movielib

Showtime, 9:00pm CDT (repeated one hour later).

Finally the one we've all been waiting for. OK, OK, finally the one I've been waiting for.

And congratulations to Penn & Teller: Bullshit for two Emmy nominations:

Outstanding Reality Program
Outstanding Writing for Nonfiction Programming

Red Dog

Yeah - this should be like the Environmental Hysteria one.

kvrdave

Hard to believe they had Emmy nominations for this relatively poor season. But I suppose if your competition is other reality shows, then this is still better than the other crap.

movielib

The nominations, I would guess, are for the second season (how do the Emmy seasons run, Das?). I agree this season has been the poorest overall and even a great Endangered Species episode will not bring it up enough to change that.

But the second season had its share of great and good shows such as Recycling, War on Drugs, P.E.T.A., Safety Hysteria, Profanity and 12-Stepping. (Note that I didn't include The Bible which I enjoyed but have to admit was not particularly good.)

Red Dog

Emmy seasons run from June 1 - May 31

movielib

That means P&T seasons tend to straddle Emmy seasons. I assume the nominations depend on when the season ended so these nominations would be for the second season.

movielib

All right, let me be the first to say it, I thought this episode was a huge disappointment. I wanted to see much more on challenging the wild claims of species extinction by environmentalists and much less on the Endangered Species Act. They could have done the ESA stuff in 5-10 minutes and used the rest of the show for the other stuff. It's like they're throwing together unpolished, lazy shows to fill a half hour instead of really putting together fact and argument filled programs that make you feel as if you've seen something with some substance. This is by far their weakest season and even a great topic didn't do a thing to change that.

End of rant.

I did like their going through the failure of the ESA to actually accomplish anything for which it was intended. They made a few good points that I know to be true but they did it more just by assertion than by providing evidence.

I hope they get the show back on track next season (assuming there is one). Maybe they need to take a little time off from their Vegas show and put it into Bullshit.

Red Dog

I thought the episode was great. Best one of the season by far. Personally, I'm glad that they specifically targetted the ESA because, sadly, that is the law and what people living in the real world have to deal with.

das Monkey

I agree. I don't feel like I'm getting much substance from this show anymore. Instead of showing two opinions and then explaining why one if clearly bullshit, they've been showing two opinions, and then simply mocking the guy they don't agree with instead of fully analyzing why it's an inferior position. The guy that was talking about how the ESA is abused by the government to control land could have easily been "this asshole" from a conspiracy theory episode. Also, they wasted a lot of time trying to make us feel bad for the cerebral palsy lady when most of it had nothing to do with the ESA. It's like they had 5 minutes of content and were trying to stretch it out to a 30 minute show. It's disappointing, mainly because we all know they are capable of better.

das

kvrdave

Really disappointing. If you are going to go with the cerbral palsy gal, why not talk to the people that rejected her report and get their bullshit side of the story? Why not talk about how there is no real way to know how many species are going extinct? Why not actually do something other than mock the whale dude? They had him on the show, but I have no idea why? They didn't really do anything with him. Why not go to a rally or something?

Crap, I guess I wouldn't miss this if they don't do another season, especially if they can't do it better than every single episode of this season.

kvrdave

This is telling of what kind of a season it was. Last episode....the one we have laid our hope on, and we can't even keep the thread from dying.

movielib

Exactly. They hinted at it with Patrick Moore talking about how there is no biodiversity crisis. They even used that clip in the online preview, misleading me into believing it would be the centerpiece of the program (which it should have been).

They could have used the IUCN Red List, the highly respected list of threatened and extinct species, maintained by a strong environmentalist group. Their list shows that a grand total of 784 species are known to have become extinct in the last 500 years. While we may have missed some insect and other species because they may have become extinct without our ever knowing they existed, there is absolutely no evidence that mass numbers of species are going extinct at this time.

See: http://www.iucnredlist.org/search/se...05&Submit.y=11

Edited to add: Another very important point that should have been covered is how we are mislead by many environmental groups when they talk about endangered species. For example, take the famous (or infamous) case of the Northern Spotted Owl. If every Northern Spotted Owl (the birds the enviros were concerned with) in existence died today (since they were never even in trouble this will, of course, not happen) would the species be extinct? No! Because the Northern Spotted Owl is not a species but one of three subspecies of Spotted Owl. In many cases the enviros call subspecies or even local groups species. Very few people are aware of this and P&T could have educated their viewers.