Week Without TV

An arti­cle I read recently reminded me of an old post of mine about a Calvin and Hobbes comic where Bill Wat­ter­son com­pares reli­gion and television.

Instead of ref­er­enc­ing Karl Marx, though, this arti­cle points out that both reli­gion and fic­tion serve a pur­pose of strength­en­ing in-​groups and out-​groups by way of rein­forc­ing shared val­ues. We like to share sto­ries that sup­port the “social truths” we value, and like for oth­ers around us to also value those sto­ries. It makes me won­der, though — are social truths uni­ver­sal? I’ve said before that I can appre­ci­ate fic­tional heroes, but would not sup­port their actions out­side of their fic­tional world.

Just some­thing to con­sider as I enjoy the new sea­sons of 24 and Hus­tle. Oh, and this new web­site makes it eas­ier than ever for me to watch TV because I can make a joint RSS feed of all the TV shows I want, and uTor­rent will auto­mat­i­cally start the down­loads for me as soon as new episodes are avail­able. It even checks for dupli­cate episodes for me.

How­ever, I’ll soon be putting those shows on hold for a week. A GoodReads friend of mine invited me to not watch TV for the week of Feb­ru­ary 2^nd through the 8^th. I haven’t watched live TV for a while now, since down­loaded episodes are so much more con­ve­nient, but I won’t be watch­ing through my com­puter either for the week, just to see how things go. Not sure what I’ll be doing instead, so if you aren’t watch­ing TV either and want to hang out, I’ll most def­i­nitely be down.

Tags: Batman, Computer, Dinhternet, Downloads, Goodreads, Stories, Television