By way of a non-WoW post, I'll take this opportunity to enthuse about one of the current 'reality' game shows. The Search is on Channel 4 early on Saturday evenings. Although in principle much the same as all the other voting reality gameshows, I (and most of my friends) have more in common with the contestants of this one than I ever would with Big Brother.

Highlights from the two weeks I've seen include:
  • Evil mathematician is offered a choice: take your team up the mountain by the long camel route, or by the more direct but arduous climb. She thinks for a moment: 'The climb is probably marginally quicker, and we're fit enough to do it. We should do that.' She thinks for a moment longer: 'But wait, the other team has the old guy. We'll make them do the climb...'

  • The teams are stuck in Egyptian taxis being driven around until they work out the clue that's hidden in the pop music that the taxi driver has on a loop. The art historian started moaning that the noise was ruining his concentration, and demanded that the taxi driver turn it off.

  • Classical musician and mathematician are racing for the end of their challenge: a glyph in a chest. The mathematician finds the chest suspended from a tree, and lets it down on a winch; the musician stands by when she could have rushed in and stolen it. The mathematician opens the box, sees the tarantulas inside, jumps three feet in the air and runs off for several seconds; the classical musician stands by when she could have rushed in an stolen the glyph. The mathematician gets the glyph: the classical musician is too nice for her own good...


Maybe worth noting that the 'professions' the programme describes these people as having are so unlike their actual real-world occupations that in reading the contestant profiles I had trouble working out what some of them were meant to be. The mathematician is a PhD student, the art historian is a lecturer and critic, the classical musician is a city head-hunter, and so on. They're educated, certainly, but you needn't be a rocket scientist to identify and empathise with them.