How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street • Hacker News Board

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#191

Post by sogen » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 7:03 PM UTC

McGlockenshire wrote: post #155

JoshTriplett wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, back in the day, Square One TV had a police-procedural parody called Mathnet I remember that; it was awesome . Drenched in cheesiness, but it served its goal, and it did manage the "tainment" part of "edutainment".

Odd Squad feels like a spiritual successor of Mathnet. It's entertaining, educational, and clever enough for parents to watch and not want to gouge our eyes out.

Great show!

Just watched it the other day, very entertaining and makes the viewer think by themselves.

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#192

Post by dkuntz2 » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 9:09 PM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #56

bitwize wrote: post #52

I'd rather a million Elmo-centric Sesame Street episodes than even one episode of Barney or Caillou. That said, every kid needs some old-school, Elmo-free Sesame Street and Mister Rogers. (No, "Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood" is not the same; it's insipid and dumb by comparison.) Also, back in the day, Square One TV had a police-procedural parody called Mathnet that was still loads better than network TV's attempt at a…

> Also, back in the day, Square One TV had a police-procedural parody called Mathnet I remember that; it was awesome . Drenched in cheesiness, but it served its goal, and it did manage the "tainment" part of "edutainment".

MathNet was amazing, because I definitely watched it in some high school math classes.

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#193

Post by bitwize » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 10:32 PM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #105

soylentcola wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't wanna be pedantic but I think the line was: "The story you're about to hear is a fib, but it's short. The names are made up but the problems are real." Honestly surprised I remember that gag since it's been ages since I watched that show but I did love those segments. It was like the Square One answer to 3-2-1 Contact's "Bloodhound Gang".

I was also sad to see the Ghostwriter series ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostwriter_%28TV_series%29 ) disappear.

I still use LJBAD as an "enable this for debugging" symbol on the off chance that someone else used DEBUG.

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#194

Post by doug1001 » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 8:41 AM UTC

my vote for the gold standard of kid's educational tv is "Schoolhouse Rock" Pretty much an entire primary school education just from that handful of shorts--civics ("I'm just a bill") grammar ("conjunction junction, what's your function") and math ("my hero, zero") to this day 100% of my understanding of the US legislative process is from "I'm just a bill"--eg, "yes i am only a bill and i'm sitting her on capital hill" i heard on NPR once that the guy who conceived and wrote those, was/is a jazz musician, and when he would perform in nightclubs, people in the audience would recognize this voice request songs from SchoolHouse Rock.