Slashdot Mirror
Junkyard Wars Wants You!
Dan Messinger writes "Bring On The Junk! Junkyard Wars is looking for new contestants to compete on the 2003 series. Teams of contestants are given ten hours to build a machine to solve a specific challenge using parts they salvage from a junkyard. In contrast to previous seasons, this year we are looking for individual applicants who are skilled at putting together sophisticated machinery and not afraid of getting their hands dirty. Successful candidates will possess a strong background in engineering, fabrication and a good mechanical 'know how.' Junkyard Wars wants applications from people of all ages, races, creeds, colors, sexes, religions, and sexual orientations, as well as people with physical disabilities. We are especially interested in applications from women and/or people of color, as previous crops of contenders have been underrepresented among these groups. Lots of kids watch Junkyard Wars and we want to show them that anyone can grow up to be the world's greatest mechanic or engineer! If you think you match the description or you know of someone who does - please log onto our website and apply: you will find the application forms as well as all of the information that you need regarding applying. Application deadline is February 28, 2003."
I've been saying for years that we need more hispanic lesbians building robots on TV. Count me IN!
Sounds like fun, they have a diversity problem they want you to solve. Its amazing that this day in age we are still this worried about diversity, they probably got threatened by their network and/or the fcc. Anyways, I'm still going to apply, it's a good oppertunity.
... as previous crops of contenders have been underrepresented among these groups.
Those groups are "underrepresented" among engineers!
So long, michael. Don't let the door hit you...
was Cathy rogers. Rrowr!
The other people caught on, and we need some new people to come in and clean up this junkyard.
Is is just me, or does anyone else find it strange that the teams always finish on time. Some editing tricks perhaps?
Don't you know the Slashdot audience?
Overweight all-talk do-nothing airchair warriors.
If you had some sort of porn watching or complaining challenge - then this would be the place.
Too bad she no longer hosts the show.
Kent
How, exactly? Underrepresented relative to their proportions in the general population, or relative to their proportions with inclination/education in mechanical engineering? If the former, they are idiots. If the latter, good for them. Applying one set of demographic standards to another domain entiely is ridiculous.
and see them fail miserably because they wasted 6 hours arguing over whether to use the MIG/MAG or TIG welding torch, or spending all the time trying to get linux to boot on their handheld so they can run some simulation calculations....
"...and not afraid of getting their hands dirty..."
"...as well as people with physical disabilities..."
What about people with no hands?
Hands dirty? The poster does realize that this is slashdot, right?
Perhaps he ment to post that they were looking for someone to bitch on the sidelines in the upcoming season...
I find the most under represented groups are those of students (post-secondary ones). What's up with that? Do they thing we've not got the skills to build things?
I've always thought about that myself. They've always 'got a long way to go' with 45 minutes left, and just finish the last nail at the buzzer. A little too Hollywood in the timing, and it's consistant with every team every time.
GL
If I can contact the legless mechanic and Tina Turner, I've got myself a team!
this is one of the few times ive wished i was more mechanically inclined, as a chica. i am SO in love with that show, and other than reception, it would be one of the few reasons i would get cable. i am often incredulous at what they come up with. not to mention, they seem like they have so much fun --- winning or losing. maybe i can pick up a "dummies guide to 'engineering, fabrication and a good mechanical 'know how'". ah well. whats a girl to do??
With the actual problem in Middle East (and possible consequences) maybe the next war will be really a Junkyard war.
..but wouldn't this be more suited for [H]ardOCP folk? Slashdot crowd's needs are different. Hear me out.
Create a gameshow called IT Storage Wars.
Premise: Nerds will be unleashed upon ridiculously aged hardware with a copy of putty.exe, 5 1/5 floppy disc, Linux distribution on a USB-pen, and a wrench to build enterprise-level application servers complete with clustering and a backend database.
I think this could be a winning combination.
This is probably going to become the first time in history that a snail-mail box is going to feel the wrath of the Slashdot Effect.
And yes, I'll be applying. Heh.
blog |
... make the competition more suitable to the ./ crowd.
*Mental Picture*
Ok, guys.. You got 10 hours to build a PC that will run Quake2 in 60 FPS or more. Good luck !
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
But dohn't they contradict the statement of having "diasbled people" and people with "good skills" on the same show. I mean the show is pretty funny now, but have a bunch of one armed people with an IQ of 50 will just make it a "sad funny". I have nothing against stupid people, some of my best friends are stupid! Obviously the show cheats enough as it is to magiclaly get this contraptions to work, but going too far will just turn it into a fantasy show.
On an off-tanget note, I wonder if they will have a show like that 100 years from now. "On the next episode in 5D vision Refuse Pile Conflicts (politically corret), our two teams (made up of humnas and robitic celebrities) try to construct a particle accelerator and see which team can extract the most Uranium 238 in an hour to make fuel for a mass driver."
I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
ive heard girls talk about their boyfriends like this....
I've have watched this for ages on Discovery. The latest series seems to consists of exclusively of US teams, although it appears still to be set in the UK (UK number plates on the scrapped cars etc). In addition to shipping the teams in they also appear to ship cars in, like Oldsmobile and the like. The challenges are getting a bit repetitive too, last night (I live in Holland) we had the "build a old fashioned diving bell and get some treasure off the bottom of the pool". Been there done that.
If they are going to repeat these things can we have repeats of the ones that involve building guns and siege weapons, you can never have enough of that.
--My sig is bigger than your sig--
Moron
This is a show that does some great engineering out of nothing. But their application process is to download a word document, fill it out, print it out and send it via snail mail to the studio.
Can't they come up with a better solution then this? At the very least make the application an interactive PDF and at most make it a Web Form.
But because they are using word they have to post an e-mail address stating that if you can not open word to e-mail someone about it.
Not very technically saavy they seem.
I wonder if Cathy Rogers liked my Junkyard Wars entry tape from a couple of years ago. Bobo hates cans. And sometimes garlic cloves, too.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I hope he applies for it - this is the sort of thing he would love.
when he was a professor, his students hated him because he made them think (imagine that) and he frequently gave them assignments that were much like this show (the one I recall best was they were given a remote control car, assorted kitchen appliances, tin foil, wood, tennis balls, a 286, and some other stuff and were supposed to make a robot that would roam about a gym and retrieve various objects that were placed there. nobody completed the assignment and most didn't even try)
I told him about this show once and he was quite excited - had never seen it - I don't think he watches tv. he wanted me to tape it for him, which to me is like asking me to carve it out of stone for him - I don't even own a VCR.
Now I see that they sell VHS tapes of the show, so I guess now I know a present for him.
I agree with another poster on here that my fav part of the show was the cute brit host girl that is now on that show with Henry Rollins.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
There are basically two programmes:
Just to confuse things though, when Discovery Channel in Europe shows the programmes the use Scrapheap Challenge as the title regardless of which version the programme originally came from.
Both SHC and JW are filmed in the same place. Last series this was in the US. This series its moved back to the UK. As you say, "foreign" rubbish is imported if necessary to make people feel at home.
Am I the saddest man on
No, the irony is that you ended up in the wrong thread.
I guess you do need a better back button after all.
-- Boycott Shell
Those groups are "underrepresented" among engineers!
Yeah, tell me about it. In my engineering classes, out of about 300 students, we only had two gay guys. Two! And they were both in aerospace engineering.
It was really annoying, because anytime I needed fashion advice, I had to walk all the way to the arts buildings on the other end of campus and start asking random people in the hallways.
In my experience, there are only two kinds of people who can drink harder than engineers: mariners and gay people. I think it would be utterly terrifying to meet a gay marine engineer.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
please log onto our website
I tried, but I couldn't find the blank for my userid and password. Perhaps your site is broken.
That forced diversity is absurd as taking a white male in Britain and force him to hang out with a French white male. We would never do this because they are both the same color, and so then it's ok that they don't like eachother. Diversity at my company is a crock, and when people talk about why there aren't many female engineers. I can tell you why. my first year of school at kettering, a private engineering school in Michigan, where I got my undergrad B.S. 35% of the girls dropped out before the first semester ended. They had every advantage, garanteed scholarships just for being girls at a engineering school and buy my Junior year, out of the 79 girls that started when i was a freshman 15 were left. and even less were sitting up there with me when I graduated. So I don't know what the reason is. But something happens and it's not all societal.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
See the Cathy Rogers interview, first question.
Too bad this wasn't a call for contestant on Scrap Heap. The American installments of Junkyard Wars have been generally awful, with pparticipants who act no better than your average (American) football fan. Ugh! The British teams always seemed as if they were actually having fun, but the American teams spend most of their time posturing and sniping at one another. The Young Guns were the worst.
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
There is quite a bit of editing going on. Some sequences are shown out of order and they concentrate on the spectacular (which is usually also disastrous) rather than the four hours of welding. Teams also have a bit of time the next day without the tools and equipment to do "touch up" work. And sometimes, the machines just plain suck.
Get a degree in Engineering like most of us here, I imagine. I don't suggest computer engineering, That's what my major was and well, I have my degree, but I hated it. lol
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
Why did they change the name from Scrapheap Challenge to Junkyard Wars, I wonder. Junkyard I can understand, it's a localisation thing. But why Wars?
And why did they drop Kryten? He was deadly!
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
Tonight, on a very special episode of Junkyard Wars- Two guys in wheel chairs join the megalomaniacs. Can Nosher find the true beauty within them, or will he be untouched by their stoic perseverance at trying to drag a mini out of a pile of crap? Will he tear their wheelchairs apart to get the motors? Will they all cry together at the end?
Will this show suck?
Carpe Deez
people who like to post 'F1r5t p0t7 d00d! 1'm 1337!'
Then they'd have come to the right place.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
"Junkyard Wars wants applications from people of all ages, races, creeds, colors, sexes, religions, and sexual orientations..." This is not a question of right or wrong. I completely fail to undersatnd why who/what you perfer to have sex with is a criteria for any job/tv gameshow.
Turn this super gun into an oil pipe running through afganistan.
Conpanies in the US and UK will provide all the materials, and the US, UK governments will provide any 'assistants' you need, incease any 'problems' are encountered.
BTW Junk Yard wars was a UK programme called Scrap Heap chanlange. Conisidence?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Affirmative action for game shows?!? What is this world coming to....
Caucasian
Black
Asian
Hispanic
Middle eastern
Native [Australian/American/etc]
Mixed
Cowboynealean
Sparks:Gadget:Beer Maker
I found this show pretty fun a few years ago but it has grown tiresome, dull, repetitive and predictable.
I just go outside now for fun.
*Outside*?
Yeah, you know, trees, people, walking?
Why must I be trapped in this caucasian-male-between-the-ages-of-18-and-35-years -old body? All this PC shit sucks! I'm in the key demographic but I now I won't be able to compete?! Sucks to that!
do not read this line twice.
It's just not the same without Kryten.. *sigh* Whomever is hosting it now doesn't do the program format justice. IMHO.
Ever worked on a project with a deadline? Notice how more work always gets done right at the end, no matter what you do? Specification, design, etc. at the beginning seem to take a long time while getting nothing done but implementation goes quickly near the end. Testing -- what testing?
$#!^ happens, but why does it always have to happen to me???
So I'm young, white, christian, male and straight (sex. orientations) and except for a pair of glasses I am otherwise perfectly able. Do I stand a chance to get qualified ? :)
Probably not as much as some others but you can console yourself in the knowledge that you've always had the right to vote, never been someone's property or indiscriminately hung from trees.
This is unabashed political correctness. The hell with individuality. Which special group/s do you belong to? I suppose the producers would be especially pleased with themselves if they could manage to sign up a 72 year old Hispanic quadriplegic lesbian wiccan. Their collective smugness would be palpable
Bush should have died, not Reagan -- Morrissey
Morrissey rides a cockhorse -- The Warlock Pinchers
I grew up on a farm with a well-equipped shop and was always putting things together. I've also got an degree from Cornell Bio. & Ag. Engineering. Proficient in all sorts of mechanical and electrical systems.
If you're local, and feel like trying this - I'm all about digging through junk piles to get random shit built! email: cyrus_yunker at ncsu.edu Include in subject 'slashdot'.
But in Soviet Russia...
You want Junkyard Wa....
Never mind.
It disturbs me that diversity is increasingly defined as different races, sexes, sexual-orientations, etc. Defining diversity in these ways assumes a stereotypical view of the world: "all people of one race must have the same views, and they must be represented". This logic only holds as far as the stereotype holds--which is not far. It is not fair to put people in a box, and I fear that attemps to bring in "diversity" are quite discriminating.
This is the inherent problem with affirmative action policies that (for the sake of diversity) discriminate against the majority. This further de-values the minority by effectively saying that "a person of minority can't excel on his/her own, so we must help them."
I'm a big fan of the show, and what I've noticed over the years is that the teams are quite diverse in character, intellect, and skills. I hope the show continues to choose teams based on these criteria. I would hate for the show to choose a team because they have decided that they have to have a "gay team" and a "black team".
--White Male (let the flaming begin)
Lisa Rogers is way cuter. Her voice drives me wild.
I didn't even know Henry *had* a show!!!!
Junkyard Wars is a cool show, but there is always a planted item that takes away from the raw inventiveness of the show. For example, the other night the teams built full-size, remote controled cars to battle each other, and both teams found several working servo-motor in the trash heap. How many ordinary junkyards have 6 separate working servo motors?
The US one was again near LA, the UK one was in the UK. You can spot the last season because Kathy wasn't on either show, since she was filming "Full Metal Madness".
In other seasons, both shows were filmed in the same place. Except for the first season where there was no US version.
Plywood Guy is an "exercise in the magic power of plywood and drywall screws. He crouches! He stands! He stores potential energy!"
tone
tone
you've always had the right to vote, never been someone's property or indiscriminately hung from trees
Hmmm, just like everyone else in the U.S. Nope, no consolation.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
And on the diversity front; yes, engineers as a group are a lot more white and male than the population and even many other professions, but that doesn't mean we don't value diversity. We just don't have much time for a 'token' anything. I hope they can find a couple of competent participants that are not white males to spice up their show, but it will flop if these people don't add something to the teams they are on.
The question I have is whether participants are paid. I would volunteer in a heartbeat if they made it worth my while, but I don't have time to just contribute my valuable time to their money making operation. I also think the concept could be a lot cooler if it wasn't so much of a race as a true engineering competition. You could still factor in time as a bonus for shorter time taken, but rushing through things rarely makes for good engineering.
You could also downplay the 'wars' part of it and mix in some footage of a wide variety of wild and weird engineering feets, projects and competitions. Highlights of the 2.70 contest from MIT would always be good for a side story. For those who don't know the reference, '2.70' is the course number for a mechnical engineering design course that features a design competition where you get a box of parts and a goal, and teams just go at it. It has been featured on some programs in the past (Scientific American is one such program AFIAK). Just a thought.
i'm a German-American aerospace engineer - so apparently, so they ob-fscking-ously don't want me.
I'm going to put this one up on my wall of fame...right next to the time i had a black 4-star general tell me that the Air Force still has a problem with diversity.
Jesus tapdancing Christ - GET OVER YOUR SKIN COLOR.
(before you think i'm totally nuts - i do live in Los Angeles... the race-baiting capital of the world... and where lighter-skin-colored-European-Americans are by far becoming the smallest minority)
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Contestants must take code snipets from Real M$ applications and make some thing that REALLY functions and DOES what they planned it to do, and it won't cost a fortune to build, and can be done in a matter of 10 hours.
\FLAMEBAIT\ Isn't this a British show? Why would posting on Slashdot, whose audience is mostly American, have any effect? Unless the show is providing free travel, I'm not going across the Atlantic just to be on a show that is not entirely popular in America. \/FLAMEBAIT\
OH NOES!!! IT APPEARS YUO DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO PAY FOR DIS HERE PIZZA! WAHT EVER ARE YOU GOING TO DO!?!?
So far, I've seen all these posts decrying the want for those with disabilities and people of color to sign up for junkyard wars. Its making me sick. I for one, am a person of color, and it would be nice to occaisionally see someone on there who is not pasty white. Nothing wrong with caucasian individuals, but a splash of color every now and again would be good. I am entering myself, and I'm sure that them seeing hte video with me on it may help a bit, but i"ll probably get passed over.
You know what else? I also have a disability, and am apart of hte growing amount of identified geeks out there who have been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome. Probably won't make for good TV, but fuck it....I had to get it off my chest.
I'm sick of all these fucking jokes about lesbian builders. This is serious!
13 year old white supremacists are shitty web designers.
They covered this on their "junkyard bloopers" show that aired last week. They may be re-running it -- look for it. There is a lot more that goes on behind the scenes than you are aware of.
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
That's because she actually runs the LA branch of RDF television now. She didn't just host the show, she invented it.
I nominate Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson because they both have very extensive experience in fabrication.
I have no arms, but can rebuild an engine with my feet, I wonder if I'll make the cut.
Trying is the first step towards failure.
Hey, the Scrapyard challenge (The UK program that Junkyard challenge is based on) pilot episode/program was a two day thing where they had to build a hovercraft and get it around a course. They've now effectively halved the time...
During lunch I'm going to run out in the shop and ask all the black welders and machinist if they're gay.....
I for one will not be watching Junkyard Wars anymore. I'm just one rebel from the seemly conquered White race... I will instead spend my time pursuing the advancement of my own people. To hell with the masses of White cowards who so easily surrender and submit.
A. Wyatt Mann
Hmmm, just like everyone else in the U.S. Nope, no consolation.
You seem to be forgetting that whole slavery thing. Or civil rights thing. Or women getting the right to vote in the 20s.
I say the let guys from Monster Garage compete as one of the teams.
I fear for the future of the world now. I realise this is just for a tv show, but you must understand it's happening everywhere now. Colleges being the worse, right now my wife and I are trying to get pregnant, and I am praying for a daughter, because I fear the world a white male from America would face, he would be passed over on scholarships for people with lower scores than him, passed over on jobs for people with less schooling or experience, all because he is a white male. Why is this fair, prejudice is prejudice, no matter how you do it. If you prejudice in favor of one group, it is still just that. I want to raise my children in a world blind to color and gender, instead of a world that hates them for coming from an upper class family and being of the majority.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
the show that pits the White Supremacist Geeks against the Black Gay Jewish Construction Workers
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
I think that this post was just a troll to see what a bunch of homogeneous, narrow minded, tunnel visioned, chair monkeys slashdotters are. Guess what?! It worked!
You're given a pile of old code and obsolete libraries, and you have 10 hours to construct something useful out of it.
Some editing tricks perhaps?
I've seen the show a few times, and occasionally one team's machine or whatever is really a joke (i.e., the team's original strategy failed and the deadline really bit them in the ass). There was one episode where they built rockets: one team designed a fundamentally unstable rocket that looked like crap and flopped on launch--they obviously had run out of time.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
While I doubt that it will actually work, what is wrong for them wanting to expand their viewership?
If they want to expand their viewership, they should ask for more hot applicants...
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
Which would apply to anyone who is currently older than 100 years old...
I would apply, but I'm not black, I'm not gay, and I'm not a woman. So its futile, since I'll be discriminated againts 3 times before they even check to see if I'm qualified.
The scary thing? I'm actually with Bush on the whole affirmative action thing...it is wrong. Discriminating agains a particular racial group, one way or another, is not a good idea. (Even if people from one group discriminated against the other before...if it was wrong that way, its wrong the other way too!)
They are surprised to get so much more men then women to want to be in a show called junkyard wars? What is wrong with this picture? The applications, or the expectations?
You can't take the sky from me...
it shouldn't be a problem
if instead of them saying they wanted more women and what not, they said we want more white males. Then everyone would raise a shit fest, but it's ok to prejudice against white males.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
If the slashdot team trips and falls, will the host yell "Tools down"?
These comments and opinions are mine and mine alone, although they shouldn't be.
Or... I can see it now. Some black guy, er, excuse me, African American who has never been to Africa, mind you, will join this program, participate, and lose the contest because their catamaran or whatever they had to build, uh, sank. Not because they're black (I mean African American), but because the mechanism somehow failed, just like it would have for some white guy. So this guy is going to sue Junkyard Wars for making black people look stupid. Well, hell, I'm black, maybe I should do this myself.
Hmmm, can they vote now? Yes. Is there slavery now, yes. Slavery ended how many years ago? Any woman that couldn't vote in the 20's when she was 18 is well over 90 now. So no it's no cosolation. White males suffer through higher qualification criteria for a host of things, simply because they're white males.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
It's called Junkyard Challenge. Everybody knows this. Don't need to be obsessed with war. Fed up with hearing about war.
David Duncan Ross Palmer, author of OverChat
Did anyone read the application? I'm kinda annoyed that 1/2 the questions were trying to prove that you watch the show. I watch that show as often as I get the chance, but I don't get it as my house, so I catch them like once every couple of months. I don't think they should be so worried about how much you watch the show and car more about how you would do....oh never mind, we need to keep the advertisers happy. :(
In contrast to previous seasons, this year we are looking for individual applicants who are skilled at putting together sophisticated machinery and not afraid of getting their hands dirty.
I'm a bit worried about the 'individual applicants' part. Part of what makes JYW/SHC so great is the camaraderie of the teams. With a few exceptions, they're a delight to see working together as one.
I'm concerned about throwing a group of people together. Are they wanting to introduce more "reality TV" elements in by putting strangers together? The show TLC show "Escape from Experiment Island" is like this, and it absolutely stinks (for that and other contrived "reality TV"-like elements).
Fortunately, times have changed... history teaches many lessons, but living in the past solves none of the current issues.
Uh, including hand amputees? I'm confused. Do 3 mental disabilities equal one physical disability? How about 10 social disabilities?
...the plan to attack Iraq?
Pretty big breasts for such a skinny guy, wouldn't you say?
613746 (613746) How?? ??
Mystery solved:
1. [A-Za-z ]+
2. Imagine a beowulf cluster of (1).
3. Profit!!
There are 010 kinds of people. Those who understand octal, those who don't, and 06 other kinds of morons.
Real men watch Monster Garage.
Absolutely beautiful choice of wording...
- Great host(s)
- Fantastic machine builds
- Interesting team characters
- Wonderful sense of sportsmanship, that it was all in fun
- Fair play
We had these things in seasons 1-4 and to some degree in season 6 (all British imports of the renamed "Scrapheap Challenge" with Robert). But in seasons 5 and 7, each of these things have been lost.1. THE HOSTS: In the old says we had Robert Lewellyn, who was perfect. He was funny, had clever insights, and joked around with the teams. Who can forget his impersonation of a V8 engine? The show brought Cathy onscreen as a foil for him, and that worked out fine too -- they played well off each other. Then we got George Gray. Who was about 50% as fun and interesting as Robert (but still acceptable). Now they've hit rock-bottom with Tyler, who offers no ad-lib humour, no insights, nothing -- all he does is yell -- and a generic hollywood talking head chick who doesn't even have as much personality as Tyler.
2. MACHINE BUILDS: There was a time when it mattered if your machine worked or not, and if you really tried. Teams came up with brilliant designs, and there were failures, but they had to work at least a LITTLE. And teams did things that were ambitious. On one of the old British shows, a team actually built a demolition machine with a hydraulic claw. And it WORKED! Yes, they eventually had some hydraulic problems and their radiator sprung a leak, but when have we seen anything that great in the last three seasons? Nowadays we have things like "Mega Wars", where teams get two days to build an all-terrain amphibious vehicle, and in those two days, two of the teams manage to do nothing more than strip down an existing truck and hook some empty drums on for flotation in the water part of the challenge. Or we get challenges like the Hydrofoil, where the competition is a boat that can't hydrofoil vs. a boat that can't move at all. It's a disgrace.
3. TEAM CHARACTERS: The Bodgers, The Long Brothers, The Techno Teachers, even the original Orange and Yellow teams were full of interesting, likeable characters. We all loved Anne, Nosher, Dick, and the rest of the old crews. We cared about them and rooted for them.
In contrast, the teams that won the last two US seasons have had one thing in common: they're both comprised of obnoxious, cursing, unlikable jerks with no personalities. Our only hope in watching their progress through the season was that they'd lose and we wouldn't have to see them again.
Let's face it: when we're against the teams, we're against the show.
4. SPORTSMANSHIP: In the old days teams would trade with each other if they needed something. Nowadays they just steal it. Back then, teams joked around and had a good time. Our kids could watch the show and learn how to be a good sport, that there was such a thing as friendly competition, that winning wasn't everything. Now the teams mock each other's failures, openly berate the experts who try to help them, jump on each other's stolen stuff and are all-around poor sports. We can't let our kids watch the show anymore. It sends them the wrong message.
5. FAIR PLAY: I don't think it's news to anyone that season 7's team won by cheating. Twice. And the last US season was "won" by a big cheat-off in the demolition final where both teams just ran their trucks into the walls because neither of them could make even their basic machines work. What a disappointment.
What can JW do now?
If you ask me, it's a simple matter to address these five issues.
1. HOSTS: Put Robert and Cathy together again. Period.
2. BUILDS: Talk to your experts before challenges. Make sure they have interesting ideas to present. Talk to your teams. Make sure everyone knows that their machines need to work. Do more creative editing if necessary. Find more good challenges. Ice racers, with 4-wheel drive, 4-wheel steering and homemade studded tires? Pipe sleds that need to travel inside big pipes and be invertable, with wheels top and bottom? Pole climbing machines? OK, my ideas aren't all gems, but that's 2 minutes' work off the top of my head. I'll bet Cathy & co. can do a lot better than I can -- or than what we've been getting lately.
3. CHARACTERS: Rather than making everyone on the team required to be a welder, pick teams that are going to be fun to watch and who demonstrate some imagination. If necessary, bring back teams from previous seasons. Why not? We liked them before. We'd like to see them again. Particularly some of the early teams, whom new viewers might have never seen at all.
4. SPORTSMANSHIP: This springs from #3, but is something you can enforce too.
5. FAIR PLAY: Make the rules clear and stick to them.
Making these changes would cost the show almost nothing, and would in my opinion save the show. Longtime fans would be thrilled to see a new golden age of JW, and new fans would be won over.
We seem to suffer from a surfeit of fat Army types and bad-ass bikers with moustaches. Even worse, we now get that tart Lisa Rogers instead of the thinking geek's crumpet Cathy Rogers who has buggered off over the pond :-(
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Good god, that PC bullshit made me want to puke. funk that.
An Army recruiter, calling to tell my parents my score on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test (I took it in high school to get out of class): "Your son has some of the highest scores I've seen. Except....on the 'mechanics' section."
My dad: "What'd he get?"
Recruiter: "A 15. You know, sir, the average 11th grade girl scores a 45."
My dad: "That's higher than I would have thought he'd score."
..Klingon, you insensitive clod!
and PLEASE don't tell me that the top echelons of the US workforce are balanced and diverse and PLEASE don't tell me that the top echelons of the US work force are filled with the most qualified people. You'll make me feel like I wasted my keystrokes.
So sexism and racism just disappeared immediately when women got the vote and segregation ended?
The reson for afirmative action is not payback. As applied to education, the idea is to expand the number of minorities and women who get an excellent education. After enough of them do, there will be a critical mass that means we don't need afirmative action anymore because a brilliant black woman scientist will be just a scientist. The same thing can happen in other areas.
As a white male I don't like afirmative action, but I don't have a better alternative, and ignoring inequality doesn't make it go away.
what does this have to do with taxes?
Ummm...are you insinuating that girls avoid going to school with alcohol and partying. Are you stupid. Why do you think that everytime the top ten party schools list comes out, that school suddenly has a rise in admissions for both males and females. Ussually state schools with 40 times as many girls as our school are the worst schools, for rape, and public indecency.
Look at our record. Despite being in Flint, there has never been a charge of public indeceny or sexual harassment within my alma mater.
hmm..this sounds to me like they will select one race over another, that's racism.
[AA]is to counter the preconceived notions and preferences of the people in positions to HIRE!
Natural Selection will do that quite nicely.
If Company A refuses to hire the best people because they are not the right 'type' of people, then they will end up with second-best (if not third- or forth-best). Another, non-prejudiced company will hire the best people, and will be the better company for it. Being better than Company A, they will run Company A out of business.
Yes, that is an extremely simplistic example. But the theory holds true. It may take some time, but racist and sexist companies are slowly declining, or becoming non-racist/sexist.
It's a touchy subject, one that tends to push people to argue one extreme or the other, a bad trait that I know I'm subject to. To be honest I've argued the extremes on both sides, only to balance out the extreme argument I hear from someone else.
You're right, ignoring inequality doesn't make it go away, but highlighting it doesn't either.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
If cultural diversity is the issue then why
did they feel the need to do a redundant
American version with the same challenges
but all the British hosts and contestants
replaced?
I would apply, but I'm not black, I'm not gay, and I'm not a woman. So its futile, since I'll be discriminated againts 3 times before they even check to see if I'm qualified.
They didn't say that it would be a factor in their decision making - only that they wanted a broader range of applications.
That said, since they also want to broaden their range of team members, it could still be a factor in their decisions. This isn't employment where you may want the most technically qualified applicant. If you're interesting enough to get on it before you'd still have about the same chance now - they're not going to pass you by for some incompetent boring black woman just to meet some self-defined quota, at the expense of an entertaining show.
To make the job more harder. It adds to the confusion factor.
Wonder what you'd get if you crossed 'Junkyard Wars' with
'Monster Garage' and 'Robot Wars'.
As white people it's sometimes hard to understand this, but as humans we do look at skin color. If you deny that and say you are "color blind", you're not being completely honest with yourself and you are not acknowledging that people you know base things on race. Things like where they live (Chinatown), what shows they watch (on UPN), who they date, etc. So if you admit that race is a factor in society (black people certainly didn't invent the concept of race) and people are visual beings, what we see on TV affects how we think about things.
There are kids out there that watch the show but never see anyone that looks like themselves or their dad and could possibly think, I guess this show is not for me...how could I ever do this?
The show makers are saying, let's make a better country and have the most amount of engineers possible one way we can try is by putting people that look like our viewers on the screen.
I don't see what is so threatening about this. Diversity is not a zero-sum game. Including more people doesn't mean we have to exclude others. OMG, maybe we could even have a team with white and black people on it. Instead of people seeing it as the show makers looking for a "black team" or a "gay team". People that are suggesting these situations are the end result, obviously take race into account when they think about things, whether they admit it or not.
imagine a Baywatch Cluster of those!
It's not about good engineering. It's about great real-world hacks using Oxy-acetylene, duct tape, and whatever else you can lay your hands on. Typically the machines they build need to last all of about 20 minutes anyway.
It's also the logical spinoff of MIT's engineering competitions, where engineers got a box of junk and need to build a robot or a submarine or something.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
*Coughs politely* Er . . . renamed? It was Scrapheap Challenge originally, y'know . . .
P
Does that clear things up? (And was that was the only thing you had to say in response to my Post Of Epic Proportions?)
"You cannot apply one set of rules to everyone and a different set of rules to yourself"
Actually if it is your damn show you can apply any set of rules any way you want. Like you have freedom of the press if you own a press. Also what the hell is up with comparing who gets to particpate in a "Reality" TV show with trial by jury and piloting airliners, if the show is that important to you seek help, soon.
It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to
mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics and chemistry.
-- H.L. Mencken
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