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MSN Capt' Obvious: Watching TV might make you dumber.. LOL — Parallax Forums

MSN Capt' Obvious: Watching TV might make you dumber.. LOL

Oldbitcollector (Jeff)Oldbitcollector (Jeff) Posts: 8,091
edited 2011-12-08 07:23 in General Discussion
Love this article from MSN today about "Jersey Shore"

http://bodyodd.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/06/13/6851542-watching-jersey-shore-might-make-you-dumber-study-suggests

Yep, this crowd has been saying it all along, turn off that TV and go DO something.

TIL, something I suspected all along.. "media priming"

OBC

Comments

  • sylvie369sylvie369 Posts: 1,622
    edited 2011-12-07 13:15
    In a couple of weeks I will have gone exactly ten years since the last time there was a television set in my house. I missed the entire "reality TV" movement, and I get to go through election season without having to watch attack ads, smug in the knowledge that all those $$$ spent on them have no influence on me.

    Yes, I'm pretty smug about this. I do miss "Meet the Press" and "The Simpsons" (though I understand it went south years ago). But that's about it.
  • ElectricAyeElectricAye Posts: 4,561
    edited 2011-12-07 15:40
    Does anybody here remember when "getting cable" meant "not having to endure commercials"? Now for every 100 minutes you're dumb enough to sit and watch a service you pay for, 30 minutes of your time (and money) is spent watching somebody try to sell you something, and so often that something is yet another TV program.

    Suck it up, slobs.
  • GordonMcCombGordonMcComb Posts: 3,366
    edited 2011-12-07 17:05
    I don't have cable or satellite, but I do watch TV. Everything is "self programmed" -- Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Instant. That's the future.

    I was watching an interesting Stephen Hawking documentary (though some of his views are depressing), then switched over to a second season Frasier, caught the final Inspector Lewis episode, and now watching part 1 of Star Trek Menagerie for the 22nd time. I don't think it's maid me two dum, but my viewing tends to be older stuff. Which is okay because it tended to be better written than the most of what they have now. At least that was my impression when I still had cable.

    -- Gordon
  • bill190bill190 Posts: 769
    edited 2011-12-07 18:59
    I canceled my paid TV about 10 years ago when they kept jacking up the prices. I object to being forced to pay for stupid channels I don't watch just so I can have a couple of intelligent channels. This is like going to the grocery store for bread and being forced to also buy 6 other items to get that bread. When they allow me to pay for just the channels I want to watch, then I will be happy to do business with them again.

    Instead I installed "Free-To-Air" satellite TV. And I get about 600 free channels from about 50 different satellites up in the sky! (Many of these channels are foreign language.) That is with a 12 ft. C/Ku motorized satellite dish, a Diseqc dish motor controller/positioner, and Fortec Star MPEG DVB Free-To-Air receiver.

    That was quite a bit of fun installing that system. Aiming a satellite dish to accurately point to an arc of satellites 28,000 miles away is challenging to say the least. They have satellite pointing calculators like the following for this...
    http://www.satellite-calculations.com/Satellite/lookangles.htm

    Following is a picture of all the commercial communication satellites around the world. These are all fixed orbit around the equator. Needless to say, you can only receive signals from those satellites your dish can "see" from your location...
    http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/bss/launch/980031_001.pdf

    Here are all the TV satellites, their channels, and frequencies...
    http://www.lyngsat.com

    Near the equator satellite dishes point almost straight up...
    http://www.mfgtrade.com/trade/clients/images/Photo_16443000.jpg

    And in Alaska almost horizontal...
    http://www.corp.att.com/alaska/images/satellite-dish.jpg

    About Free To Air TV...
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-to-air
  • prof_brainoprof_braino Posts: 4,313
    edited 2011-12-08 06:16
    ElectricAye wrote: »
    30 minutes of your time (and money) is spent watching somebody try to sell you something

    DVR - FF through commercials. A liitle training makes the kids controllable around xmas
  • ElectricAyeElectricAye Posts: 4,561
    edited 2011-12-08 07:23
    prof_braino wrote: »
    DVR - FF through commercials. A liitle training makes the kids controllable...

    I've actually pondered the possibility of doing the exact opposite. Whenever they turn to a favorite mindless program, a recorder kicks on during commercial time and inserts even more commercials, adding even more and more commercials as the program drags on.... until finally the system never returns to their program at all but instead becomes one long concatenation of video clips selling used cars, denture cream, dishwashing detergent, adult diapers, gold investment opportunities, reverse mortgages, etc., etc. It would work on the principle of aversion therapy, training them at a young age to regard the TV with all the enthusiasm of a household chore.
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