Psychic Kids: Children of the Paranormal

[pokerfan]

DU doesn't seem to have a facepalm emoticon so this will have to do: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/11/bad_move_ae.php">Bad move, A&E

by PZ Myers

The A&E Channel has a new show coming up: Psychic Kids: Children of the Paranormal. Sounds awful already, doesn't it? But it's worse than you think: they're looking for disturbed kids who think they've got magic powers, and then they're flying in "professional psychics" to coach them in dealing with their awesome powers, i.e., indulge their delusions, get off on feeling superior to unhappy kids, and collect a paycheck for psychic child abuse.

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http://skepchick.org/blog/2010/11/psychic-kids-letter-writing-campaign-edition/">Skepchicks are mobilizing the skeptic hordes. Call or write to A&E and let them know that their schlock has reached a new and despicable low.

I mentioned that I have cable…but there's almost nothing on. The quality has been on a steady decline for years; cable stations like A&E, TLC, the History Channel, and the Discovery Channel were all set up with the noble goals of providing good educational/informative programming, and they've all sold out to provide little more than dreck ala Psychics with Serious Mental Illnesses Hunting Hitler's Ghost While Driving A Big Truck with Their Freakish Family. It's cheap, it's easy, the 'talent' they hire are all boring nobodies with only their disturbed personalities as a selling point — these are modern freak shows, plain and simple — and audiences eat them up.

I agree with PZ regarding the decline of those once great cable channels. I think I first saw Discovery Channel more than twenty years ago. I was instantly hooked. It was like PBS' Nova and Nature 24 hours a day! Now it's nothing but dreck with a few exceptions. --BTW, this week's Nova (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/dogs-decoded.html">Dogs Decoded) was awesome not to mention free.

I was even disappointed with Bad Astronomer's Bad Universe where he claimed that interstellar travel is impossible not because of the incredible distances, time or energies involved but because of the bone-crushing accelerations required. :banghead: In fact, a gentle and constant 1g acceleration will get you to relativistic velocities within a year. I'm not saying that that would be an easy thing to achieve, only that it would be a comfortable ride, no different than living on Earth. When confronted on his blog, Phil defended himself by saying that he had to dumb it down for his audience due to time constraints which I find ironic because Bad Astronomer cut its teeth by debunking similar crap in TV and movies.

But back to the psychic hockum... I'm perfectly willing to entertain all kinds of weird stuff. You know, things like relativity, quantum physics, deviations from the standard model but you have to filter out the bullshit to avoid filling your head with a bunch of junk.

"A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence."
-David Hume

This comic nicely sums up my feelings on paranormal claims. Put up or shut up:



(Clutching my copy of Demon Haunted World whilst gently rocking to and fro...)