Pay TV - Sunday, February 7
The Age
Thursday February 4, 2010
Nostradamus DecodedDiscovery, 7.30pmNOSTRA-BLOODY-DAMUS again? As if it's not enough that the History Channel is running a whole series about him (The Nostradamus Effect, Mondays, 7.30pm), here we have two more hours of typical Discovery mystery-mongering on the subject. Unsurprisingly, it comes to the wrong-headed conclusion that it's up to sceptics to prove that the claims of Nostradamus believers are wrong, rather than for the Nostradamus crowd to prove that they're right. Fortunately, some renowned sceptics, among them Michael Shermer (author of the fascinating book Why People Believe Weird Things) and James Randi (a long-time debunker of Nostradamus, among many other seers and psychics) are on hand to do just that. Among other things, Shermer explains how people come to form and reinforce supernatural beliefs through what's known as confirmation bias, basically "remembering the hits and forgetting the misses". Randi reminds viewers that the identity of Nostradamus' Third Antichrist (after Napoleon and Hitler, so they say) changes every time there's a new bogeyman in the news €” it was Ayatollah Khomeini one week, Saddam Hussein the next. The documentary gives more weight to true believers such as John Hogue, a spectacularly unsuccessful modern-day prophet whose own candidates for the Antichrist have included Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussein, George W. Bush and now Barack Obama. There's also an appearance by none other than Ray Comfort, the Kiwi creationist who became a YouTube sensation with a hilarious video explaining that the banana is "the atheist's nightmare" because it was so clearly designed by God to fit into the human hand and mouth. Discovery and History no longer care who they put to air €” in fact, the more ludicrous the lunatics are, the better. They provide History and Discovery with ratings and in return they get an ever-thickening veneer of authority. The very channels that should be enlightening viewers are shepherding them into endarkenment. This doco does have some interesting stuff but you should boycott it on general principles.Boys and Girls AloneLifeStyle, 8.30pmAN ABSORBING British experiment in which two groups of children aged 10 to 12 (one group of boys and one of girls) are each given a charming "village" and the freedom to live however they want. Will they create little utopias, chaotic anarchies or something in between?Worth a lookTough Guy or Chicken? (BBC Knowledge, 8.30pm)Nat Geo's Top 10 Photos (National Geographic, 8.30pm)Outback Cowboys (Discovery Travel & Living, 7.30pm)
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