Interesting Programme on BBC4.

[Donwill]

Tomorrow, Tuesday @ 21.00 hrs, The Joy of Statistics. There was a reference to it on Radio 4 this morning, it sounds very interesting despite the title. Cheers Don

[Ronald Raygun]

I suspect the title may have been sexed up.

[Huge]

Not entirely;

[Bob Minchin]

Fascinating presentation of interesting data.

Bob

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Ronald Raygun saying something like:

You don't 'kin say.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Good link. Bit dumbed down, but hey, that's BBC4 for you.

I have seen tat graph before. The curious thing is that once you get to a standard of living such as e.g.Cuba, more income doesn't actually increase life expectancy much at all.

[Another John]

Beeb4's as good as you're gonna get, these days, surely? ("The new Beeb2" I call it.)

Mind - there was a good prog on last night about food, on BBC1 (Jimmy's Food Factory). It was dumbed down, he must have an army of enthusiastic techies behind him making the "DIY" bits and pieces he used, but: it answered questions, and he was very personable, and straightforward.

In this house, we LONG for the programmes that tell you -- in a straightforward way, no arsing about, no f****ing up-himself, this-is-my-career-you-know presenter, etc etc etc -- tell you "This is how they make cornflakes." [1] "This is how they make roads." "This is how they process the contents of your wheelie bins." "This is how the council set about gritting roads every winter." "This is how an AA battery is made."

Perhaps such programmes exist, but finding them in the Niagara of effluent in the Radio Times simply isn't worth the investment of time.

Sorry - got carried way OT there!

John

[1] There was a [good] programme about cereal foods last Wednesday - excellent - but the one bit I and my wife were looking forward to ("this is how we turn maize into cornflakes") wasn't there. (Irrelevant to the programme as it turned out, since it was about how to make undreamt of profits by using simple foodstuffs)

[Spamlet]

There are zillions of programmes in series called 'How It's Made'; 'How Do They Do That' etc, on the cable channels. They are made by Canadian TV and have covered most or all of these topics at various depths:

[Tabby]

Quest has lots of that sort of thing, other titles too, and better ones than 'how its made.'.

NT

[Gib Bogle]

There's lots of stuff on TV along the lines of "This is how they make babies."

[Chris J Dixon]

Indeed. What I find a little irritating is their relentless striving to fit their coverage to a narrative arc, with frequent moments of "jeopardy".

I recall one covering the sea barrier around Venice. We see rocks being placed in the sea, and are told that it is vital to protect them straight away, before they wash away. Off to the concrete plant, where our tame engineer apparently resolves a problem with the mix for tetrapod casting.

We watch a tetrapod being poured and later removed from its mould, then taken to a site where hundreds of them are stored, because there is a backlog in installing them at sea. Rather exposing the previous artificial "tension".

Next we have to share a problem with getting the right size crane onto a barge to (eventually) place tetrapods....

I'm not so sure about the "Extreme Engineering" episodes looking to the future - the transatlantic submerged rail tunnel - cable tethered and evacuated. I won't hold my breath.

Much more straightforward are the excellent Industrial Revelations with Mark Williams - look out for them coming round again.

More interesting hardware can be seen with Mark Evans in his "A Car/ Plane/ Helicopter/ Bike... is Born" series.

Chris

[Tim Downie]

I caught those. He was a surprisingly good presenter and clearly had a keen interest in the subject.

Tim

[The Natural Philosopher]

As if by the age to twenty, everyone didn't know..

Here's something. its not a video, but its a really well illustrated story.. about how to make a real scale model aircraft.

The author is a professional woodworker. And it shows.

This is DIY at its best

[Gib Bogle]

I wasn't referring to documentaries ...