Science, Quasi-Science, and WTFience on TV
Aug. 9th, 2012 06:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shipperxYou know how HGTV and Food Network are sort of "Nothing is on, guess I'll watch this" channels? Well, for me, you can toss in The Science Channel, the Discovery Channel, The Smithsonian Channel, etc. I'm one of those folks who will gladly watch "The Universe" or Morgan Freeman's science channel series "The Wormhole", etc. And I'll even dabble in the far more wacky (Hey! I enjoyed that cheesetastic "Atlantis/Minoans drowned by a tsunami" thing that was quasi-dramatized with wholly fictional characters just so you could have a completely fictionalized first person POV of something that they are roughly guessing about. :) So, yes, I watch some good science TV, and I also watch some crap.
Some of both categories that I've watched lately:
The Grammar of Happiness A guy began his trips to the remote Amazon as Christian missionary who eventually had a bit of an existential crisis when he realized that a remote Amazonian tribe lived happy, fulfilling lives without ever having heard of his religion. But that was just a personal anecdote in the documentary. The gist of it was this wildly esoteric controversy about... grammar.
Seriously, it was about grammar and language and what the Amazonian tribe represents is basically a bomb disrupting Noam Chomsky's theories about language, and Noam Chomsky is not pleased... and not going to accept or investigate when independent computer analysis by MIT appears to back up the Amazonian missionary/linguist's claims about the non-standard grammar of this isolated Amazonian tribe. I understand why Chomsky is fighting it tooth and nail and why it's even an important debate... but it's also one of those things where as a layman you step back and have to go 'WTF are they getting so upset about with GRAMMAR?!" And why are so many people so unwilling to even investigate whether it's plausible or not?
Anyway, it was an interesting documentary. (understanding the controversy: here , here, and even on youtube:
* * * *
Also interesting, was a documentary on skin color (wish I could remember the name of that one... or what channel it was on because while watching, I kept wishing it could be made required viewing. It basically boils down to -- racists, your ideas are crap!) The documentary was explaining research into the way that skin color is, for the most part, a climatological adaptation. Go back in human evolution and early humans were much like chimpanzees --. covered in hair. When most body hair was forsaken because of climate drying out and forest retreat from the savanna, bodies adapted, and when populations migrate, they adapt again.
There was a lot of analysis of UV exposure corellating to skin tone of idigenous populations (UV exposure isn't just about lattitude, there are factors such as humidity, elevation, and diet as well) . Ultimately it boils down to UV exposure depletes folate in the blood, and folate is essential for healthy reproduction with healthy offspring. Increased melanin isn't just to protect from skin cancer (though there's that too) but also to ensure healthy reproduction under circumstances of high UV exposure. Conversely in cold (or rather ice age) climates, Vitamin D became an issue. Populations that were in cloudy climates or cold climates (and thus largely covered) develop Vitamin D deficiency and that impacts the health of the population and survival of its offspring. Adaptations such as the ability to tolerate milk into adulthood and the reduction of melanin (so as to facilitate adequate D absorption with little of the body exposed to much sunlight), allowed absorbtion of adequate levels of Vitamin D in colder, cloudier climes.
So the development of a wide range of skin tones is the human body adapting to balance the dual necessities of preserving folate and absorbing Vitamin D; thus it is related to levels of UV exposure in poplulations over long time scales. (The Inuit are a bit of an exception because their high consumption of whale and seal blubber gave them excellent sources of Vitamin D. Of course, now that their diet is changing, they have rising levels of Vitamin D diffenciency. (Take your vitamins. You may need folate or vitamin D depending on your sun exposure and the climate where you live.. People living more and more indoor lifestyles is leading to wide-spread Vitamin D difficiency.)
How do racists maintain their racism in the face of "it's organic suncreen"? (No doubt they would... and do).
Anyway, that too was an interesting show on one of the science channels.
* * * *
Finally in the cheesetastic category such as "The Hunt for Sasquatch"... the other night while going to bed or waking up in the middle of the night, I turned on the TV and it was this thing on... merpeople.
It was just like those shows where scientists discuss dinosaurs and then do the digitized animation of how the dinosaurs lived, only it was mermaids and shit. It was so damn strange, I wonder whether I imagined it or dreamed it because it was after I had already gone to bed and turned off the lights and was sort of 'twilighting.' It had these scienc-y people discussing the bones and skulls and fragments that they'd found and... it was merpeople, people!
I mean, sure History Channel does all that conspiracy crazy crap about UFOs, Armagheddon, and Mayan 2012. But this was merpeople. People discussing in 'serious' tones the existence of .... MERPEOPLE! WTF?
I'm still not sure that I didn't dream the whole damn thing because... yeah. STRANGE. I'll have to google around too see if any of the science-y-ish channels had such a WTF, goofy program. Otherwise, boy do I have a feverish imagination!
Some of both categories that I've watched lately:
The Grammar of Happiness A guy began his trips to the remote Amazon as Christian missionary who eventually had a bit of an existential crisis when he realized that a remote Amazonian tribe lived happy, fulfilling lives without ever having heard of his religion. But that was just a personal anecdote in the documentary. The gist of it was this wildly esoteric controversy about... grammar.
Seriously, it was about grammar and language and what the Amazonian tribe represents is basically a bomb disrupting Noam Chomsky's theories about language, and Noam Chomsky is not pleased... and not going to accept or investigate when independent computer analysis by MIT appears to back up the Amazonian missionary/linguist's claims about the non-standard grammar of this isolated Amazonian tribe. I understand why Chomsky is fighting it tooth and nail and why it's even an important debate... but it's also one of those things where as a layman you step back and have to go 'WTF are they getting so upset about with GRAMMAR?!" And why are so many people so unwilling to even investigate whether it's plausible or not?
Anyway, it was an interesting documentary. (understanding the controversy: here , here, and even on youtube:
* * * *
Also interesting, was a documentary on skin color (wish I could remember the name of that one... or what channel it was on because while watching, I kept wishing it could be made required viewing. It basically boils down to -- racists, your ideas are crap!) The documentary was explaining research into the way that skin color is, for the most part, a climatological adaptation. Go back in human evolution and early humans were much like chimpanzees --. covered in hair. When most body hair was forsaken because of climate drying out and forest retreat from the savanna, bodies adapted, and when populations migrate, they adapt again.
There was a lot of analysis of UV exposure corellating to skin tone of idigenous populations (UV exposure isn't just about lattitude, there are factors such as humidity, elevation, and diet as well) . Ultimately it boils down to UV exposure depletes folate in the blood, and folate is essential for healthy reproduction with healthy offspring. Increased melanin isn't just to protect from skin cancer (though there's that too) but also to ensure healthy reproduction under circumstances of high UV exposure. Conversely in cold (or rather ice age) climates, Vitamin D became an issue. Populations that were in cloudy climates or cold climates (and thus largely covered) develop Vitamin D deficiency and that impacts the health of the population and survival of its offspring. Adaptations such as the ability to tolerate milk into adulthood and the reduction of melanin (so as to facilitate adequate D absorption with little of the body exposed to much sunlight), allowed absorbtion of adequate levels of Vitamin D in colder, cloudier climes.
So the development of a wide range of skin tones is the human body adapting to balance the dual necessities of preserving folate and absorbing Vitamin D; thus it is related to levels of UV exposure in poplulations over long time scales. (The Inuit are a bit of an exception because their high consumption of whale and seal blubber gave them excellent sources of Vitamin D. Of course, now that their diet is changing, they have rising levels of Vitamin D diffenciency. (Take your vitamins. You may need folate or vitamin D depending on your sun exposure and the climate where you live.. People living more and more indoor lifestyles is leading to wide-spread Vitamin D difficiency.)
How do racists maintain their racism in the face of "it's organic suncreen"? (No doubt they would... and do).
Anyway, that too was an interesting show on one of the science channels.
* * * *
Finally in the cheesetastic category such as "The Hunt for Sasquatch"... the other night while going to bed or waking up in the middle of the night, I turned on the TV and it was this thing on... merpeople.
It was just like those shows where scientists discuss dinosaurs and then do the digitized animation of how the dinosaurs lived, only it was mermaids and shit. It was so damn strange, I wonder whether I imagined it or dreamed it because it was after I had already gone to bed and turned off the lights and was sort of 'twilighting.' It had these scienc-y people discussing the bones and skulls and fragments that they'd found and... it was merpeople, people!
I mean, sure History Channel does all that conspiracy crazy crap about UFOs, Armagheddon, and Mayan 2012. But this was merpeople. People discussing in 'serious' tones the existence of .... MERPEOPLE! WTF?
I'm still not sure that I didn't dream the whole damn thing because... yeah. STRANGE. I'll have to google around too see if any of the science-y-ish channels had such a WTF, goofy program. Otherwise, boy do I have a feverish imagination!
