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Dazed and Confused

The only time I watch TV  is in a hotel room while on a business trip if I am truly exhausted and simply cannot do anything else. Such events are few and far between - there is almost always something else that needs my time. Each time I feel a tremendous sense of disconnect from the world that is playing out there in news, talk-shows, movies, cop-shows, commercials and what have you. 

The commercials are particularly interesting for me - because I have no prior exposure to them. From watching detergent ads for example, I concluded that the target market is predominantly of one ethnicity. It was unclear to me why the rest of the population did not need to edified as to the benefits of these products. Overall TV watching for me is like being on a roller-coaster and trying not to throw-up. 

I wonder if they have ever done longitudinal studies on sets of people exposed to TV a few hours a day every day controlled against a group of folks like me who have not had a TV at home for decades. It would be interesting to see how far the wiring in the brains of the two populations diverge over time. This Scientific American study is an interesting one.

My personal experience leads me to believe that people have to work up a level of tolerance to TV and when they don't have it the experience feels like an unpleasant sensory assault. 

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