OT Sunken Ship Rescue - One of the most fascinating TV shows I've seen lately

[Neill Massello]

Government efficiency. And the local stations wonder why it's such a struggle to raise money. PBS, the Radio Shack of television.

[notbob]

They should also wonder why they need so much money. Besides, PBS has become as mercenary as regular network TV. I can't believe all the blantant advertising I now see. Worse than those "donation drives" are those dig-up-ancient/forgotten-music groups and charge big $$$$ to buy their old songs.

I recall the lure to cable TV, back in the day. "Would you be willing to pay to view zero commercials?" As if......

nb

[Robert Green]

They talked about how the Concordia was so large that even techniques that refloated the smaller(!) battleship Oklahoma might have failed because of the sheer size of the ship. It was always threatening to break apart for one reason or another. It was really apparent, once refloated (sort of - the sponsons actually did the floating, I think) how quickly the sea corrodes (and covers with creatures) anything sitting in it for long.

One of the divers did get killed, but I got a phone call during the show so I might have missed how it happened. Didn't we used to have a salvage diver in the group? Steve B?

[Robert Green]

Yeah, I remember that big lie that got bigger every year. I think TCM is one of the few channels outside of premium cable that at least shows movies uninterrupted.

I have a 1 minute commercial skip button on my DVR (that's well over 10 years old and whose clock has drifted two hours in that time - it used analog TV signals to set it and provides NO other way to reset it). Movies on something like TNT have gone from 3 clicks to 7.

I sometimes rent TV shows on DVD from Netflix and you realize how seriously the commercial breaks impede the dramatic tension of the show.

When I used to delete the ads from a one hour recording, it usually left less than 45 minutes of actual program material. Someday it will 30 minutes.

[ItsJoanNotJoann]

I get two PBS stations on DirecTV and yes, you really have to be snoozing to miss any of their programs. ;-)

[ItsJoanNotJoann]

Thanks!! Don't know why I didn't think of YouTube. Everything is on that site.

[Kurt Ullman]

PBS has many more stations than the "regular nets", including some places with multiple stations in the same town. Saw a study a few years ago that suggested if you sold off the "extra" stations and invested the money, you would get more than the Federal contribution at the time.

[micky]

Horrors, man. What's wrong with you.

Next you'll be turning the tv off to talk to people in living room.

Wow. So even in those days, construction wasn't like it seemed.

(I found out that those tall mulit-layer wedding cakes have an interior non-edible structure. Until I was 16, I assumed like two layer 4" cakes, you could just have 18 inch tall cakes.

[Dean Hoffman]

There was a show called Outrageous Acts of Science on the Science Channel last winter. It might still be on but I get busy in the summer. The scientists search YouTube for the odd things people do for stunts then explain the science behind the tricks. One trick was lighting a candle from its smoke.

[Stormin Mormon]

Do you mean vapor, not smoke?

- . Christopher A. Young learn more about Jesus .

. .

[micky]

Yeah, but I still want to get one of the deck chairs. They're meant to get wet.

[Robert Green]

They tell me YouTube's *awfully* slow on dial up. The great Urban/Rural High Speed Internet Range War is already underway. Google wants to use low orbit satelites and balloons to bring high speed internet to the boondocks because some people live outside of Chicagoland. Freemarket at work. The people who feed the country are mostly stuck on dialup or l-o-n-g l-a-t-e-n-c-y satelite internet that goes out during rainstorms, windstorms, duststorms and sunspots.

What, too lazy to look up the URL? (-:

As a personal aside, I am really beginning to hate YouTube's endless suggestions, ad info creeping into the frame and the more than occasional "ack, ack, ack" of buffering because of a crowded internet connection. Besides, how many cat/dog/baby videos (that people send me URLs for all the time) can you watch.

Did I ever tell you about my techie but slightly hard-headed boss insisted we demo an OPEN video conferencing system called See You, See Me. We kept telling him you have to control every channel for a demo to the high-priced clients we had at the time. Needless to say, when the demo came the whole room learned what the word "dickpix" meant. Oddly enough, it was a woman who first exclaimed at the extreme close-up as it slowly pulled back: "What is that? Is that a man's - OH MY GOD." Demonstration over. The idiot held it against my team even though we had warned him again and again that the open video chat channels had a lot of perves and weeny-waggers.

Did I answer your question? (-:

[Robert Green]

You might have something there. People probably would like to have a souvenir from a wreck like that. I always thought we should have taken Osama Bin Laden and sliced him up into incredibly thin slices with a microtome that could be sold to souvenir hunters. I'll bet a lot of religious zealots would have paid top dollar for a vacuum pack slice. Premiums could be charged for important slices. It's something not without precedent:

Eeeewww!

[Robert Green]

Now let's not go to extremes!

They had polished the column sections so flat and smooth that no air got in to the center of the column. They built it all without cranes or machinery, and IIRC, they did it by building ramps around the perimeter that rose up as the building did. BTW, it was the Parthenon, not the Acropolis. Brain fart.

Another balloon burst. I used to think it was "Chester" drawers instead of "chest of drawers."

[micky]

On second thought, you could buy them in Italiy, but in the US, the Dept. of Agricullture would object to the barnacles etc. that are attached to the deck chairs. And without them, half of the ambiance would be gone.

I think I'll skip this.

[micky]

I thought that was the pyraminds, not the Parthenon. At least the "around the perimeter".

I used to know his brother Festus.

Speaking of drawers, two networks last week talked about the two kids killed when Ikea chests fell over, and I think I saw one and it only talked about Ikea. Heck, any chest (as opposed to a dresser, which in my world is shorter and probably wider) can fall over if you pull most of the drawers out, especially the drawers at the top. Inside Edition included this in passing in 3 words, but it too concentrated on Ikea. What a bad rap. Nothing about the ikea chest looked different to me from any other chest.

[Robert Green]

It apparently was a pretty common building technique for anything that required placing heavy stones atop one another. IIRC, even the builders of Stonehenge used similar ramps and excavations at the site have found remains of the ramp works. What other way except magic could they raise the huge multi-ton lintel stones to sit atop the columnar supports?

IIRC Ikea includes a wall mounting kit to secure their furniture so it really is a bad rap for them. I suspect they're also victim of the "sue the deepest pocket" rule employed by aggressive attorneys.

I also read that a lot of kids are injured and even killed when they tug on wires and Daddy's 50" HDTV lands on them.

One thing that really surprised me is how many toddlers drown in the 5 gallon general purpose buckets. Apparently they are just tall enough to allow a toddler to fall in head first and then it's the end of the line. Another baby-killer you might not suspect are drapery cords. Kids hang themselves in those all the time. I believe that now they have to be designed to be not so lethal, but it's late and I am too lazy to look it up. (-:

[micky]

Yes.

I heard something about drapery cords. My drapery cord frayed to the point of breaking after 32 years, and it turns out no one sells brown/white anymore. Only white. So I'm buying 50 feet of imitation parachute cord from home depot. it won't get noticeably dirty so fast. but it doesnt' feel the same and I'm unhappy.

I was a child once and I had two matching chests (not so much for my own clothes but extra storage for my mother.) There's no doubt either would have fallen over if I'd pulled the drawers out, but I don't remember ever doing that or ever trying to climb to the top. No one ever considered screwing them to the walls, and cetainly no one blamed the furniture maker if somethng like this happend.

I still have chests that fall over like this. One has the bottom two drawers full of steel tools and the top two drawers full of maps or colored paper.

[micky]

You don't think they can make the areas perfectly shaped so they don't overlap at all, do you? So they have a choice between overlapping areas and having areas where one can't get it at all.