What's amazing is "reality" shows like Survivor, where people are struggling to eat worms to survive in the wilderness. Surrounded by camera crews, makeup artists, directors, producers, script advisors, caterers, air-conditioned offices, and generators.
(Mind, I've never actually seen "Survivor" myself!)
Nothing too radical I hope. I survived a couple of days in the hospital last year, but I had to die first.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing precision measurement jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
I think I may have accidentally seen one or two episodes of some kind of situation comedy repackaged as a reality show. That's not for me.
Near as I can tell, most reality shows target viewers that have no social life, never go anywhere interesting, and never do anything dangerous. That's a fairly large demographic, which might explain why they seem to do well in the ratings (until the script gets repetitive and boring).
Viewing people doing dangerous things goes all the way back to the Roman games, where gladiators were forced to do really dangerous things in order to entertain the crowds. Roll forward 2000 years and not much has changed. The gladiators and audiences are much the same. Our lust for violence and blood hasn't changed. About all that has prevented TV games, sports, and reality shows from degenerating into Roman gladiatorial spectacles is the cost of insurance and settling the lawsuits should any of the participants get hurt or killed. Also, the sponsors don't like viewers associating their products with fatalities, so they tend to discourage extreme forms of violence.
Bruce Willis would be considered one of those modern movie gladiators. Audiences just love to see him get beat up or beat up the villian.
Long ago, I somehow ended up in a theater watching the movie "The Poseidon Adventure". I was trying to relax, but that wasn't going to happen. The bulk of the audience was over 50 NPS (naval postgraduate skool) marine engineering students. They were there as a class assignment to identify as many hydrodynamic mistakes as possible. I may have seen about 5 mistakes, but the students easily found 20 times as many. So much for technically accurate movies.
Some years later, I was at Costco watching the then new movie "Twister" on one of the big screens. I was giving a running commentary to a friend highlighting many violations of physics. Near the ending, a 12 year old, that was also watching snarled at me "You ruined the movie" and stomped away without watching the ending. For some people, the illusion of reality is more important than actual reality.
So much for you only die once. Congrats on surviving the hospital.
The body mechanics added two stents to my triple bypass graft collection. The operation was not a total success so I expect problems in a few years. Right now, I'm fine, but am having difficulties tolerating the newly prescribed drugs. One of the side effects is an uncontrollable urge to post long rants and drivel on Usenet. That should hopefully pass, eventually, maybe...
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
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