www.whyville.net Jun 14, 2001 Weekly Issue



MediaWiz
Staff Writer

What's On!

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What's On!


MediaWiz
Times Writer
Hello to Whyville!

My name's MediaWiz, and I'm the guy who knows everything about your TV, and the movies, and your radio, and everything. Pick a media, and I know all about it. I've got my thumbs in almost every pie you can imagine, and if I don't, just ask about it, and I'll find out whatever you want to know!

What's a guy with all this knowledge to do? Well, some friends of mine showed me Whyville, and I knew immediately that this was the right place for me! The perfect place to share all my info!

So, over the last couple weeks, I wrote a couple articles for the Whyville Times, and this is the first one I've gotten in! Let me know what you think -- the Times Editor is still working to perfect my articles' format.

My specialty this week is space science, but as you can tell from this article, I do a lot of other things as well. Anyways, on to the shows!

On Thursday, June 14th:

"Satellite Technology: Discover Magazine" (Discovery Channel, 9-10 a.m. ET/PT) Today this science magazine show features the latest news about space satellites -- there are 8,000 orbiting above our planet nowadays. The show also looks under our planet -- down in Mammoth Cave in Kentucky where geologists think they've found some substances that might cure cancer.

"The Man Who Saw The Future: Arthur C. Clarke" (Ovation -The Fine Arts Network, 8-8:30 p.m. ET 5-5:30 p.m. PT, repeating Sunday June 17th , 4-4:30 p.m. ET,1-1:30 p.m. PT) In this biographical documentary you can watch the author of "2001: A Space Odyssey", the classic science-fiction novel and the screenplay of the famous movie made from it, being interviewed at his home on the island nation of Sri Lanka, where he lives and works, easily connected to the outside world by satellite. Not many people remember, but he was the first person to figure out how communication satellites would work -- when he wrote a science textbook on the subject exactly 50 years ago -- when they didn't exist yet. (May you be as careful what you wish for as he was.)

On Friday, June 15th:

"Rangers" (Discovery Channel, 8-9 p.m. ET/PT) If you have ever had fantasies about growing up to be a "Smoky Bear" park ranger and spending all your time outdoors in nature being a biologist or botanist, watch this show and find out what they really do, mostly. These days, rangers not only have to be a sort of paramedic, protecting animal and plant life from human interference, but they also have to protect park visitors from robbers and other assorted bad guys that show up, now that parks are so popular with the general public.

On Saturday, June 16:

"Power Plants" (History Channel, 7-8 p.m. ET/PT) This episode of the "Modern Marvels" documentary series describes electrical generating plants -- places now so much in the headlines because of the U.S.??s energy crisis. Learn how they make electricity using coal, oil, nuclear reaction, river flow, or the light of the sun -- different methods originated, as we see in the show, by individuals such as Edison, Tesla, Fermi, and Einstein.

"The Impressionists" (A&E Network, 8-10 p.m. ET/PT) This is a fascinating documentary about light. Scientists have been measuring it for a long time, but artists only began a serious effort to 'capture' it in their paintings in the 1900's. Their results were at first considered controversial but now the work of these French men and women, Renoir, Monet, Degas and Morisot is more or less what everybody thinks about when the word 'art' is mentioned.

"World Stunt Awards" (ABC, 9-11 p.m. ET/PT) This awards program honors the men and women who design and then perform live-action stunts for the movies -- not the computerized stuff, but the ones where lives are in real danger and insurance companies won't let the real star of the movie get into the exploding car or swing from the burning rope. These stunt-folks do some of the best work in 'applied physics' that ever was.

On Sunday, June 17:

"Planet Storm" (Discovery Channel, June 17 from 8-10 p.m. ET/PT) This astronomy documentary shows the latest findings about the atmospheres of other planets. Some of them endure 300 mile per hour winds; some experience lightning bolts 100 times stronger than anything on Earth, rather like atom bombs going off all day. Using state of the art special effects, the program demonstrates what these conditions would wreak if they happened on Earth -- including an unstoppable mile-high wall of choking dust and sand travelling at half the speed of sound and sandblasting everything to oblivion. (And we want to GO to such places? Wow!)

On Tuesday, June 19:

"Bill Moyers Reports: Earth On Edge" (PBS, 8-10 p.m. ET/PT) Some of the predictions in this documentary about environmental science are not optimistic, while some suggest we still have time to fix what folks have screwed up. Moyers, who used to run the Peace Corps and is now a very good TV reporter, visits Brazil, British Columbia, South Africa, Mongolia, and even the American Midwest in search of places where folks have done good and bad jobs of protecting their environment. What do you think about the Canadian timber industry's method of flying loggers in via helicopter to harvest trees without cutting roads into the wilderness? Or the American farmers who grow crops on vast fields without using pesticides or artificial fertilizers?

Well, that's about it! Stay tuned to the Times for the latest of What's On!

MediaWiz

 

 

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