Suw: Human beings breathe, so why not have a programme showing humans do that for an hour?

But I doubt that most non-mathematicians will even notice that, because they are more involved in the character’s development, his relationships with his love interests and his family, his career, his happiness. Because those are the human things that people in general care about. From that point of view, Charlies is portrayed very well, he’s a human being, just like us. He’s not a freak of nature; he’s a sexy maths prof. That’s the most important thing.

When the first “test tube” baby was to be “made,” various religious people opposed it saying that the child will be born without a soul and he/she would be the antichrist.

People believe Jesus rode on dinosaurs.

People fear what they do not know or understand.

FYI – I am Asian and I am not a kung fu master…I know Tae Kwon Do…not kung fu.

Now tell me, is the LHC really Satan’s Stargate?!

(I think the issue is that some people are dumber than rocks.)

There are people who believe in psychic abilities…ESP, telepathy, whatever…as shown on certain TV shows.

We can’t help what people choose to believe. If people want to believe that H2O can be turned into EtOH (which requires fission and fusion +/- large amounts of deadly nuclear radiation) in a jar to impress a Pharaoh just so he would let “my people go”…that staves can become snakes…and a man can walk on water (defying gravity and other laws of physics) just because he has certain amount of faith…yeah it’s starting to sound ridiculous…but so do the things about aliens and ESP.

The problem is SOMETIMES, TV shows illustrate caricatures of OTHER PEOPLE. It is then we may have issues. What if TV shows only had black people as criminals? What if TV shows only had British people as Doctors? What if TV shows depicted Asians only as kung fu masters? What if TV shows depicted that in order to find people guilty of a crime, they need DNA evidence (although they don’t even know what a DNA is)?

Another problem is that SOMETIMES, TV shows illustrate caricatures of reality. Although the shows are supposed to be for entertainment, they can mentally fuck with peoples understanding of the real world…much like religion, superstition, whatever.

Perhaps the problems are not with the TV shows…may be the problems exist in ourselves (humans)…or just those who are dumber than rocks.

Nah, Christians only fuck with kids’ brains. But they’re not exactly alone in that.

This is not about getting everything 100% accurate, which is an unrealistic (haha) expectation, but misrepresentation, cultural stereotypes and plain ignorance.

*Do any of those ‘inaccurate representations’ have a serious or detrimental impact on our society? What if some people think doctors are fools, cops are corrupt, Jesus is a nappy-wearing sexual deviant…?*

Well, ‘the short answer is a no with a but, the long a yes with an if.’ You’ve listed a lot of very specific examples, yes there is a lot of variety and it’s wrong for me to focus on particular shows, but you can’t expect me to give a detailed critique of every single every produced. However, perhaps not surprisingly, I can say that of all of the shows you’ve listed play on stereotypes or simply fall down to the lowest common denominator with a view to achieving mass appeal (and thus more money).

Is Jerry Springer the Opera, taking that particular example, damaging to society? Well it seemingly has done nothing for the reputation of Christians and it possibly doesn’t reflect well on the wider state of current British beliefs and morals. But then this, as well as being perspective dependent, all depends on how much weight you place on a theatre show. For example, the excellent paedophile special of Brass Eye, Paedogeddon, had jump-on-the-bandwagon politicians slating the current state of the media but in the end, I think people saw it for what it was, FUNNY! Is the same true for Jerry Springer the Opera? Hmm maybe, although it’s not that funny. Both were unfairly written off simply because they tackled controversial subjects, but then the two are different from the perspective that one could only really served to piss paedophiles off, where as the other was unfair to Christians. Surely not even you Gia think that paedophiles and Christians are as bad as each other?

Mind, I’m biased by the fact I love anything Charlie Brooker is involved in. For example, on umm accidentally calling for the assassination of Bush he wrote, ‘My inbox overflowed with blood-curdling death threats, and it was all very unfunny indeed – a bit like recounting a rude joke at a dinner party, only to be told you hadn’t recounted a joke at all, but molested the host’s children, and suddenly everyone was punching you and you weren’t going to get any pudding.’ I believe in another article he ha stated that he has actually asked to leave from a dinner party for dropping a stinker of a joke. Gia, you’re lucky for knowing that man.

Anyway, the issue here is not so much mass media portrayals of certain professions, but whether we want a nation bloated with ill-informed graduates who base their career aspirations on telly shows. Pah.

However, maybe I have been a little unfair in completely deriding Numb3rs. Although it’s very idealised in their application, and the show contains much more action than anything else, at least it does make an attempt to present various mathematical theories to the wider public. Hmm, maybe I’d watch and enjoy the thing if I could get a decent Freeview signal. Might look into getting the DVDs actually, talking about the show has made me want to watch it, lolz.

It’s true that TV isn’t reality. And yes, some slower-witted people in our society haven’t quite grokked that yet, but they’d have problems regardless. But TV isn’t always entirely false either.

Not all of Numb3rs is tosh – some of it is real. Which bits are which is discussed nicely on a blog from a maths professor in the US. This entry in particular is interesting. http://is.gd/LVV

It starts, “At lot of people who have watched “Numb3rs” have expressed disbelief that Charlie could actually predict, say, the probable location of a bank robbery, just knowing where previous ones have taken place. In fact, some mathematicians I know (more acquainted, perhaps, with “pure” or highly abstract math) have expressed the same doubts. Well, in fact, the first two episodes of Numb3ers are actually based on real-life cases where mathematicians have done just that.”

But what interests me most about Numb3rs and CSI is that they have the capacity to stimulate curiosity and a sense of possibility in teens as they choose what to study next. If more people decide to study sciences at school and then go to uni to study science, then that’s a win. If, in the course of doing that, they realise that part of some Numb3rs episode they saw was tosh, are they really going to storm off in a huff and go become a fine arts grad?

And yes, of course there are execrable geek stereotypes used on TV, but stuff like CSI and Numb3rs provides positive images that I don’t think existed before in the mainstream. Even on Star Trek, the smart kid – Wesley Crusher – is played as an annoying, precocious git to start with, and an awkward geek later on. Hardly positive.

And finally, I have no patience at all with anyone who comes over all snobbish about their discipline. (Note, I’m not accusing anyone here of snobbishness.) Last year I was at a dinner with a bunch of people I didn’t know. We got to talking about TV and I mentioned how much I enjoyed Numb3rs, and they started deriding me, saying how even a child could see that Numb3rs was mathematically inept. A bit of a pile-on ensued, wherein the object of the exercise was to take the piss out of me for liking a show they found to be sub-standard.

That kind of snobbery is inexcusable. It’s also the kind of attitude that puts people off subjects that they would otherwise be fascinated by. Deeply unconstructive.