Dark Horizons
I have this little ritual. It’s just a slight quirk, but it makes me feel good and gets stuff off my chest. Every six months or so, I like to watch an episode of Horizon, the flagship science strand of the greatest public service broadcaster in the world. And then I like to shout into the cold, unblinking eye of the TV screen, “JESUS FUCKING CHRIST I REMEMBER WHEN THIS WAS A QUALITY SHOW THAT ACTUALLY CATERED TO PEOPLE WITH AN INTEREST IN SCIENCE AND IT WASN’T JUST A LOAD OF INCOHERENT COCKDRIZZLE PRODUCED BY A CAGEFUL OF MENTALLY SUBNORMAL GIBBONS WHO JUST LIKE LOOKING AT PRETTY PICTURES.”
And then I weep.
Tonight’s show dealt with the science of decision making. Now there’s an interesting topic, you’d think. But not for the fearless morons at Horizon. First up, they had a camp version of Tommy Carcetti from The Wire who tells people how to make better decisions in life and love using FORMULAS! Because you understand, SCIENCE is made out of FORMULAS. It was like every PR puff piece about “scientists discover the formula for the perfect walk/boiled egg/tentacle porn” had been elevated to the level of a self-help personality cult. This involved experiments which apparently revealed that people who are more attractive and confident are more successful in romance. Fuck me. Then, oh, I dunno, there was a magician or some shit.
The next bit, involving a dull man who demonstrates how your decisions can be affected by what kind of beverage you’re holding, was simply a warm up for the show’s big finale, which was about a parapsychologist who did an experiment which demonstrated that precognition exists. You could tell he had proved this because he had a GRAPH. SCIENCE is also made out of GRAPHS. Naturally, this being the BBC’s flagship science show, they didn’t ask any scientists what they thought of this. Or, indeed, the Nobel committee.
There were also some Top Gun pilots, who had nothing to do with anything but they did look very pretty.
It’s pointless, I know, my little ritual of weeping and shouting – Horizon lost the plot over a decade ago, and there doesn’t seem to be much prospect of getting it back short of some serious bloodletting (note: not a metaphor) at the BBC. But like I said, it makes me feel better.
Couldn’t agree more. It jumped the shark for me with that one about dinosaurs not dying out and living among us.
Comment by Pinksy — February 13, 2008 @ 4:39 pm
The problem here is that I don’t want to seem elitist and dismiss the simple-minded, whizz-bang pop-sci of the Peter Wothers variety.
On the other hand it isn’t elitist to suggest that programmes like Horizon concentrate on useful and mentally stimulating material, like The Trap by Adam Curtis.
There was actually a Horizon on tonight about “life on other planets.”
Clearly anyone who seriously studies this sort of thing should have some kind of standard email to send to idiot journalists (no offense) along the lines of:
“Further to your invitation to appear on x-infowank-magazine-show-x I am unfortunately unavailable.
The short answer to any questions on the subject of life on other planets is: we don’t know yet, and quit bugging us.
Unless you have $5000 billion dollars to spend over twenty years on an omnidirectional, deep field, multi-spectral scanning device and/or a probe to Europa, or Uranus, we’re really not that fussy.”
*sigh*
What I mean is: I agree.
Comment by Tom James — March 4, 2008 @ 11:19 pm