Slashdot Mirror

https://tvo.org/article/curren...

Not sure if this will play outside Canada or not.

But here it is: Cosmonauts: How Russia Won The Space Program, a fascinating look at the USSR's space program, and what they got right, and why.

Definitely worth watching.

Suns have a lot of light noise too, so we probably wouldn't see a laser transmitter either, unless it were from the very edge of the system.

Noise? No. Sound? Yes. It is precisely how we understand our own sun. It is not by light but by sound.

There is a nice lecture titled "Songs of the Stars" by Don Kurtz from the University of Central Lancashire. It can be found here: http://feeds.tvo.org/tvobigideas

The podcast is called Stellar Seismology. Enjoy.

Shakespeare, among all other poets and artists, was correct. Even the dead poets and artists are still light years ahead of the early 20th century scientist. Modern scientists are just a regression of their predecessor; there are very few scientists today who merit such a title.

The proposed lawful access legislation that will give law enforcement sweeping new powers, put a tremendous strain on smaller ISPs, and put all Canadians at risk of inappropriate and unnecessary surveillance. This 1984-like legislation is something that has been in the works in one form or another since 1999. It seeks to add far more warrantless Internet surveillance options for law enforcement officers. While I very much respect and support our fine police men and women, the information that the proposed bill will grant, without warrant or or oversight, should concern all privacy-loving citizens. Ontario’s fantastic privacy commissioner, Ann Cavoukian, outlines her concerns eloquently in an interview with Search Engine’s Jesse Brown:
http://searchengine.tvo.org/blog

Anyone interested, and we should all be interested, should read up on the details, listen to what others are saying, and let your MP know how you feel about this potential invasion of our privacy. If you feel strongly about this, you may also want to fill out the Open Media petition.

http://www.realprivacy.ca/write-my-mp
http://openmedia.ca/StopSpying

The Internet is what we make it. We should all be active participants.

I know some schools in Toronto Canada have stopped assigning homework. Studies have shown that there's little if any benefit to assigning homework. And when homework is dropped altogether, many students do better.

To add to this, on the episode of "The Agenda (TVO)" where they had Bell and others on for a discussion on UBB, the guy from bell specifically said that "50% of the customers who are on the 25 GB plan only use 20% of their allotted amount", which means that there's a whole lot of users out there using less than 5GB a month. So that's a lot of of people who on a pure UBB system would be paying almost nothing. But Bell doesn't want to charge those people less. What a scam.

Up here in Ontario Canada, our local school gives out the dumbest grades to children. I swear they stole the grading system from Harry Potter's O.W.L. system -- basically they get A, B, C letter grades for certain aspects of the year, and then an "excellent / good / satisfactory / needs improvement" grade for other aspects of the course work (sample report card).

The unnecessary complexity becomes apparent when guides are made to help parents understand the grade system.

On top of this, the letter grading has been made substantially tougher (something I have no problem with). To quote:

The Ontario Ministry of Education changed its grading system several years ago in response to two different factors: to reduce disparity in reporting standards; and to reflect the academic achievement of the vast majority of Ontario students in the public education system. That's right, the vast majority of bright, capable students in the Ontario public elementary system are not straight-A achievers, but rather straight-B's.

A few different things:

1) ThreeHundredEight is an excellent resource for Canadian Poll analysis, much like the United States' FiveThirtyEight. Personally I think Rae is probably the only electable leader of the proposed coalition. I think Layton is too far left for Western Canada.

2) Search Engine has an excellent podcast up this morning on how the Conservatives are pushing to get this through again.

3) I swear the Conservatives are trying everything in their power to piss off the future political power base in this country. By 2020, everyone under 40 will have intimate knowledge of digital privacy, copyright, and barely remember a time when there wasn't an internet. Nobody under 50 will remember a time without videogames and personal computers. This legislation will hamstring the Conservative party for years to come.

Disclaimer: I used to be a diehard federal conservative-voter (I'm a social liberal, fiscal conservative), however with the garbage the Conservative party has pulled in the past few years, I would be surprised if I would return in the near future.

Had a nice lecture on TVO (TV Ontario) last week on Copyright. I watched the whole thing.

I couldn't find the lecture, but I did find the interview:

http://www.tvo.org/TVO/WebObjects/TVO.woa?videoid?50148434001

So, the problem with anecdotes is this: right now where I live it is unusually cold, which is an anecdote against global warming. However, if we examine it, we find that this temperature anomaly is probably not related to the global climate anyway. You already know that. The point is, if anecdotes aren't carefully examined, they are meaningless.

But what we have in the climate community is a bunch of guys who feel highly motivated to find anecdotes that support global warming, and few that support anything else. So it is not surprising to me that you would find much more anecdotal evidence in support of global warming than against it.

Fortunately, none of that really matters, because we don't need anecdotes, we have data. We know that recently the global climate system has been warming at around .12 degrees per decade, unless the temperature record is wrong. So that settles it.

Really, .12 degrees is not very much, and so far nothing bad has happened. The main question is, will the temperatures continue to rise at an accelerated pace, or will it level out? Right now we have various scenarios, and in one scenario it will go up drastically, in another it will remain fairly static, but there really isn't enough evidence to say for sure what will happen. However, it seems unlikely that the worst scenarios will happen (New York covered by the ocean, jet stream stopping, etc). Some people have predicted rain pattern change, but that is just a guess, the computer models can't predict anything at smaller than the continental level.

Someone else Someone else posted this debate between two scientists on opposite sides of the issue. The great thing about it is they agreed on almost every point. If that link doesn't work someone seems to have posted snippets of it on youtube.

That CO2 is going to cause a global catastrophe? Is that your extraordinary claim? Because I haven't seen the extraordinary evidence.

If your claim is that CO2 affects the global temperature, I'm not going to disagree with you. If your claim is that it's the most significant segment in the change of temperature over the last decade, I'm going to say, "the evidence for that is extremely weak." If you say, "global warming is a disaster and we must act now to stop it!" I'm going to say you're wrong.

Now that I think I've made my position clear, I will tell you my evidence for this is mainly in the IPCC report. It's a good summary of the science of global warming (I am referring to WGI, not WGII). There just isn't anything in there that's very scary.

If you want to get a more accessible presentation of a 'denier' view on global warming, here is a good piece.

I especially like the approach John Christy takes. He does what I would do if I had the time, he does his own experiments. He saw that the temperatures based on ground based thermometers had potential weaknesses, so he went out and got a separate data source (satellites). He wanted to understand climate models, so he built his own. I would do that if I had time. His conclusion in the paper is, "fundamental knowledge is meagre here, and our own research indicates that alarming changes in the key observations are not occurring."

That is basically my position as well, that I have seen no evidence that leads me to believe a climate catastrophe is about to happen.

Not everyone disagrees on the claim because it is convenient to do so, many disagree for entirely reasonable critiques of the current science.

Here is a clip from TVO:

http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/index.cfm?page_id=7&bpn=779732&ts=2010-03-09%2020:00:00.0

Unless you think the research chair and professor in Applied Mathematics and Global Change at the University of British Columbia and the professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are also nutjobs. I am inclined to think they know a thing or two about what they are talking about. Both of them agree that the current research is over simplified, faulty assumptions, based on data used improperly. Hardly, foregone conclusion as most people who spout this rhetoric would have you believe.

Calling people names like "deniers" only proves that you are not tolerant of other ideas, and that you only have faith in your own. That is not science.

Myself I am not saying one way or another with any certainty what is happening. However from what I have read and what I have seen, much of the actual science seems to be flawed, and is heavily weighted on assumptions which are in turn based on assumptions, based on sketchy data, in which much of the methods used are questionable. The whole thing has become so politicized now, that there is more politics in it that any bit of science that may have been apart of it.

The release of the emails just added to the mess, in that it showed that "scientists" (and I use that word lightly) were actively trying to prevent people from examining their data, and actively trying to prevent other people with contrary opinions to their own from publishing it in an academic journal, going so far I heard as to try and purchase the journal so they could pick and choose who got published (only the ones that back their findings).

Anyway sketchy. I think people should be more environmentally friendly, and reduce the amount of energy we use anyway. Pollution and wanton consumption without regard is I believe is pretty irresponsible. So far as I am concerned Climate Change or not, it is something we should be doing anyway. I find most of the hype and fervor of the issue to be sensationalistic BS used for purely economical reasons. It is a complex issue that should be investigated thoroughly, and doesn't need people telling others that they are "deniers" etc... of obvious "truths". If your looking for "Truth" pick up a bible or a copy of Philosophy 101, as you won't find any "truth" in science. Science is about "facts", and reproducible experiment, or at the very very least confirmed modeling based on real life data. I have yet to see a model that hasn't failed under any kind of rigor.

Don't even get me started on the fools who blather on about geo-engineering like they know what they are talking about. That's like a blind guy doing surgery using a chainsaw. These would probably be the same morons that 100 years ago would suggest introducing a foreign invasive species to solve some kind of pest problem, not fully understanding the consequences of their actions...

Anyway I am ranted out...

The pages about some topics of nuclear physics were removed from the university textbooks. In some cases the textbooks were collected and destroyed. Knowledge do can be a dangerous thing.
Knowledge isn't necessarily dangerous in and of itself. What you do with said knowledge is more important. Yeah, yeah: "Guns don't kill people rappers do" etc. but are you really trying to make an analogy between censorship and copyright infringement prevention? Regardless of one's views on the censorship you mention (without references BTW) I'm not aware of anyone suggesting U2's music is a threat under anti-terrorism laws?

Now after some secret international consultations the Open Source is about to go this way. MySQL was already bought first by "Sun", then by "Oracle". PHP will be bought before long by "IBM".
And yet MySQL remains free. I have access to the source code and can continue to deploy it as part of free software projects. Sun bought StarOffice and turned it into one of the largest open source projects. IBM is a huge proponent and supporter of free and open source software. What exactly is the concern here?

Network computing will be available only to selected ones, who have an access to the proprietary IDE, like Visual Studio, etc.
Cobblers. Network computing has nothing to do with an IDE. Even if you are referring to some kind of networked development, it's doubtful that the IDE will play a big part. IDEs are generally related to language and OS. Development environment is pretty much irrelevant.

More about these international consultations from this podcast http://feeds.tvo.org/tvo/searchengine from Canada.
Thanks but given the lack of informed view in the rest of your post - I'll pass.

Actually the new World Order is in the making.
Ooh that's a short step from Godwin's Law isn't it?

The pages about some topics of nuclear physics were removed from the university textbooks. In some cases the textbooks were collected and destroyed. Knowledge do can be a dangerous thing.

Now after some secret international consultations the Open Source is about to go this way. MySQL was already bought first by "Sun", then by "Oracle". PHP will be bought before long by "IBM".

Network computing will be available only to selected ones, who have an access to the proprietary IDE, like Visual Studio, etc.

More about these international consultations from this podcast http://feeds.tvo.org/tvo/searchengine from Canada. Actually the new World Order is in the making.

As much as the claim "a bunch of Imams got together and basically stated that Math and Science were of the devil" plays into contemporary stereotypes, it is a very superficial and incomplete assessment.

What happened was a period of scientific breakthroughs and constant progress in conjunction with the expanding empires of Islam from Andalusian Spain, to Kashgar in Western China.

Then, several events started the slow but steady decline. The first was the Mongol invasion from the east, which destroyed Baghdad as a seat of science (and government) for the Muslim east. Great libraries were lost in the event. The Silk Road trade was eliminated, and with it all the hinterland that produced luminaries such as Al-Farabi, Al-Biruni and many more for many centuries.

The second was the Reconquista in Spain which took several centuries. Again, untold amounts of books were burned or lost.

Then following the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks, 1492 saw two events: the final fall of Muslim Spain, and Columbus' discovery of America. With the wealth of the Americas, Europe now had access to new trade and riches, and developed many technologies for sailing, trade, military, ...etc. No longer were they constrained by the Muslim Orient being a barrier between them and trade limited to India and China.

Then came the rejection of modern technology: the most stark example is the printing press. While Europe started the Renaissance, and printed books started an intellectual revolution, the printing press was rejected in Muslim lands. I am not sure why, but perhaps the Ottoman authorities feared it as a means of insubordination. Regardless, the end result was 3 centuries of relying on manuscripts only, causing poor dissemination of knowledge.

You can see the effect even in religious disciplines, for example, jurisprudence: the later commentators were just compilers/editors/summarizers of earlier texts. Even they declared that the "door to ijtihad has been closed", and all that has been said has been said, nothing new was to come about. This decline happened under late Mameluke and Ottoman rule.

This was soon followed by the colonialism period from Mughal India (1700s by the British East India Company), North Africa (France 1830s), Egypt (Britian 1882), Palestinian mandate, and the rest of it.

Following World War II, military dictators came to power (Nasser, Sukarno, Assad, Saddam, Qaddafi, ...etc.)

At least the Arab countries have not yet recovered from those last 2 stages.

For more on Science under Islam, watch this awesome BBC documentary: Science and Islam - Episode 1.

The three episodes are described here:

• Science and Islam: The Language of Science
• Science and Islam: The Empire of Reason
• Science and Islam: The Power of Doubt

Also articles, books and talks by Dr. George Saliba (Columbia University) are highly recommended in this regard. He is interviewed in the above documentary.

As much as the claim "a bunch of Imams got together and basically stated that Math and Science were of the devil" plays into contemporary stereotypes, it is a very superficial and incomplete assessment.

What happened was a period of scientific breakthroughs and constant progress in conjunction with the expanding empires of Islam from Andalusian Spain, to Kashgar in Western China.

Then, several events started the slow but steady decline. The first was the Mongol invasion from the east, which destroyed Baghdad as a seat of science (and government) for the Muslim east. Great libraries were lost in the event. The Silk Road trade was eliminated, and with it all the hinterland that produced luminaries such as Al-Farabi, Al-Biruni and many more for many centuries.

The second was the Reconquista in Spain which took several centuries. Again, untold amounts of books were burned or lost.

Then following the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks, 1492 saw two events: the final fall of Muslim Spain, and Columbus' discovery of America. With the wealth of the Americas, Europe now had access to new trade and riches, and developed many technologies for sailing, trade, military, ...etc. No longer were they constrained by the Muslim Orient being a barrier between them and trade limited to India and China.

Then came the rejection of modern technology: the most stark example is the printing press. While Europe started the Renaissance, and printed books started an intellectual revolution, the printing press was rejected in Muslim lands. I am not sure why, but perhaps the Ottoman authorities feared it as a means of insubordination. Regardless, the end result was 3 centuries of relying on manuscripts only, causing poor dissemination of knowledge.

You can see the effect even in religious disciplines, for example, jurisprudence: the later commentators were just compilers/editors/summarizers of earlier texts. Even they declared that the "door to ijtihad has been closed", and all that has been said has been said, nothing new was to come about. This decline happened under late Mameluke and Ottoman rule.

This was soon followed by the colonialism period from Mughal India (1700s by the British East India Company), North Africa (France 1830s), Egypt (Britian 1882), Palestinian mandate, and the rest of it.

Following World War II, military dictators came to power (Nasser, Sukarno, Assad, Saddam, Qaddafi, ...etc.)

At least the Arab countries have not yet recovered from those last 2 stages.

For more on Science under Islam, watch this awesome BBC documentary: Science and Islam - Episode 1.

The three episodes are described here:

• Science and Islam: The Language of Science
• Science and Islam: The Empire of Reason
• Science and Islam: The Power of Doubt

Also articles, books and talks by Dr. George Saliba (Columbia University) are highly recommended in this regard. He is interviewed in the above documentary.

As much as the claim "a bunch of Imams got together and basically stated that Math and Science were of the devil" plays into contemporary stereotypes, it is a very superficial and incomplete assessment.

What happened was a period of scientific breakthroughs and constant progress in conjunction with the expanding empires of Islam from Andalusian Spain, to Kashgar in Western China.

Then, several events started the slow but steady decline. The first was the Mongol invasion from the east, which destroyed Baghdad as a seat of science (and government) for the Muslim east. Great libraries were lost in the event. The Silk Road trade was eliminated, and with it all the hinterland that produced luminaries such as Al-Farabi, Al-Biruni and many more for many centuries.

The second was the Reconquista in Spain which took several centuries. Again, untold amounts of books were burned or lost.

Then following the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks, 1492 saw two events: the final fall of Muslim Spain, and Columbus' discovery of America. With the wealth of the Americas, Europe now had access to new trade and riches, and developed many technologies for sailing, trade, military, ...etc. No longer were they constrained by the Muslim Orient being a barrier between them and trade limited to India and China.

Then came the rejection of modern technology: the most stark example is the printing press. While Europe started the Renaissance, and printed books started an intellectual revolution, the printing press was rejected in Muslim lands. I am not sure why, but perhaps the Ottoman authorities feared it as a means of insubordination. Regardless, the end result was 3 centuries of relying on manuscripts only, causing poor dissemination of knowledge.

You can see the effect even in religious disciplines, for example, jurisprudence: the later commentators were just compilers/editors/summarizers of earlier texts. Even they declared that the "door to ijtihad has been closed", and all that has been said has been said, nothing new was to come about. This decline happened under late Mameluke and Ottoman rule.

This was soon followed by the colonialism period from Mughal India (1700s by the British East India Company), North Africa (France 1830s), Egypt (Britian 1882), Palestinian mandate, and the rest of it.

Following World War II, military dictators came to power (Nasser, Sukarno, Assad, Saddam, Qaddafi, ...etc.)

At least the Arab countries have not yet recovered from those last 2 stages.

For more on Science under Islam, watch this awesome BBC documentary: Science and Islam - Episode 1.

The three episodes are described here:

• Science and Islam: The Language of Science
• Science and Islam: The Empire of Reason
• Science and Islam: The Power of Doubt

Also articles, books and talks by Dr. George Saliba (Columbia University) are highly recommended in this regard. He is interviewed in the above documentary.

Didn't Search Engine cover something similar happening in China? Yes, yes they did. And it didn't work out too well for people as I recall.

Didn't Search Engine cover something similar happening in China? Yes, yes they did. And it didn't work out too well for people as I recall.

Nesson was interviewed on the latest Search Engine podcast (an excellent program), and gave me the impression of being a totally arrogant crackpot. Direct link to the audio interview (MP3).

Nesson was interviewed on the latest Search Engine podcast (an excellent program), and gave me the impression of being a totally arrogant crackpot. Direct link to the audio interview (MP3).

The SearchEngine podcast has a nice summary of the issue and interview with the Minister in charge.

You can listen to it Here

The SearchEngine podcast has a nice summary of the issue and interview with the Minister in charge.

You can listen to it Here

I'm happy you left out section 2.x, but I'll copy it over for you too.

2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

        a) freedom of conscience and religion;
        b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
        c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
        d) freedom of association.

Section 1 applies generally to incitement against the government; we've had very few cases of this. Today people run with this whenever someone calls them a bad name, it's also been used against people who actively promote excessive hate; that is murder, targeting specific groups of people, ethnic cleansing, etc.

The second point, you can. You simply can not incite hate--this is the main reason people have been deported from Canada, but you're allowed an opinion and your right to express it still exists. Most people seem to believe you can't have any 'negative' opinions at all.

To your third point. He let people refute his argument on TVO earlier this week, and remember it's not his quote but that of Mullah Krekar; who the argument and thesis that the argument is based on as well as ongoing trends.

Here is the TVO piece: Styen Vs Critics (Requires Flash)

I can't rip the following in Linux (I can't seem to direct link, click 'watch video').

http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/index.cfm?page_id=7&bpn=779085&ts=2007-12-14%2020:00:15.0

It's an FLV file transported through an RTMP stream. On Windows Orbit Downloader is supposed to work by I can't find anything that supports RTMP streams on Linux.

The fabulously energetic Princeton theoretical physicist Leonard Susskind and one the founders of string theory returns with an encore presentation about his disagreement with Stephen Hawking: whether collapsing stars which form black holes not only make matter disappear but all information as well. Does it matter? It's one of the major battle lines among people who think about what makes the universe tick.

The fabulously energetic Princeton theoretical physicist Leonard Susskind and one the founders of string theory returns with an encore presentation about his disagreement with Stephen Hawking: whether collapsing stars which form black holes not only make matter disappear but all information as well. Does it matter? It's one of the major battle lines among people who think about what makes the universe tick.

I particularly liked Jacalyn Duffin's lecture about the history of medicine during the Rational Movement and it's relation to the scientific method in making a diagnosis.

If anyone knows of any other good webcast sites (other than the MIT open courseware project, which I already have.) please let me know.

I particularly liked Jacalyn Duffin's lecture about the history of medicine during the Rational Movement and it's relation to the scientific method in making a diagnosis.

If anyone knows of any other good webcast sites (other than the MIT open courseware project, which I already have.) please let me know.

Christopher Hitchens was on TV Ontario recently debating a similar issue, whether religions should be protected from criticism, mocking, etc. Audio can be heard here.

You know, I saw a taped lecture given by this guy on a tvo program two weeks ago. When he first started speaking I remember thinking to myself "what a nut." As he went on, tho', he started citing his sources and he started to sound really credible. Of course, he then went off into Danekenite (thanks to David Brin for the term) style speculation with the "intergalactic Quarantine" and "Forward Bases."

Over all he came off goofy.

J

OT: if you follow the TVO link you will see link to a lecture "WWII: The Russian Perspective." It's fantastic. Watch it if you like the subject of history.

I have an idea, why not have a channel with nothing but a camera pointed in a college classroom? Not anything produced, but just a webcam that captures lectures. That would be interesting.

>So who exactly is paying for the TV channels in Canada - The viewers, via increased costs of goods to pay for their advertising, or the viewers, via taxes paid to the state ?

Here's the difference:

You don't go to jail if you don't buy products advertised on TV (I know plenty of people, including myself, that see most ads as annoying putoffs and avoid those products instead of purchasing them [I'm looking at you most shampoo companies -- At least generic brands aren't supposed to give me some sort of scalp orgasm.])

Now, you do tend to go to jail if you don't pay taxes.

I hear it's a 5,000 UKP fine for not paying the TV tax in the UK, and about 6 months jail time for chronic offenders. And then even people who are paying have to deal with detector vans invading UK residents' privacy, checking on what channels are being watched.

Am I off on that?

This isn't so say Canada doesn't have TV stations paid for by taxes, such as TV Ontario, we do. However, everyone pays for it so we can avoid the whole invasion of privacy and non-payment type issues. I suppose it sucks for those who refuse to watch TV, however, I can assure you that government funded TV channels like TV Ontario carry absolutely no interest to anyone *except* for the artsy-fartsy type that wouldn't own a TV. Yeah; the fact the channel exists at all makes no sense to me, either... :-)

If you've never seen this film, The Corporation is a documentary covering the history of how corporations came to exist and their roles in society today.

This film begins by conducting a psychological prognosis of a corporation, where they find it's condition is of a psychopath.

It was shown on the Canadian equivalent of PBS.

So here's oddly enough a bittorrent download of the 3 part series.

http://66.90.75.92/suprnova//torrents/1983/The Corporation(3).torrent

If anyone is asking for more proof, I think this film will provide it for them. Otherwise, I still found watching this film to be very informative.

Perhaps in Europe everything is opposite (well, having been there, it'd come as no surprise to me if this was true :-) ), but I do know one thing: There's a great deal of broadcasters in North America who lack any form of commercials.

Some of them are paid directly by people who subscribe to the programming, for example, HBO, and FSTV. Some of them broadcast for free and have absolutely no charge attached to them, for example, PBS, and, to some degree (if you live outside of Ontario) TV Ontario. FSTV also has a station without commercials.

Commercial free stations such as TV Ontario, PBS, FSTV, and the various religious stations regularly broadcast content which a great many would find objectionable if they didn't keep their TV sets glued to stations they actually enjoy. In fact, in spite of the fact the BBC forces a license upon people in the UK for their content, PBS manages to give away many of the exact same programs developed by the BBC themselves, and has continued to do so for years. Also, I am certain that the content broadcast on FSTV is FAR more objectionable to many than just about ANY other station I know of, especially the BBC.

Why it is that there are more commercial free programs being broadcast that I can pick up in North America for free than there are in the UK under forced licencing will always remain an unsolveable enigmah to me.

>I guess you were in the UK some time back, we now have the grand total of 5 terestial (sp?) channels

Last month, but the area was a bit remote, and we just had rabbit ears... I noticed a channel 5 in the Teletext, though. I just thought it was some kind of cable TV channel or something. :-)

>for some strange reason the programe makers (both here & the US) think that you Americans are a bit dense and everything is either dummbed down

Hey, I'm from Ontario, Canada (not that there's a big difference, though). Trust me, you don't want TV too intelligent. You'd end up with TVOntario (our government run TV station that shows all sorts of "intellectual" shows that no one ever watches). I'd rather go to sleep watching something below my intelligence than be put to sleep by something that's supposed to be above it.

>I guess you were in the UK some time back, we now have the grand total of 5 terestial (sp?) channels

Last month, but the area was a bit remote, and we just had rabbit ears... I noticed a channel 5 in the Teletext, though. I just thought it was some kind of cable TV channel or something. :-)

>for some strange reason the programe makers (both here & the US) think that you Americans are a bit dense and everything is either dummbed down

Hey, I'm from Ontario, Canada (not that there's a big difference, though). Trust me, you don't want TV too intelligent. You'd end up with TVOntario (our government run TV station that shows all sorts of "intellectual" shows that no one ever watches). I'd rather go to sleep watching something below my intelligence than be put to sleep by something that's supposed to be above it.