This will be a long rambling thread, because I feel like being long-winded and rambling. I apologize in advance.

Last night was one of those rare occasions where my girlfriend fell asleep on the couch before me, therefore I got control of the remote. At one point, there were "paranormal investigation" shows on at least three different channels. I settled on on called something like "Ghost Hunters International", where a team of "paranormal investigators" was in (London?) at Mary King's Cross, a supposedly haunted underground alley thing. It was an hour of people running around pretending to be scientists who feigned skeptism about everything that occured so that they could take one or two things and make it seem special. Basically, "Naw this stuff wasn't ghosts. Look, that makes us skeptic. But even we think this was a ghost! It must be more true, because we just said we were skeptics!"

So aside from one of the girls being kinda cute, the show was a wash (of course, I expected that). Then I caught part of the "documentary" on rods, which was recently discussed here in another thread. Yet another group of people throwing the word "science" around much too losely, although at least this show allowed some time for actual, rational people to talk before giving some wack-o the camera to say why all the arguments just presented don't make sense (even though they did).

A few bored sighs later, I landed on a program called "Chased by Sea Monsters" (or something along those lines). It was on Animal Planet, so I had my fingers crossed that it wouldn't be another "Monster Hunters" type deal. It wasn't.

I don't know if you guys have seen it, but it's a fakeumentary (but the good kind) where the host travels to the different times throughout history to explore the "10 most dangerous seas". I came in on the one where they were talking about Megladon. I missed the premise, and for a minute was thinking "wow I thought these were extinct!" (the effects were good enough to fool me until he got into the water where it was obvious, but very good CG).

Anyway, the show was very corny, but I still applaude this approach. It's something that would be great for children, as it really helps put these animals in context when you can see them next to people. Also makes it a little more entertaining.

So that was the "diamond" I found floating in the sea of... ...well, ghost shows. [/ramble]

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

"Throwing", although it does sound like they were roughing up poor old science

Love those shows, they keep the masses sedated.

Lol woops. My typing/spelling accuracy is always bad, but it's even worse when I'm off a'ramblin'

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

Nigel Marven - Walking with Dinosaurs: Sea Monsters, a 3-part series

Wikipedia: Sea Monsters

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Yeah, I had actually seen the show before, but since Megalodon is basically just a giant shark, I didn't immediately recognize it. I really like the show, even the corny parts where he pretends to be in danger. And the effects were done pretty well.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

See, right there, proof of a paranormal experience.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009

Yeah, I saw some of that yesterday when Graham was flipping channels. (When Graham Is Home, Graham Controls the Remote.) We agreed that we didn't like annoying voiceover guy, but it was pretty cool other than that. We, too, had the "wait, aren't those extinct?" moment, having come in partway through.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

The masses don't need to be sedated, they need to be informed!

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"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

Though I had to talk back at the TV repeatedly throughout this show (having been in far too many "rod" discussions over the last 10 years), this one actually ended well (as do most of the "MonsterQuest," shows, surprisingly!). With the main researchers actually reproducing videos and pictures of moths, birds, etc., that perfectly reproduce the "rods" (something the proponent UFO/cryptozoonut bleever x-perts said could not be reproduced). Of course you have to sit through nearly 50 minutes of a "balanced" presentation of the fairy-tale wanna-believe faithful contrasted with occassional conditional statement of more authentic scientific experts, before you get to the last segment "reality reveal."

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Iyam what Iyam

Well, I probably shouldn't say "most of the MonsterQuest shows." I have only watched three of them all the way through, and that was my experience of those three episodes.

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Iyam what Iyam

It was just getting to that part when I switched over to the Sea Mosters show. Was surfing on commercial breaks--something I don't normally do.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

I've seen some of the shows from that series on the Discovery channel, a couple of years ago. The host guy puts on diving gear to "swim" with Sea Scorpions, a breathing mask for "visiting" the ages before Earth's atmosphere was beatheable, etc. There's also an earlier version about land "monsters" by the same guy.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort