Remember When that Channel was About…?

It is really annoying when television channels “evolve” to be something other than what they are supposed to be. It is one thing for a generic station to change, but many channels are subject-specific, so changing doesn’t make any sense. In fact when a subject-specific channel changes its subject, it renders the channel’s name meaningless, yet they almost never change their names to reflect their new material. Here’s a few examples:

ChannelFormer SubjectCurrent Subject
BravoHigh culture programs like operas and Inside the Actor’s StudioInane reality shows like Real Housewives of… Pretty Much Everywhere
TLCEducational programs like OperationInane reality shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, Sister Wives, 19 Kids and Counting, Say Yes to the Dress, Rich Bride-Poor Bride, Breaking Amish, Storage Wars, Little People Big-World, and so on
Discovery ChannelEducational programs like Inventions that Shook the World , Curiosity, Cash Cab, etc.Inane reality shows like Deadliest Catch, Gold Rush Alaska, Moonshiners, American Loggers, Finding Bigfoot, Amish Mafia, etc.
History ChannelEducational programs about history like Museum SecretsInane reality shows like Swamp People and Ice Road Truckers, and inane non-history (and non-reality ¬_¬) shows like Ancient Aliens
SpaceScience-fiction, horror, and fantasy showsAnything that is even slightly related even indirectly to the appropriate subject matter like the crime-drama Castle simply because it stars Nathan Fillion who was in one sci-fi show for a few episodes before it was cancelled

It looks like the worst offender is The Learning Channel. It has gone from being a specifically educational channel to a pointless reality-show channel with absolutely no educational content whatsoever anymore. 😒

110%

For the past while now, I’ve been hearing a lot of people on television nagging about when someone quotes the line about giving 110% or something similar. It’s happened numerous times in the past year or so where someone would nitpick that “more than 100% is by definition impossible”.

This is absurd. If amounts more than 100% were impossible, then how does tax work? If an item is $10, but tax is 20%, you have to pay 120% of the item’s price, or $12. Is it impossible to pay more than 100% of the price for the item? The government certainly doesn’t think so.

Likewise, if there are twice as many sales as last year, then sales are up 100%, to 200% of what they were last year. Companies regularly report sales higher than 100%. Are they performing magic? Of course not.

Obviously amounts higher than 100% are indeed possible, so what are people nagging about? One explanation could be that tangible, physical objects are limited. For example, if you have 10 boxes, then you can give no more than 100% of them away. How could you give away 150%? Simple: debt. You give all 10, and owe five more. Another explanation is that you can only do up to 100% of your ability and not beyond that. However even that is not a valid reason to complain because you can indeed give more than all of your ability sometimes; just ask anyone who got a surge of adrenaline and performed the impossible (like the classic example of the parent lifting a car off of their child or running faster than they ever have).

Granted, it can end up turning into an argument about semantics, but nagging that more than 100% is impossible is pedantic at best and generally foolish.