Sunday, August 29, 2010

Overheard in the Living Room:

Roomie and I are eating gyros in front of the TeeWee, watching Before the Dinosaurs on Discovery, when a commercial comes on announcing The Last Day of the Dinosaurs, a new show about the K-T Event, complete with giant tsunamis and computer-generated theropods getting incinerated by hypersonic blast waves and such.
Me: "Oh, I'm totally watching that. It's got dinosaurs and global armageddon! If it had ninjas, it'd be the greatest TV show ever!"

RX: "What about machine guns?"

Me: "Ninjas with machine guns!"
It's nice to see that they're refraining from showing programs about the sex lives of alien Nazi bigfoot ghosts 24/7 on at least a couple of the edumacational channels.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

No fast zombies?

Bummer.

Gerry

Steve Skubinna said...

No, ninjas with lasers! Fighting pirates! Space pirates!!!

Anonymous said...

Ever see "Connections" on PBS? That series and the follow up series are all on Youtube here

Way better than the average dreck on the cable these days. By cracky!

Kevin said...

I watched the first Connections series recently via Netflix.

And Tam, the ninjas have swords & shuriken. The dinosaurs have the lasers and machine guns. It's the only way to make it fair.

Bubblehead Les. said...

So what weapons do Alien Nazi Bigfoot Ghosts use to fight off Dinosaurs and Ninjas while they are about to have sex? The Ghosts, that is. Not the Ninjas and Dinos.

Revolver Rob said...

Before the Dinosaurs makes me want to punch babies. Not as much as "Creating the Dinosaurs" made me want to punch Discovery Channel officials and their babies though.

It makes for good entertainment, it doesn't make for good science though. I watched the shows tonight to try and figure out what myths and BS I will have to dispel tomorrow in my lab sections. (Lab sections for the illustrious Intro Paleo class Age of Dinosaurs).

I'm sure by the end of the day I will want to punch even more Discovery channel asshats then I do now.

-Rob

Atom Smasher said...

Rob-

The fact that the show even acknowledges the sheer coolness of the Paleozoic lets me accept its rounded edges.

I have the whole "Walking With Dinosaurs" DVD set and 100% accurate or not, it's a fabulous production.

Tam said...

Rob,

Yes, I spotted some stuff that itched, even with my untrained layperson's eye.

Now you know how I feel when I watch Tales of the Gun. ;)

(I'll still watch TotG if it's on, however, because... well, you know, guns.)

LabRat said...

Revolver Rob's rant is why my mother-in-law Tivos these and screens them during dinner when I happen to be over. She thinks the result is hilarious. Still, they are fun to watch.

Intro paleo? I am so, so sorry. I have a vivid recollection of another student in that section, most horrified, blurting out "DINOSAURS ATE OTHER DINOSAURS!?"

Anonymous said...

I caught a bit of the show. To me it was more like a soap opera with CG dinosaurs instead of people, rather than anything of scientific interest. -- Lyle

Borepatch said...

I have a (characteristically long) review up, about the junk science behind this.

Basically, you can't spell "Asteroid O' Doom" without N-U-C-L-E-A-R-W-I-N-T-E-R.

But the CGI was cool.

Anonymous said...

http://imgur.com/a/A379E/1