TLC, the cable network that used to be called The Learning Channel but which had to change its name because it suddenly realized that it offered no programming with any educational content, continues its slide into rubbernecking idiocy with Paranormal Court (via SouthCoastToday.com):
Robert Hansen, a psychic medium famous among people gullible enough to believe in psychic mediums, will mediate disputes between family members squabbling over possessions left behind by the deceased. Hansen goes right to the source and communicates with the “owners” to set things straight.
This is the network, remember, that features series about people with 19 kids, people who willingly put themselves forth to be berated about their clothing, people who sex up their toddlers for money and fame, and other freaks shows. And now it includes people who are so sadly desperate and grief-stricken enough — as well as greedy and materialistic enough — to let a charlatan con them… not to mention the con man revolting enough to take advantage of them.
This has been your WTF Thought for the Day.
Doesn’t Sarah Palin have a show coming onto TLC soon?
(Interpret that as you will.)
TLC the other channel for Fox News watching mouth-breathers.
People who go on that show deserve whatever they don’t get.
In the UK the term “alternative dispute resolution” is used for things not wildly dissimilar to this – for example, the people involved in a business dispute can all say “we’ll agree to the decision of this neutral arbitrator”, which can in some cases be a religious court (some Muslims like this approach because they get someone who’s more familiar with the culture than an English judge might be). If you strip out the psychic garbage, what you effectively have left is an arbitration service, and it might not even be an entirely bad one…
Ah, but can this Hansen kill people with the power of his thoughts?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/mar/23/surender-sharma-tv-ritual-edamaruku
one of the reason why you should not name something like channels or products in a descriptive method because you might not know that in the near future you might have to break your own description, let this be a lesson to TLC.