Anyone else watch the Ninja edition of Mythbusters this week? I have a few issues with how they did their tests.

First of all, they keep using themselves as the example of the best humans could do...um...yeah, I'm pretty sure there are humans with faster reflexes and that are stronger than the M5 crew.

Also, on the arrow catch it seems that they jumped from it not working to a totally extreme end of the scale to fix it. I was thinking that it might also not be a straight catch but that the person catching might be sweeping their hand towards the arrow to catch it and that could have an impact on the testing.

Mythbusters: I always have issues with how they do their tests. Also, they totally should have had a Japanese ninja expert. Also, also, isn't it totally funny how Grant was so serious about being the fastest/bestes of them to gauge against; it was a matter of pride.

But yeah, definitely could have used some other testing to set the reflex range. Reflexes are something that really vary widely. And that's the problem with mechanical testing. It takes out all the human variables, which, okay, good for consistency, but not necessarily representative.

Although I guess since I'm a direct line descendant of samurai, I should just say, neener neener, ninja peasant class!

I objected to the Mythbusters testing of the bronze-mirror-burns-ship test--they used multiple little mirrors instead of one big mirror. I don't have the link, but a large concave mirror has been proven to be able to focus sunlight into a Plasma Beam of Death.

The people trying to recreate historical things never give the ancients credit for brains, plus they never take into account the "I'm willing to risk serious injury to make this work" factor--or rather "I'm willing to have my slaves risk serious injury to make this work" factor. They always put in safety limiters that wreck the experiment.

The people trying to recreate historical things never give the ancients credit for brains, plus they never take into account the "I'm willing to risk serious injury to make this work" factor--or rather "I'm willing to have my slaves risk serious injury to make this work" factor.

There's a BBC series called Secrets of the Ancients / Secrets of Lost Empires that does exactly that. I wish I could remember if it ever aired in the States. (It's exactly the sort of thing that would normally be sold to Discovery to air on the History Channel, but I don't think that series was a co-prod, so it might have gone to PBS instead.)

Oh, and speaking of the Beeb, Planet Earth is out on DVD -- original BBC cut, original BBC narration. (And it's also available in Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, which if you have any way of playing them are definitely worth getting since the entire series was specially shot on HD -- there's no bought-in footage, and nothing's been upconverted.)

Oh, good. Now I can delete all my unwatched episodes. It's something I really want to have and watch, but I can't handle now.

Looks like the Making of Planet Earth is on Discovery tonight. I think I'll watch it, it looks quite interesting.

TAR: Funny that they're (more or less) in the US already. Also, Mirna uses those accents on purpose so people will understand her??? I can almost see it, if they way she spoke had any relationship to the way the people where they are speak.

Gah -- I hate her so much!

We love the Blue Planet BBC series. Will definitely check out Planet Earth.

TAR: Wow, out of the six people left, there are five women! That's got to be a first.