Justin Cox's Mindless Chatter » Discovery

I’m a Television Snob

Justin — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 02:04:27 +0000

There, I said it, I’m a TV snob. I’m subscribed to Bright House’s HD cable package and receive, I kid you not, around 1000 channels. The problem is I only watch about 7 of them, the HD channels that are all bunched together at the bottom of the dial. I find it too much work to search through the entire guide, so I only look at what’s on the HD channels. It goes something like this:

This is what you get when you search 1329 on Google Images.

What’s on ESPN (1329), ESPN2 (1330) or ESPNU (1331)? Oh, nothing. Alright, let’s move down to Discovery (1340) and Discovery HD Theater (1341). Alright, let’s skim through the rest of the Discovery channel partners (Science, History, TLC, etc) and check out Food Network (1359). The interesting thing is that I completely skip TBS (1312), TNT (1311), Disney (1335) and Family (1337) because they completely bore me — unless TBS is showing baseball which is almost never anymore.

Now, if I find nothing in this run, then I start to get a little adventurous. I’ll check HBO HD (1243) and the networks, NBC (1020) and ABC (1090) — who watches CBS? If still I find nothing worth watching, I’ll either turn on CNN (1324) or just return to ESPN.

I’m sure there are other, really great channels out there, but if I don’t get it in HD it’s really not worth watching — also it’s not worth the effort to find it on the guide. There are, of course, very few exceptions. The biggest one being The Soup which is on E! (65).

Is that wrong? Do you only watch a handful of channels? Let me know down under.

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Manned Space Flight Fascinates Me

Justin — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 03:25:31 +0000

Ever since I was a little kid I have been fascinated with manned space flight. Maybe it’s because I’ve grown up in Central Florida, the home of NASA and where the history of the space program is ingrained upon every elementary school student, I don’t know. But there is just something amazing about being able to visit space.

One thing that I love about the history of the space program, and something that both From the Earth to the Moon and Discovery’s When We Left Earth focus upon, is that when the whole thing started no one really had a clue what they were doing. In ‘61 President Kennedy declared that we’d send a man to the moon and return him safely again. At that point the only thing NASA knew how to do was send a man into space for a few minutes and bring him back. But in eight years engineers, scientists, mathematicians and test pilots figured out what it took and made it all possible.

Since the amazing journey that put twelve people on the Moon, NASA has launched dozens of satellites, learned how to take up permanent residence in space, and overcome tragedy twice. The Space Shuttle era is coming to a close in just two short years and soon the next chapter of the Space Agency will open. A return to the Moon is in the cards and eventually a manned flight to Mars. Whatever the next chapter holds, it will guarantee to amaze and to continue pushing advancement in science and engineering beyond our current imaginations.

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The World is Just Awesome

Justin — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 01:34:49 +0000

Tonight the new season of Deadliest Catch started and Discovery decided to update their logo and advertising to coincide. While the corporate logo is cleaner (and beautiful in HD) the star of their upgrade is their new ad campaign, The World is Just Awesome. It’s cute, clever, and pretty addictive — which sums up Discovery to a T. Check it out, it’s worth a watch.

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Discovery Channel: Visual Cocaine

Justin — Tue, 05 Aug 2003 03:38:15 +0000

There is a drug out there just as addicting as crack, though you can’t snort or smoke it. If I could somehow figure a way to bottle this and sell it on the black market, I’d make a fortune. What is it? Well, it’s the Discovery Channel.

There is just something about that channel that captures me, and that I’m not the only one that this happens to, and forces me to continue watching. Take last night for instance. I was going to bed, it was around 11:30 and I was exhausted. The news had just ended so I thought I’d see what was on Discovery before I went to sleep. They were doing a show on how Boston is moving all of its highways underground. They call it the Big Dig. Well, needless to say the show took me in and I couldn’t force myself to go to sleep, I had to watch the show. Like all programs on Discovery, the Big Dig show was fascinating. They, Bostonian engineers, did all kinds of really crazy cool things to get this highway underground including FREEZING the soil so that they could easily dig and not upset the topsoil.

But back to my point. Whether its special programs like this one or their series’ like Monster Garage and the spin-off, Monster House, Discovery has some sort of addictive chemical mixed into the horizontal scan lines that force you to keep watching. And their commercials don’t help.

Ok, so Shark Week is coming up next week and they’ve been advertising it on their various shows for what seems like months now. But the kicker is that this year, their headlining program is “Antimony of a Shark Bite” which kicks off the week and airs this Sunday night from nine to eleven. What’s it about? Basically one of the Discovery Channel documentary film makers, Dr. Erich Ritter, was bit by a shark while filming and the whole program is him analyzing the attack and explaining it and whatnot. Now how cool is that! Seriously, I’ve been waiting for this for weeks now and come Sunday evening, you know where to find me.

Let me wrap this uncompensated advertisement for the Discovery Channel up by saying that yes, Discovery is entertainment for your brain, and probably then some.

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