skeptical drinking and tv!
Jun. 18th, 2008 01:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivendellroseWent out with the local skeptic's group last night, and it was a pretty successful evening. Dinner at a cafe/pub type restaurant, followed by some discussion ("Does skepticism lead directly to atheism?" was a major topic of debate), and planning for a 9/11 conspiracy debate that will be going on next month (while I get that some people are still suspicious about things surrounding 9/11... I don't think that I personally will have the patience to wade through the evidence pro and con, and so will probably absent myself from that meeting), and then, the highlight of the evening, watched sections from some episodes of Really Bad Paranormal TV.
The first was a History Channel production, "MonsterSearch" or something like that. It was... hokey, in a predictable sort of way. They were investigating supposed haunting activity at the Lizzie Borden house in Massachussetts, and I sort of wanted to be ill at their supposed "evidence" and the craptastically melodramatic way they presented everything. Two moments stick out. The first was when they set their digital camera to show heat-readings and threw a fit over a wooden chest that was warmer (19 degrees C) on the bottom than on top. Not only did they refer to 19 degrees C (about 70 F) as "scorching" or something like that, but they completely ignored the expert who commented that the bottom was brass. Hello, brass conducts heat better than wood.... But no, it's obviously ghosts. The other bit was that out of their 50 hours (!) of film and audio footage, they managed to pull two moments with "voices" on the track. One of which the "voice recognition expert" they had on the show commented said flat-out was nothing (which they interpreted as him not being able to get anything one way or the other, despite him clearly saying otherwise), and the other one where they claimed to here the word "So...." I bet you if I set up a cheap old audio recorder in my old house in Wallingford, I'd pick up a whole lot more than that in 50 hours of recording, and that house wasn't even as old as the Lizzie Borden house.
The other show, "Paranormal State," looked like a wannabe cross between a documentary and some sort of college-student version of the X-Files. With a side of "Torchwood" thrown on for fun. The writing (and the supposed investigators) were melodramatic, sophomoric (probably literally...), and, at many moments, downright silly in how credulous they were. They were supposed to be helping a little boy who supposedly saw ghosts, but all they seemed to do was interview the family, try to hold a seance, and then do an amateur cleansing/exorcism. Oh, and give the boy a bottle of holy water. The kid, unsurprisingly, was not cured... and sounded, from the interviews, unnervingly as though he had something mentally and/or physically wrong with him. My bet is Aspergers, but of course that's armchair theorizing of the worst kind. In any case, his problems showed up when they moved to a new house... do you suppose he might just be lonely? Nah. Obviously it's ghosts. Whatever.
At least when the X-Files did this stuff, they had good writing and good acting... oh, and didn't pretend it was real. It was almost worth it so that I and one of the other girls could make fun of the main "investigator" guy for wearing a coat that looked like it'd been stolen from Jack Harkness' wardrobe. Somebody really wanted to look the part... ;)
The first was a History Channel production, "MonsterSearch" or something like that. It was... hokey, in a predictable sort of way. They were investigating supposed haunting activity at the Lizzie Borden house in Massachussetts, and I sort of wanted to be ill at their supposed "evidence" and the craptastically melodramatic way they presented everything. Two moments stick out. The first was when they set their digital camera to show heat-readings and threw a fit over a wooden chest that was warmer (19 degrees C) on the bottom than on top. Not only did they refer to 19 degrees C (about 70 F) as "scorching" or something like that, but they completely ignored the expert who commented that the bottom was brass. Hello, brass conducts heat better than wood.... But no, it's obviously ghosts. The other bit was that out of their 50 hours (!) of film and audio footage, they managed to pull two moments with "voices" on the track. One of which the "voice recognition expert" they had on the show commented said flat-out was nothing (which they interpreted as him not being able to get anything one way or the other, despite him clearly saying otherwise), and the other one where they claimed to here the word "So...." I bet you if I set up a cheap old audio recorder in my old house in Wallingford, I'd pick up a whole lot more than that in 50 hours of recording, and that house wasn't even as old as the Lizzie Borden house.
The other show, "Paranormal State," looked like a wannabe cross between a documentary and some sort of college-student version of the X-Files. With a side of "Torchwood" thrown on for fun. The writing (and the supposed investigators) were melodramatic, sophomoric (probably literally...), and, at many moments, downright silly in how credulous they were. They were supposed to be helping a little boy who supposedly saw ghosts, but all they seemed to do was interview the family, try to hold a seance, and then do an amateur cleansing/exorcism. Oh, and give the boy a bottle of holy water. The kid, unsurprisingly, was not cured... and sounded, from the interviews, unnervingly as though he had something mentally and/or physically wrong with him. My bet is Aspergers, but of course that's armchair theorizing of the worst kind. In any case, his problems showed up when they moved to a new house... do you suppose he might just be lonely? Nah. Obviously it's ghosts. Whatever.
At least when the X-Files did this stuff, they had good writing and good acting... oh, and didn't pretend it was real. It was almost worth it so that I and one of the other girls could make fun of the main "investigator" guy for wearing a coat that looked like it'd been stolen from Jack Harkness' wardrobe. Somebody really wanted to look the part... ;)
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no subject
Date: 2008-06-18 09:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-19 12:50 am (UTC)Oh, Ghost Hunters... I've heard stories about them. It's so fun making fun of these guys, but at the same time, you kind of walk away wondering how the hell people manage to live being that completely gullible.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-19 12:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-18 10:18 pm (UTC)But I think I would seriously enjoy your skeptic's group. I could get right in there with that discussion.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-19 12:52 am (UTC)You totally would, I bet! Maybe there's something similar in your area? I found mine off of Meetup.com...