TMINE

Various tiny tearaways are upset by Billie Piper’s (alleged) behaviour at an Asda book-signing.

Asda has book-signings?

So Five US, the channel just for me but with the rubbish advertising campaign, launched last night. So far, it’s not crowded with all the delights that were promised us: Shark, Vanished, et al are nowhere to be seen in the EPG. Of course, since TVTV doesn’t yet have Five US in its EPG, that might be the reason.

What is on, so far, are episodes of Joey, Happy Days and the various CSIs. I’m not impressed on the latter score. Five US decided to launch the whole channel with CSI, which would have been fine if they’d actually started with the first episode. But they didn’t. They began with episode two, which was the second half of a two-part story: in fact, it was the second-part of the original pilot episode.

So, to sum up, Five has launched a whole channel dedicated to fans of US programming; yet they’re not really showing anything new, only repeats, and the repeats aren’t in the right order or are missing episodes.

I recorded Conviction though, so maybe that’ll be worth the entrance fee alone.

UPDATE: They also repeated one scene in CSI so it played on either side of the final advert break. Classy.

Someone at Slate theorised a while ago that television causes increased likelihood of getting autism. He’s at it again, but this time he has ‘proof’. Some people at Cornell and Purdue think there’s a relationship, too.

The trouble is, these people aren’t doctors but are economists at various management schools. For the scientifically inclined, here’s a link to their paper (PDF), which obfuscates things a whole lot less than the Slate article. It’s worth noting the paper hasn’t been sent to any peer-reviewed journals, but I’ll leave others to find the other, highly amusing boo-boos in their actual work.

I would point out though that:

1. Rainfall in the area isn’t necessarily the best indicator of television-viewing habits among 0-4 year olds
2. In a test to see if television can make people more prone to autism, the control group really shouldn’t be “those who can’t afford cable”.

Congratulations to my friend Jon Templar, who became a daddy for the first time on Wednesday. The daughter of Mr Templar will be Maebh Leela Conway Templar.

Yes, he is a Doctor Who fan. Why do you ask?