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List Things That Are Better Than Tv


arfink

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I was having a conversation with a coworker the other night about TV. She was set on convincing me that TV is worth watching because "there are so many good shows on TV." Now initially I had said that I didn't want to watch TV because 1) there is so much filth and worthless content on TV and 2) because it's a massive waste of my cognitive surplus and free time. She didn't seem to understand, and kept listing off shows that she thinks are good. Now, I'm willing to concede there are some things on TV that might be worth watching. Mythbusters springs immediately to mind, mainly because of the copious quantities of geekyness and explosions. But even so, the amount of time the United States spends watching TV is absurd. If you compare the number of man-hours wasted on TV to things like the total human input of Wikipedia or the amount of time it took us to get to the Moon it's astounding. We could do Wikipedia a thousand times over if nobody watched TV.

So, in exasperation, I said: "For me, it's not about whether there is anything good on TV, but whether there is anything [i]better.[/i]"

So in this thread I encourage people to list things that are better than wasting time watching TV.

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Having actual conversations, including discussing opinions. I've heard it said that in our culture of "I'm busy with xyz..." that we don't spend as much time working on our relationships and treasuring them.

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Laudate_Dominum

A million things, but just for starters:

Observing the night sky (esp. with a decent instrument)
Studying amesome things
Contemplating existence and stuff
Experiencing nature
Gardening

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Television can be educational, but the viewer is largely passive while watching TV - you can't interrupt to ask questions, people don't pause to think about something and then go on to the next idea (although they[i] could [/i]if they used Tivo et al).

Therefore, anything that's mentally active is better than television - play a musical instrument, draw, tap dance, make cookies with your Granny.

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brianthephysicist

cooking and/or eating food
volleyball
hay-rides
coloring books
dancing
board games with Grandpop
Church
playing the drums
petting zoos
puzzles
making a snowman
walking through the woods
playing with LEGOs
going to the beach
wrestling with a friend over something silly (like the last cookie)
playing 'dress up' and taking silly pictures


Wow, how old am I?

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Archery
Rifle marksmanship
hiking in the woods
hiking in the meadows
hiking on the beach
hiking in the mountains
hiking in the hills
mountain biking
creating a large oil painting of a person hiking in the woods, doing archery or rifle shooting
making a sculpture out of anything of a person hiking in the woods, doing archery or rifle shooting
making a replica of a famous cathedral out of foam core or toothpicks
making a model spanish galleon that actually floats
building and flying a RC car, helicpter, boat or plane
taking your dog with you when you hike in the woods, meadows, hills or mountains
making a fortress out of sofa cushions and defending if from and army of orcs or commies, take your pic, I grew up in the Cold War era.
restoring an old car, motorcycle, scooter or moped.
building a tree house
traveling to obscure places and checking out the Churches and the Catholic scene
snorkeling
camping in a primitive camp
canoeing
fishing ...

Some of this stuff I have done, some of it just sounds like stuff cooler than watching television.

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reading books (with my children, or by myself)

going to the library

creating art with my kids

jigsaw puzzles!! (I'm a little obsessed with them)

surf phatmass

journal/blog

pray with my kids/by myself

watch classic movies (I watched West Side Story the other night! :love:)

take a nap

write a letter to a friend


to be honest, much of what we watch is PBS - even with a digital TV we only get ABC & the four PBS channels. so either we watch PBS educational stuff, or watch NOVA (they had a great program on last night!). Most tv is complete bunk nowadays, or totally misogynistic and perpetuating absurd attitudes against women...nothing that Catholics should support or watch.

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