Curiosity

I see there's a new TV show called Curiosity. The tag-line, at least according to the ads I've seen, is "No question is off limits." I agree that in principle no question should be off limits. But some questions just aren't worth asking.

"Are we prepared for an alien invasion?" the ad asks. Well, that depends. If the aliens are two inches tall and are armed with thumbtacks, I'd say we're in good shape. If the aliens hit us with a twenty-ton iron projectile at .995 c, then we're in trouble. But is that an alien attack or an alien invasion? Does it matter?

It just seems to me that in a time when people are trying to kill the James Webb Space Telescope, the Discovery Channel could find better questions to ask than "Are we ready for an alien invasion?" Like, "Is basic scientific exploration worth anything?" Or, "If the Tea Party has its way and science becomes strictly a for-profit enterprise, are we better off?"

What's gone wrong with cable TV? Professional wrestling on Syfy? Storage Wars? A TV show about people who bellow a lot while they convert cars into Xtreme aquariums? Remember when TLC used to stand for "The Learning Channel" and not "The Lame Channel"? No wonder people believe crazy things when the supposedly highbrow cable channels are a wasteland of UFOs, ghost hunters, Nostradamus, and reality shows about pawn shops, storage units, and people who like to yell a lot.

I always liked the TV shows Cosmos and Connections (the one with James Burke), and I thought they were genius when they first aired. But against backdrop of the crap that passes for "educational TV" these days, their genius seems even more profound, and very badly missed.