The History Channel
 

We really ought to start cataloguing the gems on the History Channel. :D

At this moment, they are showing a one-hour special called Earth's Black Hole. The thesis: That the phenomena observed in the Bermuda Triangle are caused by a black hole somewhere under the surface of the Earth! :rofl:

Oh man! Is this great history or what? :lol:

Then why hasn't said black hole eaten the rest of the earth or sucked up a good share of the ocean instead of confining itself to various vehicles in the Bermuda Triangle?

Or is it a black-hole-powered device left behind by the Atlanteans?

I'm sure they're trying to find out which of Nostradamus's quatrains will enlighten them about this.

Another one: We mustn't forget their on-going series about a couple of guys touring the world to practice martial arts!

Yeah, that's important history for sure!

Hm, think there's a connection between Maxis programmers and History channel content creators?

Maybe the program director for the History Channel is a sim.

History Channel over this side of the pond just ran a program on the workings of UFOs. All sorts of technical details about the workings of anti-gravity drives. I hadn't realized we'd reached that level so long ago.

Let's see if I've got this right.

History channel is run by sims, there is a black hole under the earth's surface, causing Bermuda triangle stuff, martians are purple not green.
And the IRS, are the good guys.

Get it, got it, good.


Oh, one more thing.


You don't screw with Atlanteans, they can hold their breath for a really long time. That bit I do know to be true.

I thought Patrick Duffy was the last of them though :)

A red herring my friend.
He was actually a reject, a weakling, sent to the surface to fend for himself.

Damn, that might cause some strife.

You will now forget everything I just wrote.

(makes mystical symbol, computer vanishes in a puff of smoke)

If we run out of History Channel jokes, we can start in on the Discovery Channel.

Golly, I'm sure that the science community has been clamoring for television shows where the basic point is watching motorcycle mechanics getting into personal arguments and contrived crises in tanning salons!

That's it, "Reality Science", that's what the TV moguls need.
We can set challenges, with rewards, and exile islands, and.....

Discovery Channel?
I got this problem, with almost anything, called Discovery something.
It's a Land Rover thing. Land Rover "Discovery" ( or Disco) drivers, don't wave to us ordinary Land Rover drivers. There is something wrong with the Discovery, it makes people snobbish. Even Range Rover drivers wave.
And anyway, I can't get cable TV out here in the sticks, and pay for view satellite? Hyuck Hyuck, it is to laugh.
Hmm, my late computer scientist friend, did give me a nice powerful satellite card, I could convert one of my spare silly tinfoil hats to a dish. Revert to the old family trade. "Piratin".

Yeah mate. That all came from "Area 50.9".:laugh: :p

Oh... here's a good one from the History Channel!

In a show about barbecue, they stated outright that the reason barbecue developed in the South was... hold on to your chair now!... slavery! :rofl:

The argument, you see, was that because barbecue means slowly cooking meat over a low fire, it was a very labor-intensive way to prepare meat so only households with slaves could afford to cook it.

So, here's the quiz: Who can tell us all of the idiotic errors in the claim that barbecue developed in the South because it is a labor-intensive cooking method that only people with slaves could afford?


In the same show, there was also a blunder about Clarence Birdseye, but it's just plain dumb instead of going out of their way for idiocy like the one above. Birdseye (at least once) demonstrated frozen meat to a guest in his home by tossing it at the floor and it bounced. The ditz they are interviewing said it bounced because meat was not frozen as solid in those days as it is now.

Doesn't Southern Barbecue involve a large pit with hot coals in the bottom?

I.E. labor intensive to set up (even if you re-use the pit!), but you can pretty much let it go all day. Kind of like a wood fired crock pot...

Speaking of crock pots (the electric kind), I've got a pot of chuck going now... tomorrow it will be shredded beef on rolls!

Now we are talking about the Polynesian way of cooking. Dig a big hole, light a big fire, when it settles place big rocks on top, put food into banana leaves on top of rocks, cover with dirt. Mother nature's oven.

I seem to recall a movie, some "Southern Barbeque" theme, Sunday barbequed ribs etc.
Real popular with the coloured folks, till they started runnin low on white folks.:weg:

Yup! That's a start! Barbecue involves digging a barbecue pit, starting a slow fire, putting in the meat, covering it, and leaving it alone for the next 12 to 24 hours!

The blunders I thought of were:

1. Pound for pound, barbecue is the least labor-intensive way to cook meat.
   
   
2. Building a barbecue pit is no more labor-intensive than building any other kind of cooking fire, and less so than most because it doesn't require constant maintenance.
   
   
3. Slave labor was not cheap; far too valuable to have a slave spend an entire day watching the smoke from a barbecue pit.
   
   
4. At the start of the Civil War, there were more slaves in the North than there were in the South, so if slavery had anything to do with it, barbecue would have been invented in the North first.
   
   
5. No one knows for sure who built the first barbecue pit in America but it was most likely the hillbillies in western Virginia, not slaves in South Carolina. That's why it moved west with the Scots-Irish and became identified with Kansas City and Texas.
   
   
6. Barbecue probably became popular in the South because the South had much stronger traditions of sharing large community meals while the North was carved up into tiny little farms where the meat people ate was mostly salted beef and fish, and they didn't eat meat every day. The only analog in the North that I can think of was the New England clam bake; but the clam bake was a seasonal special event rather than a daily tradition.
   
   
7. The climate probably played a role, too. In the North, meat could be preserved by storing it in cool places, especially in winter. The North had ice houses; the South did not. In the South, if you butchered a steer, you ate him right away.
   
   
8. The South had the large open ranges suited to maintaining large cattle herds. In the North, cattle were much more labor-intensive, requiring growing fodder on farms where the acreage could be more profitably invested in growing vegetables for human consumption. Hence, Southrons ate a lot more fresh meat.

Here's another History Channel oddity: They did a segment of "Save Our History" about a building in Boston that they called "the African meeting house" without once mentioning that the real name of the building is the First Independent Baptist Church. They even bleeped out one guy who spoke its real name when he was talking about his restoration job.

Obviously changing the name of the building is bizarre corruption of history, but for the life of me I can't figure out why they would do it. :thinking:

Very bizarro, since tons of modern day Black churches are Baptist....

Yup. I'm stumped. Obviously someone was trying to accomplish something but I sure can't figure out what. Nevertheless, it's amusing that they would be doing revisionist history tricks in a show entitled "Save Our History." :lol:

Hmm.

This might help clear up that mystery somewhat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Meeting_House

Then again, maybe it just adds to the confusion.