on the Disney Channel that's meant for kids.
JP: All of that is so…
purepedantry | April 2, 2007I was just in London, and a friend of mine clued me into this British comic named Bill Bailey. Priceless.
Anyway, this is not even vaguely science-related, but there is a clip below the fold that is too funny.
He was also in this BBC show that I am in love with -- or at least in lust with -- at the moment called Black Books. Here is a clip from that:
purepedantry | November 15, 2006On The Colbert Report last night, Stephen Colbert talked about an article about uterine transplants for The Word. Scientists now claim that there is nothing technically to prevent us from performing a womb transplant, even to the point that you could put a uterus in a man:
Scientists claim that the first human baby could be born from a transplanted womb within three years.
Animal experiments have dismissed many of the concerns that womb transplants could not produce healthy babies.
The Swedish expert behind the research says that one of the best candidates to be an organ donor would be the…