In a piece that could easily have lampooned several putatively educational cable stations, the fine humorists at The Onion are reporting this morning that the “Science Channel Refuses to Dumb Down Science Any Further.”
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“Look, we’ve tried, we really have, but it’s simply not possible to set the bar any lower,” said a visibly exhausted [Clark] Bunting, adding that he “could not in good conscience” make science any more mindless or insultingly juvenile. “We already have a show called Really Big Things, which is just ridiculous if you think about it, and one called Heavy Metal Taskforce, which I guess deals with science on some distant level, though I don’t know what it is. Plus, there’s Punkin Chunkin“…referring to the popular program in which contestants launch oversized pumpkins into the air using catapults. “What more do you people want?”
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
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Along with Bunting’s remarks, the Science Channel issued a statement claiming that it currently airs more than 150 programming hours that are tangentially, and often laughably, related to science, and that staff members are unable to bring themselves to make those hours even more asinine.
I haven’t watched the Science Channel in a couple years, so I assumed those were phony shows, invented by one of The Onion‘s resident wits. Alas, the programs are real… even Punkin Chunkin.
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