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MythBusters
2003 · TV series · documentary · 43 min episodes · 16 seasons
Created by Peter Rees
MythBusters is a science entertainment television program created and produced by Australia's Beyond Television Productions for the Discovery Channel. The show's hosts, special effects experts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, use elements of the scientific method to test the validity of rumors, myths, movie scenes, adages, Internet videos, and news stories.
32 positive15 negative2 mixed82 neutralfrom 131 commenters
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139 comments on Hacker News
That reminds me of an old project that I want to say was called "methbusters" that was a recut of the original mythbusters in which they cut all of the repetitions that came after every commercial break. Final product was something like 5 minutes an episode.
Matches the name of episode 152[1] the Wikipedia article cites for the info. Seems the classification of seasons and even the season's episode order on Wikipedia differs from the one in the Youtube title.
[1] Text-based summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2010_season)#Episode_152_%E2%80%93_%22Arrow_Machine_Gun%22
Education, real education, can be made entertaining. Mythbusters and Connections (I believe it was called) both qualify. As do some historic documentaries.
Just assign the work for the specialists: "It's All About the Moon Landing | MythBusters | Season 6 Episode 2 | Full Episode" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yET8Z1D2PUM
I'll come out and say that I am a full blown Youtube addict.
A lot of what I may watch on Youtube might be categorized as "background noise" - lots of talking head content that I can play on the background. Much of it is low quality and self-serious - but it's arguably much better quality than any equivalent "background noise" show on TV.
Ironically, I feel like longform Youtube content is actually better for my attention span and more rewarding - because creators aren't trying to appeal to broad audiences, they don't have to jump from topic to topic and keep things under a time limit.
I recently watched the Animagraffs video on the Hoover Dam and I was blown away. I have probably watched dozens of TV documentaries on the Hoover Dam over the year, but none of them actually just stop and methodically explained everything from top-to-down so thoroughly.
Even beloved shows like Mythbusters, there are now dozens of channels on Youtube that do all the same things we enjoyed Mythbusters for but better and with less filler and shmaltz.
> notorious for being basically un-cleanable
I don't really think anyone other than OCD/germaphobes thinks about toilet paper rolls in that way and it's certainly not "notorious". I'm pretty sure the general sentiment is that it's a perfectly benign material, often given to kids to play and craft with.
The same thing happened with that episode of mythbusters about the toilet ploom from flushing. A bunch of OCD/germaphobes lost their minds and have not stopped thinking about it since. Meanwhile the rest of society gave a collective shrug and couldn't even be bothered to move their toothbrush brush to another room or close the toilet lid while flushing.
There is an excellent MythBusters episode where they demonstrate a dropped and fired bullet hitting the ground simultaneously.
i love the confidence of the demolitions person. Reminds me of so many Mythbusters episodes.
They're uploading all the Mythbusters episodes to youtube for free as well. It wouldn't surprise me if in another 5 years much historical tv will be on youtube to watch for free.
Mythbusters did an episode on this.
It depends on how interesting the thing I'm needing to focus on is. If it's super interesting, I just block out external stimuli, since it will actually aggravate me.
The flip side is if I'm doing something boring, I have to have some other distraction going to keep the dopamine flowing, because the regular task isn't creating it. It's usually something pretty simple, a background TV show (mythbusters/how it's made/DDD, etc), youtube build videos, or up-beat music. Something novel enough to keep me interested, but not so interesting that it takes my attention away from my target task.
And yes, meds. They let me enact such a plan, letting me manage the executive dysfunction which would otherwise throw a spanner in the works.
Ok, blanket advice from US governmental agencies and a Mythbusters episode with electrical and water installations that seem... Very DIY and not up to code? I mean it is mythbusters... IDK.
I suspect power outage in the shower is more dangerous in my case than any other electrical issue... I guess it may be more of a US issue, especially since I am not finding any advice from EU agencies on the matter?...
FWIW I found the whole video quite interesting, I had never really considered that there could be sound recordings from before anyone had thought of a way to play them back. Though I do remember an old mythbusters episode [1] where they tested whether it was possible for audio to be "accidentally" recorded on a pot when a piece of grass happened to mark the pot while spinning.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2006_season)#Pottery_Record_(Archaeoacoustics)
Thanks for illuminating this complicated issue! It's so common to blurt slogans and deny subtlety.
Anecdote: The first (and last) episode of MythBusters I watched pretended to prove you couldn't start a fire by rubbing sticks together. Proceeded to make an ignorant hash of it, tried to create a bow etc but used it upside-down and so on. Conclusion: Myth! You can't start a fire with sticks.
Except, my 12-year-old Boy Scouts do it all the time. For fun.
When somebody says "That tool is crap", good to consider the source.
I mean this in the kindest way, but this is sort of run of the mill 5th grade science fair material. It’s like the author interviewed his nephew about his project and passed it off with clickbait as something major in the world. I was a lot more interested in this:
Most recently, the TV show "Mythbusters" took on Archimedes' death ray three times and never managed to make it work. In 2005, an MIT professor ignited a wooden boat with the technique, but a second attempt failed.
https://web.mit.edu/2.009_gallery/www/2005_other/archimedes/10_ArchimedesResult.html
Edit: the summary was wrong. The first attempt failed and the second succeeded.
On a very special episode of MythBusters…
> terrible shows being greenlit, homogeneity of camerawork, casting, identity-politics pandering that nobody asked for, oversaturation of the market with streaming services that is almost as bad as cable etc. … Binge-tv model is also not a good thing
None of this is unique to Netflix. Terrible shows have been greenlit since the dawn of television. Shows are incredibly homogenous because they’re largely produced by a select few people. If anything, Netflix has broken that homogeneity by allowing more indie film/tv creators to breakthrough (like squid game).
Casting and identity politics shenanigans are definitely not unique to Netflix and started way before Netflix started producing content. The oversaturation problem only became a problem when all the other networks wanted their own slice of the pie. It was actually great for awhile when Netflix was the only big player in town.
And finally, binge-tv has always been possible. My grandmother would sit in front of cable television sun-up to sun-down watching whatever was on. 24 hour marathons of mythbusters and other shows like that were very common. Reruns of all your favorite sitcoms play all night on all major cable channels. Bingeing isn’t a unique problem to Netflix. Netflix just allows you to do it with new shows instead of waiting arbitrary amounts of time.
Also, is binge-reading a novel unhealthy? I’ve had 8 hour reading sessions when I’m gripped by a great book, like the last book in the Wheel of Time series. If that’s acceptable, why isn’t watching a show for 8 hours acceptable? I don’t think the medium really has that much of a tangible effect. Now if you’re bingeing shows everyday, then it’s unhealthy. But once a quarter when a new show you like comes out? Idk, that seems fine to me.
Mythbusters EXPLOSIONS and DESTRUCTION Compilation (Season 1 - 5)
Lived in London in the early 90s and loved the concept and presentation of the TV program, a wonderful blend of inquiry, creativity, and eccentricity.
I haven't seen an episode in decades but I still remember the one where they made magnetic recording tape and another scene where they tested the hypothesis (or Murphy's Law) about a piece of toast always landing on the buttered side. It was basically a bunch of people sitting at picnic tables flipping toast onto the grass and recording the outcome.
I remember thinking: something like this could never fly in the U.S. The suits would shoot it down before it saw the light of day. But I was proven wrong a little over 10 years later when MythBusters launched.
Full title:
### Jeff Geerling - Forget spaceships, I just want my music // The big media companies want to redefine what it means to purchase content. They want everything to be a rental, even if you pay full price. That's dumb
Edited transcript:
> A couple weeks ago ... I found the album on my phone and noticed the songs were all grayed out I tapped one and nothing just this notice "this song is not currently available in your country or region". Well that's weird I pay for Apple music [...] I did find the ladybug music website and on that website they have a shop "Great I can just buy the CDs and support the artist directly and..." - no apparently ladybug music is now an app so I downloaded the app. Long story short I created an account and found out you either have to fly out to LA and join one of the in-person kids music courses or pay 3,000 bucks in licensing fees to get access to any of the songs. ... There's literally no way to buy the music online anymore. Now this isn't the first time I've seen a song disappear from Apple music and this kind of thing happens on Spotify and other streaming services too. I can't get too mad because I never actually bought those songs directly I just rented them. That's the model for video streaming too like on Netflix. Even though it's super annoying to have shows and music disappear - I mean I am renting so it's not like I have a right to anything but that's just streaming. Luckily you can also buy digital movies and music and you get to keep it right? Right? Enshittification has reached New Heights as Sony just decided to yoink over a thousand Seasons - that's right, Seasons not episodes of discovery shows from the PlayStation store but they're not just removing them from the store they're removing them from people's libraries! So if you paid full retail price for MythBusters on your PlayStation too bad you can't watch it anymore that is unless you go over and set up a new subscription to yet another completely unnecessary and broken streaming service for Warner Brothers. The term for this is Enshittification. ... If buying isn't owning then piracy isn't stealing. I made a whole video about how I manage all my video content on my NAS. I run software called jelly Fin and I've ripped hundreds of movies and thousands of TV episodes over the years my family can enjoy every movie and TV show I've bought now and forever - but most people don't do that and even for crazies like me it's getting harder more and more TV series and movies are going stream only, meaning the only way to ever watch it is to subscribe to yet another broken and temporary streaming service. You'd think as the years went on society's access to Media would get easier and better but instead backwards thinking execs in Hollywood and the music industry keep backpedaling making it harder for you to actually watch the content they produce. ... They're committed to being so anti-consumer by killing off any semblance of ownership. ... I still don't officially endorse pirating content but I mean if there's literally no other way to view the content that you already paid for who am I to judge. ... DRM is the enabler of all the horrible scummy business practices that lead to so much E-Waste ... If you crack DRM to truly own the things you already paid for yeah I don't got a problem with that. Forget spaceships flying to Mars I just want my music. Until next time, I'm Jeff Geerling
The incredible part is this has been going on for many decades. The things we see and read in mainstream media are heavily censored to give only one side of any story, and not to tell stories that goes against the party line. (The party in this case being money)
Years ago Discovery Channel were told NOT to allow Mythbusters to do an episode on credit card RFID security [1]
Murdoch owns so many publications around the world who are not allowed to run stories about things he doesn't agree with, Bezos owns the Washington Post, etc. etc.
It's manipulated all the way down.
[1] https://www.networkworld.com/article/2275605/was-mythbuster-s-rfid-tale-only-a-myth-.html
Yes.
Mythbusters did an episode showing what happens to a human body under deep sea implosion
> https://youtu.be/LEY3fN4N3D8
It's ugly.
I recall watching a Mythbusters where Adam and Jamie got Alton Brown to join them to make a dishwasher lasagna. It was an interesting episode, and as I recall it resulted in a perfectly serviceable lasagna.
MythBusters 2009 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1529059/
16x doesn't seem like that much considering they routinely went up to 52x but I guess it is up to the quality of the discs being used.
If it was a 16x DVD drive then that would probably explain it.
Mostly unrelated.
Now a slight pet peeve of mine was an episode of Mythbusters where they tackled the issue of exploding discs. The issue was the Adam took the data transfer rate of 7.2MB/sec and then extrapolated this to the inner disc area and came up with 30,000 RPM. About 3 times faster than what the discs actually spin at. So naturally discs start blowing up every time they ran the experiment.
Adam assumed a constant linear when drives are actually constant angular. Drive spins, you get what ever data comes.
It was later re-tested and re-classified as plausible (for some reasons the particualr episode was aired in EU but not in the US):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2004_season)#Episode_14_.E2.80.93_.22Myths_Revisited.22
I subscribed to Discovery plus for a few months mistakenly thinking there were edutainment shows I could watch with my kid. There weren't. Also shockingly,they only a few episodes of Mythbusters. This Discovery plus is not the Discovery channel of my childhood. What a shame!
I think they did an episode of mythbusters where they created a cannon to shoot turkeys at airplane windshields.
An iconic Mythbusters episode also :) They made an air cannon to fire frozen chickens into a plane.
I hope you’re joking, although I don’t see the joke. That Mythbusters video changes camera angle every two or three seconds at most.
Also, that particular example doesn’t show the thing they were notorious for, which is showing the same thing from multiple camera angles just before the payoff and then cutting to a commercial break. That’s probably because this was their final episode and their audience engagement tricks didn’t matter so much any more.
I always assumed the show was aimed at people with crippling ADHD.
Mythbusters isn't a great example, to the point that there are re-edited episodes floating around that remove all the superfluous teasers, "coming up"s, and unnecessary repeated shots.
https://www.reddit.com/r/smyths/comments/8gix4w/streamlined_mythbusters_complete_may_2018_update/
> Nobody edits (or copyedits) for free.
They absolutely do and would do more often without copyright laws holding them back. Every person who finds a book they want to share with others would be free to make improvements as they saw fit, and that would certainty include edits and correcting errors.
Even today we have rouge editors who take copyrighted works, then illegally edit and distribute them along with their changes because they feel it improves the works in question. Examples include fan edits of films to improve the narrative and streamline edits of mythbusters to remove obnoxious repetitive cruft.
Other examples of free editors can be found in Wikipeida articles, fanfic projects, fan translation projects, and video game walkthroughs. Even mods/patches for video games can be a form of "free editing".
There are very few forms of media where I haven't seen people providing some form of editing services for free. (I can't say I've seen it for oil paintings yet I guess)
I‘ve noticed this happening not just with characters, but with narratives as well.
Mythbusters used to be my all time favorite TV show for almost a decade. They had such interesting myths (lead balloon!), authentic characters and real builds that also went wrong at times, with some pretty random occurrences.
And then someone from Discovery‘s analytics department figured out they got the best ratings on some of their explosions.
Which lead to this incredibly thought-diverse show jumping the shark by pivoting to basically „let‘s find yet another excuse to blow stuff up“ in the last seasons. Yawn.
I guess it‘s really due to catering to the mainstream. Who said it so well again: A one-size-fits-all solution barely fits anybody.
>His proposed solution is a 50 cal riffle to the brain of the adult female. IDK
One of the most fascinating episodes of mythbusters I've ever seen was watching what happens to bullets (even up to .50 cal IIRC) when they hit water. They disintegrate within like 1m.
Disclaimer: I vehemently disagree with the idea of shooting the killer whales.
Nikola Tesla had claimed that a resonance oscillator that he had built was capable of causing earthquakes.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla%27s_oscillator
Even though MythBusters team tried to replicate this in one of their episodes and concluded the claim to be false, the OP shows that resonance is a real problem with spinning disks.
Full title:
Deadbolt Locks Offer False Sense of Security… … when they are not installed properly.
Mythbusters inadvertently demonstrated the problems of the "short" screws that come with most strike plates in one of their episodes. They were testing "bashing through doors," and built a bunch of door frames, put doors in them, added locks, and proceeded to learn to slam through them - with rather great success, splitting the door trim.
Except for one, in which one of them rather nicely injured themselves (either Adam or Tory, can't recall which at the moment). The difference? 3" long screws into the studs, instead of the 3/4" or 1" screws that the others used.
I went through and replaced the screws securing all my strike plates after that episode.
Though, for most homes, all a lock will do is keep out the people who don't want to be there in the first place. They can be good if you don't want someone snooping around without you noticing, but unless you go out of your way to get "not abysmally shitty locks," anyone with a tiny bit of skill and a bump key or bump gun can pop your doors anyway without you noticing.
It should go without saying that the various internet connected and smartphone enabled locks are a security comedy if you care about security as well.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31828469 indicates that there was a "mythbusters" that looked at whether germs would reach things like tooth brushes in the bathroom. So... maybe it is more plausible than you seem to be allowing? (I'm planning on watching that full episode later. Seems to be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pFww_EaLiY.)
Edit: That must be the wrong episode. Will keep looking for it.
Mythbusters' "Lead Balloon" episode was 14 years ago.
I remember seeing either Mythbusters or TopGear episode where they tested this.
Busted https://www.kissmovies.io/movies/mythbusters-season-15-episode-5-transformers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_disaster#Incendiary_paint_hypothesis
They tested the incendiary paint hypothesis on the TV show Mythbusters.
The MythBusters concluded that the paint may have contributed to the disaster, but that it was not the sole reason for such rapid combustion.
One of my favorite mythbusters episodes actually tested drunk driving. Tory was the only member who performed very well while intoxicated. They showed the results, but avoided the obvious conclusions:
- This was not the first time that Tory drive drunk, and
- Clearly some people can safely drive with a level of intoxication to that is unsafe for others.
(To be clear, I’m not suggesting that driving drunk is safe or sensible on public roads, just bolstering what the parent said: the BAC level for impairment differs between individuals.)
This might be good advice for fiction, but I would expect most non-fiction writers to be familiar with how terribly your intuition or instinct actually matches the real world. For example, the natural intuition about something which has literally never happened is that it won't happen. Intuition gave us the gambler's fallacy (my own father thought he was getting better odds every week of playing the same lottery numbers), Monty Hall (check out the Mythbusters episode if you think that intuition has been defeated), xenophobia, and so on. You have to consciously fight these natural tendencies at every turn to produce reasonable non-fiction.
In this weeks episode of Mythbusters . . . .
Sources say otherwise:
A myth has taken hold that the “paint” on the Hindenburg’s skin — rather than its flammable hydrogen lifting gas — was somehow responsible for the Hindenburg disaster at Lakehurst, and this myth somehow persists even though it has been debunked by photographic evidence, scientific analysis, historical research, and even the TV show MythBusters.
https://www.airships.net/hindenburg-paint/
The Mythbusters episode:
https://mythresults.com/episode70
> Grant Masaru Imahara was an American electrical engineer, roboticist, television host, and actor. He was best known for his work on the television series MythBusters, on which he designed and built numerous robots and specialized in operating computers and electronics to test myths.
For the curious: The Mythbusters actually tested the "shooting a gun at a gas tank explodes the car" thing, and it didn't work. It only worked when they tried it with tracers, but those are a whole different thing than ordinary ammo.
I couldn't find a clip of it, but here's the Mythbusters Wiki page for the episode: https://mythbusters.fandom.com/wiki/Car_Capers
The Space Shuttle's sonic boom broke one of my bay windows when I was living in Orlando. Mythbusters was an entertainment TV show, I wouldn't extend their results to real life.
you just have to blow it up REALLY HARD
Like that old Mythbusters episode where they blow up a car twice
I think the Earth could use just ONE MORE nuclear crater..
Some autopilot systems, namely those in newer passenger aircraft, effectively do. They can take off, fly, and land an aircraft without human intervention.
They've had this capability for decades now; it was mentioned in a 5th season Mythbusters episode (the one about talking a civilian into a landing).
reminded me of a mythbusters episode where they created a lead balloon
I think the closest other team arrangements to watch for modeling software around would be theatrical performance and to a lesser extent bands.
Though kitchens are especially interesting as they have pipelines, surges, lots of tasks that can be broken down into a series of steps.
Mythbusters has another interesting aspect in that they came from movie production background, so wall time was really critical, you can't hold up a shooting day to get a better glue formulation for simulated flesh falling off bone.
Part a thing is its structure, but the other part is how it evolves over time and its reaction rates to stimulus.
Agree on the beers.
There's another related concept I came up with thinking about this discussion (which I've had with friends as well): 'freedom of utility'.
The basic idea is, forget about what you think is beautiful or motivational. Suppose you could choose to be motivated by something. Would you choose to be motivated by superficial mystery, or by deep knowledge of how things are? Should you choose to find beautiful just the surface of the flower, or also the wonders of how it works, its structure as a system, the connections to evolution and theory of color and so on -- all of which could turn out to be useful one way or another. If you could choose, would you choose to be exclusively motivated by the immediate external appearance or by the depth and myriad of relationships as well?
Unfortunately, (unlike AI systems we could design) I don't think we have complete control of our motivation -- our evolutionary biases are strong. But I'm also fairly certain much of our aesthetic sense can be shaped by culture and rational ideals. If I hadn't heard Feynman, watched so many wonderful documentaries (and e.g. Mythbusters) and many popularizers of science, perhaps I wouldn't see this beauty so much as I do -- and I'm grateful for it, because I want to see this beauty, I want to be motivated to learn about the world, and to improve it in a way.
This was the subject of the first episode of MythBusters.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0768480/?ref_=ttep_ep1
> bullets made of ice
This was one of the topics on the very first episode of Mythbusters:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6pcm0l
I think you might be remembering this Mythbusters episode backwards; they determined that it wasn't cell phones causing ignition and was in fact static electricity.
I just rewatched this out of curiosity and I think you’re seriously misremembering that episode (S4E11), the final conclusions wasn’t “busted”. They asked “busted, plausible or confirmed” and they concluded “all of the above”.
Grant actually was part of the show already at this point, they did actually find 9mm bullets they fired up, but couldn’t find 30-06 rounds. They did conclude that “straight up and down” was safe but said multiple times that bullets on a trajectory are still lethal. They present the medical evidence at the 21 minute mark, and a simulation around the 25 minute mark.
I don’t hold Mythbusters to be a scientific end-all to a discussion but I think they made that episode in good faith and portrayed it ok, even if they bulk of the testing footage was on the very narrow (and filmable) straight up and down terminal velocity aspect.
I'd recognized him from Battlebots since his robot Deadblow was a finalist from season 1, the final episode[0] starts with a short intro from Grant that shows his fun perspective brought to the table on Mythbusters. The entire Mythbusters team surely inspired the next generation of scientists and engineers with a can-do mentality.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTDrwWCJqAo
This is very sad, Mythbusters is just about my favourite tv series of all time.
Damn. I watched pretty much every episode of mythbusters, so this one hits hard.
This was tested (and confirmed) on an episode of Mythbusters: https://mythresults.com/blow-your-own-sail
Their boat went about 10% the speed of just pointing the fan backwards.
What about water heaters? I remember the mythbusters episode where they confirmed that a water heater could go through the roof of your house.
Of interest is the Mythbusters episode linked in the article:
>Myth Statement: Archimedes was able to build a powerful steam cannon, using technology available at the time.
>Status: Busted
>Notes: A flash-boil-powered cannon, built even with modern materials and techniques, was barely able to push a projectile out of the barrel. A more modern pre-boiled, valve-triggered system, like those used in aircraft catapults, was able to project a cannonball a considerable distance, and required far less pressure than the MythBusters had originally projected. Also see Holman Projector which worked on a similar principle.
I was skeptical in the beginning that "bullets can still come down with lethal force if a warning shot is fired into the air" but I guess you are correct. Mythbusters were testing this in one episode and [1]"Because of this potentiality, firing a gun into the air is illegal in most states, and even in the states that it is legal, it is not recommended by the police. Also the MythBusters were able to identify two people who had been injured by falling bullets, one of them fatally injured"
[1] https://mythresults.com/episode50
> That might not sound like a lot, but given that it is for the entire world you can fit basically any niche within those numbers.
A common fallacy in business.
> Go full time crushing things with an hydraulic press? Yes! Go full time discussing medieval weapons? Yes! Go full time building things with no tools from scratch in the woods? Yes! Go full time trying to beat Super Mario as fast as possible? Double yes! And so on.
They're not that much a weird niche really. Go to any large university and there's probably a club full of people who discuss medieval weapons full time. Actually there's probably at least two (one that's more purist in terms of historical accuracy, and another that's more focused on fun), then there's probably also a fencing club, a kendo club, maybe a HEMA club, dozens of gaming groups.
And it's not like it's not niche that isn't served by TV. There's plenty of documentary / infotainment series on medieval weapons and combat. There's serious series. There's Deadliest Warrior. Youtube often gets viewers because it's a different format, not because it's serving a very weird niche. Cheap, regular content (and often the comment box keeps creators a bit more honest), suggested next episode, more talky, short episodes.
As for those other examples, there's Mythbusters (smash stuff!), survival shows (primitive technology in a different format). Gaming is the only really odd one - it just isn't shown on TV much.
I might be in the minority here, but I thought Mythbusters was a much more compelling show before it turned into outright destruction porn.
I pretty much lost interest after the episode where they blew up the concrete truck. I don't know much about mining or blasting[0], but I think even the most basic honest attempt to answer the question of "can you remove cured concrete from the drum of a concrete truck using explosives?" would have involved drilling some holes, filling them with explosives, and using the explosives to shatter the concrete. You know, the way miners use explosives to shatter rock.
For those of you who haven't watched that episode, they throw a stick of dynamite into the drum, observe that nothing happens, pack the remaining space in the drum full of ANFO, and then basically obliterate the truck. Adam picks up a fragment of the truck and delivers his catchphrase "Well there's your problem".[1]
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for myths involving guns and explosives; those aren't things the general public has a lot of experience with[2]. But let's not sensationalize them, let's look at what they actually do, under realistic (if unusual) circumstances.
[0] I've toured a couple deactivated mines and read a couple of books. In every case, the basic process of "drill holes, fill with explosives, removed broken up material" was covered. I'm not an expert, but I find it hard to believe they couldn't have found one for the purposes of science.
[1] Haven't seen it in a while, don't care to re-watch it. There might be some bits missing, but that's basically how it goes.
[2] In the case of firearms especially, I firmly believe if more people had an understanding of how they work and their effects, even in extraordinary cases, we might be able to have a semi-intelligent conversation about them.
Didn't Mythbusters do an episode of that? IIRC they tried an ice bullet and one made out of frozen meat, neither really worked.
"The Discovery Channel program MythBusters built replicas of the jars to see if it was indeed possible for them to have been used for electroplating or electrostimulation. On MythBusters' 29th episode (March 23, 2005), ten hand-made terracotta jars were fitted to act as batteries. Lemon juice was chosen as the electrolyte to activate the electrochemical reaction between the copper and iron. Connected in series, the batteries produced 4 volts of electricity. When linked in series, the cells had sufficient power to electroplate a small token and deliver a minor electric shock to MythBusters co-host Adam Savage. Archaeologist Ken Feder commented on the show noting that no archaeological evidence has been found either for connections between the jars (which were necessary to produce the required voltage) or for their use for electroplating."
Are phones actually spark hazards?
I remember a mythbusters episode where they filled an outbuilding with dozens of different cellphones and lots and lots of open cannisters of gasoline and other petrochemicals, then called them all repeatedly without incident.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjrkwxMhc4s
I'm sure there are parts of a refinery where even static electricity could be enough to set something off but I'd assume they were not areas that people typically worked.
Video unavailable
"Mythbusters banned from tal..."
The YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated due to multiple third-party notifications of copyright infringement.
The payment cartel at it again? Oh, wait:
> 2/03/12 5:40pm
That explains that.
Some quick searching indicates that there's a lot more to this story: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/04/mythbusters_rfid_backtrack/
> The co-host of popular science television show Mythbusters has backtracked on claims that the Discovery Channel spiked a planned exploration of RFID security after coming under commercial pressure from credit card companies.
> "There's been a lot of talk about this RFID thing, and I have to admit that I got some of my facts wrong, as I wasn't on that story, and as I said on the video, I wasn't actually in on the call," Savage said in the statement.
Seems like someone necro'd only the first half of this sequence of events, neglecting to include the part where it came to light that it didn't actually happen.
Or, if your tinfoil hat is on particularly tight today, Savage's statement is just more evidence of the conspiracy to silence Mythbusters!
MythBusters made an episode about that http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/mythbusters-database/shooting-gas-tank/ [spoiler alert] "busted"
Mythbusters did an episode about those masks. They only fooled humans at a distance, and then not well.
Grant does a heck of a double-take, though, at one point. It is a fun episode so I won’t spoil it.
Thanks for the link!
The Community Details: Edits of Mythbusters episodes (all the fluff removed)
They probably get minified ratios that make js devs jealous.
There is also a fairly large community around editing Mythbusters episodes ("streamlining") so that each myth is one single block rather than the interspliced variant that was aired[1]. They've recently completed all aired Mythbuster episodes too.
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/smyths
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=how+its+made
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mythbusters+full+episodes
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=simpsons+full+episode
With the exception of the last one, which has paid options, all of those do not have permission.
> The students were expected (and encouraged) to cheat on the test but told that if they were caught, they would fail the exam. Of the 20 students in the class where this exercise was tested, all succeeded in cheating without being caught, much to their professors’ delight.
Absolutely fascinating.
This reminds me of the mythbusters lie detector episode (For the moment, let's disregard the efficacy of the polygraph). One of the things they said was there has to be a physical, actual, realistic, consequence for the test subject in order for the polygraph "to work."
Similarly, if all the exams were setup so that the only possible way was to cheat or face failure, I think you would force them into the mindset.
Because a quadcopter is meant to be controlled remotely, while a traditional car isn't, so retrofitting it for remote control is likely time consuming and error prone (ever watch one of the mythbusters episodes where they rig up a car for RC?).
Self driving cars already have everything required to control the car built in. They just need to hijack the existing controls and hook it up to a RC system (or just tell it to drive to location using internal controls).
>Kind of like with Tasers
Well that doesn't exactly stop the cops from abusing them. It's lot different when it's someone on your side, maybe someone you know, doing it because they have to and you can be basically assured they won't go out of their way to harm you or be sadistic. It's like the mythbusters water torture episode where Adam just sits there because without all the situational stuff it's not really that bad.
People who are actually on the receiving end of people abusing their power have no such luxury.
There's also a very good late-season episode of Mythbusters that almost entirely dispenses with their format because Adam Savage had the chance to ride in a U-2.
It's also just so much wasted time. Once I started watching old Mythbusters episodes on youtube I realized that about a third of it is just drumming up suspense before a commercial break, or recapping after a break. That's time that could be filled with actually interesting content.
The 416-planet solar system is the equivalent of the large explosion that ends most Mythbusters episodes.
The interesting part of the article is the explanation of the different ways that the number of planets in the habitable zone of a star can be greater than one, and how it's possible that most stars have more than one habitable planet each. This has direct consequences for the Drake Equation and the likelihood of contemporary alien life in the galaxy.
Is this where Mythbusters did their "explosive decompression" episode?
They tried and failed three times (episodes 16, 46, and 157).
Here's an interesting write-up about the team of MIT students that worked with them on the second try: http://web.mit.edu/2.009/www/experiments/deathray/10_Mythbusters.html
As a person who works with their mind all day long, concussions scare me. They scare me more than injuries to my hands do. I took a good hit to my head in a really slow lowside on my motorcycle (I, to this day, don't remember the incident itself, but I'm pretty sure it was a combination of loose gravel and rolling onto the throttle early). For months after that hit, I had more trouble than usual understanding complex concepts; had trouble building that mental model which lets us work.
Concussions result from your brain rattling around inside your skull like Jello. It's hard to write them off as minor inconveniences when you look at it like that. I recommend watching the "beer bottle to the head" episode of Mythbusters; those slow motion shots are scary (though exaggerated).
RFID chips get obsolete. Eg original Mifire chip is considered insecure and should be replaced.
Do you know which chip you have in?
I saw the related Mythbusters episode and they mention it not easy to remove the chip after some years.
As a soccer fan, the service is great as it has live La Liga games for free. They have some Mythbusters episodes too. The original content they try to push looks awful though.
The important thing about Mythbusters is that they have an idea and they test it. Their methods aren't always the best (or even good at all), but they take the right approach: they get an idea, and they try to verify or invalidate it. Pretty much anyone who watches an episode can think of a way to improve the experiment, and I think it's good that the show provokes that response.
> Mythbusters, I rarely come out of watching that show feeling like I really learned something
The earliest episodes were more scientific and educational. They spent quite a bit of time explaining how they were going to construct something and then showing how they actually built it. It became pure entertainment--devoted especially to blowing things up--once the show achieved success.
Another example of a show descending to the lowest common denominator: The first years of "Biography" on the A&E Network had stories about explorers, scientists, and world leaders--Michelangelo, Henry Ford, Julius Caesar, Marconi, Marco Polo--but now it's nothing but celebrities.
Ah, I remember this model from the episode of Mythbusters where they escape from Alcatraz. They used the model to test potential routes across the bay.
> Debunking conspiracies is not science
Why not?
> theirs don't seem to exist
http://mythresults.com
> bow ties are ok
Of course bow ties are OK. Nonetheless, a scientist wearing a bow tie reinforces negative stereotypes. It's sad, but true.
> people don't hate on Feynman for having long hair or being a supposed sex swinger
That's because Feynman didn't do those things on TV. If Bill Nye wants to wear a tutu in his private life, more power to him. But if he wears one on a TV show about science I think that would indicate some really poor judgement on his part.
> Bill Nye also engineered a part that was used in the 747 while he worked at Boeing
So? What does that have to do with the Mythbusters?
>Mythbusters tremendously advanced the cause of science, and they did it in no small part by not taking themselves too seriously.
Personally I think that's a bit of a stretch, but I'm not trying to say the show isn't great. While scientists could learn from their format (providing videos of their experiments, for instance) I wouldn't say that the mythbusters have advanced the cause of science at all. Would you say that the TV show Bill Nye the science guy advanced the cause of science? Science education he has definitely advanced the cause of, but science: not from the TV show. Similarly, I think the mythbusters have advanced engineering education tremendously, specifically television engineering education.
If you think they have actually advanced the cause of science, I would love to hear why. I'm not trying to be a jerk, I'm just speaking from having watched a few episodes, so I definitely could be wrong.
Yes - Mythbusters used it for the Alcatraz escape episode to see where the likely landing point of the improvised raft was, as it's an accurate model of the tides and flows of the area :)
If you want 5% dividends in Australia, that's easy - Telstra (TLS.AX) is regularly at levels where you'll get a 5% dividend. Right now you'd get 5.8%. Motley Fool mentioned it a couple of months ago as well, and if you can make use of Franking Credits you'll get even more value out of it [1].
If you've got E-Trade, go into Quotes & Research -> Tools -> Basic Stock Filter and search by Yield > 8%. Today there's 66 results. Of course, you need to do your research: Dick Smith Electronics is supposedly offering 33.5% yield, but they've just gone bankrupt. Slater And Gordon at 13.95% yield have been hugely impacted by UK Regulatory changes in recent months.
You might look closer at BHP Billiton: (BHP.AX, 9.95%). One of the world's biggest mining operations, and the shares have tanked post-mining-boom. Surely they'll have to cut their dividend, but even if it was halved, it would still hit your 5% extremely-good-dividend level.
Other names I recognize are Seven West Media (SWM.AX, 10.44%) who own newspapers & television stations, but also have part-ownership of Netflix competitor Presto that is preloaded on Samsung televisions. Beyond International (BYI.AX, 9.09%) produce television shows like Mythbusters, and have had steadily increasing dividends over the years.
Anyway, that's the approach I've taken: it's usually about buying into well known companies that pay dividends that steadily grow over the years, at times when the share price has been hit so hard that the dividend yields become huge.
[1] http://www.fool.com.au/2015/12/04/todays-telstra-share-price-is-offering-a-5-8-fully-franked-yield/?source=aptyholnk3030003#
There was, ironically, a MythBusters episode[0] on last night in which they were flying quadcopter drones into dummy torsos (complete with major neck arteries) to see what happened.
I'll admit I was surprised to see that, indeed, they were able to puncture through that poor soul's ballistic gel neck and sever the "aorta."
0: http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/videos/drone-decapitation-high-speed/
MythBusters episodes with the repetitive stuff edited out: https://www.reddit.com/r/smyths
I loved MythBusters early on, but I haven't been able to stand watching the show for several years, save for the occasional episode. You know the drill: the heavy editing, the grating narrator, the scripted conversations, the sponsored "myths", the filler explosions.
The fun for me was always in seeing Adam and Jamie doing the actual research and building in order to test a myth. I liked being able to follow their thinking process. They would sometimes run into dead ends before even getting to the building stage, forcing them to rethink their approach. That gives a better picture of what science and engineering really is like, too. I suppose there's always been some scripting and editing, and the early seasons were flawed in other ways, but it definitely seemed to be a lot more genuine early on.
It's not about an entertainment tradeoff for me, as I simply don't find the current show format entertaining. But then, I guess I'm just not in the show's target audience anymore. I can accept that. Some good news, though, is that Adam and Jamie have started a website [1] where they (primarily Adam) show off builds and gadgets, without the shackles of the TV show format. For example, [2] is a video in which Adam Savage explains a tool stand for 14 minutes, which I honestly found more entertaining and interesting than any MythBusters episode I can remember seeing recently. I like seeing the nuts and bolts of their builds and experiments, quite literally.
I hope the final season ends on a high note. All things considered, it's been a good run, and the team behind MythBusters deserve a huge amount of credit for what they've done.
[1] http://www.tested.com/ [2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWQAYfGxsPE
An important detail is that they don't show all the repetitions variations for time constrains. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters
> Testing is often edited due to time constraints of a televised episode. It can often seem as if the teams draw results from fewer repetitions and a smaller data set than they actually have. During the Outtakes Special, they specifically stated that while they are, in fact, very thorough in testing myths and repeat experiments many times in many different configurations, it is simply impossible to display all of it during a program. Beginning in the fifth season, episodes typically contain a prompt for the viewer to visit the show's homepage to view outtake footage of either additional testing, or other facets of the myths being tested. However, Savage himself has acknowledged that they do not purport always to achieve a satisfactorily large enough set of results to overcome definitively all bias.
(I enjoyed[1] mythbusters, and thought it was good.)
But the way they had that big metal plate that they'd drop in slomo with a clang saying "BUSTED!" gave the impression that this was now FACT and TRUTH.
For a fun tv show that's fine, but for science education (which is what a lot of people thought MB was) it's sub-optimal.
[1] although I prefered the remixed versions where each item was run in a single block, rather than the broadcast version which flicked from item to item and back again, with many catchups and coming nexts.
On Mythbusters, in their zombie myths episode, the elder duo put their crowd-crush volunteers in torso-length segments of large-diameter drainage tile, and had everyone hold their arms up above their heads while attempting to crowd-crush through a barn door.
It looked like the zombies had all gone broke in the 1920s and were wearing barrels for clothing.
But no one was apparently injured. So I guess shoppers and concertgoers could all wear crush-resistant chest armor?
This is interesting cultural phenomena.
First there was laugh tracks in sitcoms.
Then Japanese started to add those small reaction screens in the upper corners of the TV-competitions. Now it has taken over the world. Shows like MythBusters turned into collection to extended reaction shots to stuff that happens repeated over and over. You can see SpaceX having employees arranged to react and cheer and film crews filming the reactions half of the time.
We are spoon-fed with cues on how to react and reaction pics and interviews of people telling how amazing it and hyping it up has taken over.
Some people can find it draining, but I think there is good reasons why it's done. Competition for attention is fierce.
> "In 1982, Larry Walters flew across Los Angeles in a lawn chair lifted by weather balloons..."
I watched an old episode of MythBusters last night on YouTube where they tested exactly that, it was Season 1 Episode 3 - if anyone is interested.
A couple of these have been Mythbusters edutainment TV show topics. I am almost certain both the pigeons and the balloon have been on the show. I'm not sure how they'd use explosives to test the pigeon one, but I'm sure it would be interesting to watch. (edited to add, I just figured it out, they'll put frozen chicken parts from the supermarket in a really big box on top of some explosive, and put the works on a scale...)
The iron bars is more fun when analogized to the famous barometer building height challenge where the goal isn't someones abstract idea of simplest but to come up with the most unusual way to determine the answer (for the barometer I like the idea of tossing it off the roof and timing the impact, or bribing the building superintendent with a really nice barometer). For the iron bars I think a funny way to solve the problem is to heat one bar above the curie point and after it anneals back to room temp, if the bars don't stick to each other I guess the heat treated bar WAS a magnet. Another fun trick if you don't trust your string suspension to not bias the hanging position WRT north pole, simply spin each bar in each axis and one bar will have a funkier deceleration curves for various axes.
"MythBusters" is an unscientific television show run by stunt men. Imagine someone holding a candle underneath a gas tank for five seconds, not exploding, and concluding with cheesy sound effects that the flammability of gasoline is a "Myth". That's "MythBusters".
This may sound silly, but it seems like there could be a MythBusters episode specifically on this to prove or disprove how likely these no-knock raids are needed to prevent an effective coverup of evidence.
They could actually make some actionable data for public good.
>Adam and Jamie would be proud.
As much as I like Mythbusters, Tim is in a league all by himself. Not only is the movie a grand piece of seriously dedicated geekery, he's also a software developer and created video processing software on the Amiga in the 90's, amongst other things. When I was a teen, our local cable community tv channel used his Video Toaster software.
Strangely enough he doesn't have a personal wikipedia page and his name just forwards to the name of his company.
No, it isn't, I haven't seen it. Can you tell me how you got a preview of the show and decided that it was political?
President Obama is a human being who happens to like science. He also was involved in an episode of Mythbusters about a myth he'd like the guys to test and I thought it was awesome. Jamie actually was honored to do it and you could see it in his face.
There is a Mythbusters episode about moon landing hoax conspiracy theories where the hosts visited an observatory to test the lunar retro reflectors.
The laser they used was pretty big (don't know/remember the numbers) but the more impressive part was the detector. Despite the huge laser, just a handful of photons make it there and back and twice through the atmosphere.
Overall it didn't look like something you do on your back yard with off the shelf equipment, but it might be doable by a motivated hackerspace crew with a lot of time and some money on their hands.
Now that we have to consider the iPhones to be backdoored by the NSA, I wonder whether I really want to give them my fingerprint together with the rest of my data. I'm also not so sure whether a fingerprint can't still be easily faked (like it was possible on that Mythbusters episode for example).
Personally, I think I'd rather stay with my passcode.
Did you btw know that you can turn off "simple passcode" and then use a purely numeric longer passcode? In that case the iPhone will still show the big easy-to-hit numeric keyboard allowing you to type in the arbitrary length numeric code.
Yes. It's not as safe as a long alphanumeric password, but this gets annoying SO quickly, I'd rather type in my 8 digits.
I saw a Mythbusters episode where they defeated a fingerprint scanner with a home printer copy of a fingerprint they lifted off a CD case with superglue.
Water is noncompressible. Maybe the word "definitely" was misused because there's always the possibility for a fluke, but my understanding is that at terminal velocity hitting water is functionally equivalent to hitting concrete.
Look up the "hammer drop" episode of Mythbusters if you want to see the long explanation.
The second point still stands, though. I'd rather fall onto the concrete, where I could get help quickly and if I knocked myself out but survived I wouldn't drown.
This is why I love the TV show Mythbusters: they routinely demonstrate how our intuition on these matters is wrong.
(A 30-foot fall onto concrete might still kill you, but a 300-foot fall into water will definitely kill you. And if the fall onto concrete doesn't kill you, it will be much easier to get you the medical attention you need if you're not floating in San Francisco Bay).
I remember a mythbusters episode where they stuck a half a ton of clay on a regular car, and it didn't affect fuel economy. So there's that.
There's a Mythbusters where they quite literally tackled the action-movie-style busting down the door. Turns out it doesn't matter how many locks are on the door when Jamie kept knocking them off their hinges.
I really wouldn't consider MythBusters a good source. The test they came up with for the snow plow episode is so far from a proper model, it gave exactly the wrong results and basically told folks something wrong and dangerous. It is fun entertainment and they try hard within those bounds, but they get stuff totally wrong sometimes.
I've seen this episode of Mythbusters...
>He is the explosives guy on Mythbusters.
I don't know what's worse...
The idea that knowing how to blow stuff up qualifies you to profile folks as potential terrorists or that being consulted for a TV show qualifies you for anything.
"For instance, reading all of the Harry Potter books is getting something done too. Flipping channels on the couch all day, not so much."
I've always found it interesting that reading, as a form of entertainment, always seems to be held on a pedestal compared to television, cinema, or videogames. It's a kind of elitism that the literati hold over everyone who doesn't find reading as enjoyable as them. Consider this: one person reads the entire Harry Potter series and another reads the entire Twilight series, both are reading but the quality of the material is completely different. Assuming that literature is de facto superior to any other form entertainment is completely ignorant and wrong.
In this case, swap "flipping channels all day", which could include watching informative shows such as Bill Nye, How It's Made, or Mythbusters, with "watching Jersy Shore all day" and confusion about entertainment quality preferences are removed.
Turns on Mythbusters
Narrarator: On this episode of Mythbusters...
Adam shouts: I can't believe it works!
cut to build team blowing up unrelated object
Turns TV off
Well, that answers that question.
> My interest in Mythbusters faded as their excuses for blowing stuff up every week became increasingly absurd and pointless.
And the Obama episode? Really, the best they could think of was Archimedes death ray because it wasnt "tested thoroughly enough"??? Come on......
The last Mythbusters episode put Monty Hall to the test and passed. I have to say it was the first time I truly understood why Monty Hall works.
That was somehow sorted out by the Mythbusters (Season 1, Episode 8). Or is news of Russians burying themselves a meta-urban myth?
I smell an episode of Mythbusters coming on.
But so few photons come back, sometimes I wonder if the measurements are within a margin of error or reflection off atmosphere.
Mythbusters did a good episode on the moon skeptics though.
Another prediction if other players (Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft were mentioned in the original article) get into the market:
Tiered pricing. Much like basic cable (fairly inexpensive) + movie channels / premium channels / sports packages (increases your subscription cost).
And perhaps eventually the holy grail that the cable industry would never go for: a la carte pricing. Here's the price to add Discovery to your subscription. Here's the price to add Mythbusters to your subscription.
And here's where it gets interesting: I could literally get a subscription to Mythbusters, thereby providing Adam and Jamie with a source of funds that would provide capital for them to create the next batch of episodes. I could get a subscription to the Cohen Brothers, which would fund their next three movies.
Mythbusters had an episode about it http://mythbustersresults.com/alaska-special-2
Note this article does predate the Mythbusters episode (and the study probably precipitated it). The Mythbusters anecdotally reported that while you could go roughly as fast in high-viscosity fluid it was much harder; IIRC Jamie couldn't even finish his highest-viscosity run, or at least made very heavy weather of it.
(I for one would accept anecdotal reports on the matter, but if you're in an excessively science-uber-alles mood YMMV.)
Along the same lines, the Mythbusters had an episode about swimming in syrup. Here's a link to the first part of the episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs4Q5jZSJbA
This reminds me of a Mythbusters episode I saw where they tried numerous "antigravity" devices. A few of them did manage to levitate objects, but worked either on magnetic fields or thrust. There was no alteration of gravity.
That said, I'm a bit confused as to how scientists want to apply this achievement to low-gravity environments. Since gravity is not actually being altered here, it doesn't seem relevant. Am i totally off base here?
Word Amy, like the design. Just seeing the screens in the header graphic alone give me more of an idea what the application actually does. Pictures that describe things are good. In the first design, I simply scanned all the bold text, had no idea what the product did, and closed the page.
I don't have a TV, but watched an episode of MythBusters at a hotel the other week, and they were polishing shit collected from the zoo. I think they were able to get some very shiny and polish shit out of the whole thing... so... polished shit is not a myth!
People like to claim that TV is only full of crap. This is grade A, Microsoft-FUD-level, Bullshit.
Like anything, sure, most of it is crap. Just like if you went to a bookstore and picked up 10 random fantasy novels. You might conclude that they're all just cookie cutter pablum - most are - but then you miss out on George R. R. Martin's Song of Fire and Ice, Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana, LeGuin's Earthsea, and other truly excellent works of fiction.
But like anything, it takes some investment to tell the good from the bad. If you just watch Jon & Kate Plus 8, Entertainment Tonight, and According to Jim, yeah, you're better off without the TV altogether. But I claim that there's more good TV being made now than at any time in history, particularly for niche markets.
Here's some of my recommendations: Mythbusters, Penn & Teller's Bullshit, Supernatural, Dollhouse, The Office, 30 Rock, Lost, The Simpsons (not as great as it was, but still fun), The Daily Show/Colbert Report, Mad Men... and more, there's just a ton of really high quality work being done.
If your argument is that instead, you watch things online/through netflix, that makes sense. If I didn't enjoy live sports sometimes, I'd consider doing the same.
Not everyone has to have a hobby of watching television, or movies, or reading for that matter, but the opinion that it's all crap is extremely ill-informed and snobbish, and I strongly encourage it to be dropped as something that makes you sound actively stupid when you say it. It's an anti-pattern.
This happens with quite a few programmes that we have imported from the US. Off the top of my head I can think of Mythbusters and Ice Road Truckers which are dubbed by a British narrator with a lot of the dramatic music removed. All in all it makes the programmes more factual.
Personally I believe this is because of the BBC and to some extent Channel 4 (a pseudo-public tv channel) keeping standards high overall. I doubt the viewing public would accept such dramatised documentaries on the BBC considering its heritage...
I like Malcolm Gladwell and I enjoyed reading Blink. However, he's selling a book. His arguments are all very biased and do not inform.
Priming has similar effects as hypnosis, and is increasingly believed to be linked. 1/3 of people react negatively to priming and hypnosis, something that is rarely mentioned. Hypnosis research has repeatedly shown that you cannot get someone to believe something they don't want to, or to do something they don't want to. There's a very nice scene in Mythbusters where a researcher clearly refuses a hypnotic suggestion, and then quickly comes out of the hypnosis. Earlier in the episode they tried it on one of the main cast members who knew they were being implanted with a suggestion (to slap someone or jump up and down, depending on the cue) and he broke out in a laughing fit.
Also if you want to see priming in the extreme, read about the Milgram Experiment and then about the Strip Search Prank Call Scam.
Also I know I'm one of the 1/3 who doesn't react to hypnosis. I'm unsure about hypnotic flooding, but its effects are less certain than normal hypnosis due to the fact that it perverts the results. Incidentally I'm one of the (about 10% of people) who react negatively to sleep meds, they wire me like the energizer bunny.
The true effects of priming are the country and state flags sat in the court rooms (this is especially bad in death-penalty cases as national pride usually ups the pro-death vote). What about seeing a guy accused of cop-killing being marched to the stand by two cops?
We have to be careful of the unconscious effects of priming we place all around ourselves, because the conscious use of priming in wide civilization will likely have the opposite effect of what we desire.
> Of course, you like to think you're above such manipulation-- so does everyone else.
I do, as you say everyone does. It's just a mere fact that 1/3 of people are. So you, me and a random person means one of us is above such manipulation.
I think a large part of the problem is that the content is increasingly crap!
My TV watching is basically Food Network, Ovation TV (artist & musician documentaries) some History channel, a bit of Discovery channel (Mythbusters & Dirty Jobs), Cartoon Network adult swim and movies. I haven't watched broadcast TV in almost a decade and I don't get the local satellite feed. My local news comes from the radio during my commute.
Fox, ABC, NBC, etc. simply don't exist for me. CNN I have watched exactly ONCE in the last year: I heard that a plane landed in the Hudson river and I rushed home to watch it on TV then got disgusted by the usual crappy CNN coverage and switched it off.
A local bar could have an open mike night streamed online and I would watch that (with the bar's name prominently displayed in the background) over just about anything on TV. And when I got tired of watching I could go to the bar :-)
That's actually a good question. I watch a limited number of shows, and I wonder if simply buying the DVD's of a program would turn out to be cheaper than actually subscribing.
Edit: I mean I've seen boxsets in BestBuy for as little as $25 and they're shows I watch.
If I had all the series of Simpsons, Futurama, Mythbusters, Family Guy and American Dad I believe from then on I believe I would rather use the monthly subscription fee (about $150 here for all the channels we want; TMN is great to have as they're free of charge for a monthly fee, I get all the recent Stargate and Dexter episodes and most of the big movies not too long after they're out for rental) for buying more boxsets and movie rentals.
I've seen his collection on TV a few times. They used two of his tanks in an episode of Mythbusters, and the restoration of the Panzer tank mentioned in the above article was chronicled on a program called "Tank Overhaul":
http://military.discovery.com/convergence/tank-overhaul/episode/episode.html
His family has my condolences. Hopefully they'll now find a way to open his collection to the public.
Interesting and unfortunate. I wish the Mythbusters didn't face this sort of pressure. Maybe they can still do the segment and then put it on their website. That is less predominate than their TV show.
With information like the defcon slides already readily available I'm surprised to see such pressure. I guess a segment on a cable TV show is more public than MIT student newspaper.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=271920
"Adam Savage's widely circulated YouTube video account of a pack of credit card industry giants pummeling Discovery Channel into deep-sixing a Mythbusters investigation aimed at RFID is now taking more of a beating than Buster the dummy absorbs on a typical episode of the show."
I had to re-read that first sentence a few times.
She is only folding lengh-wise and that it's not too difficult with a long enough paper. Also the myth was busted properly in mythbusters season 5, "seven folds":
"They decided to make their open big 170' x 220' piece using 17 rolls of paper joined together with double-sided tape. An experiment this large required that they go to Moffett Field and setup in one of the blimp hangers there.
Using the traditional technique of alternating folds length and width-wise, they were able to get eleven folds."
http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2007/01/episode_72_underwater_car_and.html
"... Mythbusters is not an American television show. For all its massive international popularity, its devoted audience of many millions across all continents, its American hosts, locations, themes, its spin-off books, DVDs and t-shirts, Mythbusters is in fact an Australian television show made by Australians, largely in Australia ... "
read by clicking the (stupid) "Show Transcript" link...