The Documentary Thread

Can anyone recommend some non-sensationalized documentaries? historical or science preferred but any topic is welcome.

I am looking for some good ole boring PBS American Experience, or Ken Burns style docs.
Unexplained universe was nice, perhaps something like that.

Maybe some good lecture series?

Also, when I was young I used to watch some (BBC?) documentary series with a British guy walking around roman ruins while lecturing/talking about Roman/European history. i know this is a vague description, but anyone know what I'm talking about or what this was called? would be interested to watch again.



/rant on
Seems like every documentary i have seen recently involves rebuilding some stupid historical bullshit. Lets build George Washington's slave pens to see how many slaves he really had!!@!!! Lets use power tools to carve a little building into a boulder to see what it was like to build petra!!@! If they are not wasting time building some bull shit they still generally use too much hyperbole for me. I used to enjoy shows like NOVA, im not sure if my tastes have changed or if the show has, but it is the opposite of what i'm looking for these days.
/rant off

nova has been rebuilding ancient stuff for at least 20 years. bbc horizon does it too. not sure why you see that as a negative. the last few novas have been awesome. the church in istanbul miniature rebuild was quite educational

Apologies to nova for my previous rant, this recent math episode was awesome.

Video: The Great Math Mystery | Watch NOVA Online | PBS Video

"Is math invented by humans, or is it the language of the universe?"

I've watched a few documentary's recently because of the OpieRadio Documentary Show.

First up, two documentaries dealing with Sugar in almost every food we eat and how they prevent us from really losing weight. You might get lucky with a high metabolism, but your inside is the same as someone that's 600 lbs.
That Sugar Film (it's a little more modern and poppy)

Fed Up (This one is set up like a news report on 60 minutes).

Watching both of those films in that order will have you swear off processed food. It's crazy.

The next one was Senna, a documentary about the Brazilian F1 racing driver. This was a really good watch as well. It's the same time frame as the movie, Rush, but a different rivalry of what many believe to be the best F1 racer ever. Really cool movie.


EDIT: Added the trailers.

Yeah, watching Rush and Senna back to back was an extremely enjoyable experience. Pretty incredible that they have footage and interviews with Senna talking about safety and the like basically right up to like half an hour before he was killed.

Just watched Pump on netflix. Pretty eye opening. I had no idea you can turn pretty much every car sold in America in the past ~15 years into a flex fuel car just by "hacking" the computer and changing a few settings. I also had no idea that Henry Ford's original cars were all flex fuel and could run on either ethanol or gasoline.

Khane_sl said:

Just watched Pump on netflix. Pretty eye opening. I had no idea you can turn pretty much every car sold in America in the past ~15 years into a flex fuel car just by "hacking" the computer and changing a few settings. I also had no idea that Henry Ford's original cars were all flex fuel and could run on either ethanol or gasoline.

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I don't think it's that simple at all. Ethanol is corrosive to certain materials, and unless the engine and fuel systems have been designed for that, it can cause a lot of damage. A friend of mine didn't know that and left a tank full of part-ethanol gasoline (not sure what percentage) in his old Jap motorcycle over a winter, and ended up having to spend a couple grand having fuel lines replaced and the whole thing flushed out. BMW and Porsche still recommend ethanol free fuel for their vehicles, as far as I know. Or maybe they just recommend keeping it under 10% or something. Pretty sure the same thing goes for my Yamaha R6 and Ducati Multistrada, I avoid ethanol in those as well.

We don't have the same regulation about ethanol mixing that the US does, so it's still fairly easy to avoid. Most gas stations' premium fuels are ethanol free, except for Husky, which has long mixed ethanol and marketed itself as "Mother Nature's Fuel", which is kind of hilarious.

You guys should both just watch the documentary. Seriously, the Model T could run on Gasoline, Kerosene or Ethanol. No change in equipment or different engines required, any model T could run on any of those three fuels.

Ford Model T - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia(Just CTRL+F and type ethanol)

The only thing that prevents cars in the US from running on Ethanol is the computer. All you need to do is hack your cars computer (which is illegal) and it will run perfectly safely on Ethanol. And the corrosive issue you speak of seems to be nonexistent because the manufacturers are making the cars the same way whether they are flex-fuel logo'd or not. And some people did a tear down on a converted Tahoe that ran 100k miles on Ethanol fuel and found no damage:

Fill Your Tank With Freedom: Burning E85 Without a Conversion Kit (in a Non-Flex-Fuel Vehicle)

The video he speaks of is found here:

E85 Facts

As for the cutesy project? Pike's Peak race cars run on Methanol. It is not a pet or cutesy project.

Why race-car drivers love methanol - Fuel Freedom


The reason cars ran solely on gasoline is due pretty much entirely to prohibition.

To add, the documentary isn't just about alcohol fuels vs gasoline. It talks about all kinds of alternative fuels including electricity and natural gas. It's definitely worth a watch.

I'm not disputing that it's a good doc. However, there's more to long term use of ethanol as a fuel in a vehicle than just the emissions control module. Again, I personally know a guy who did a couple thousand dollars in damage to a motorcycle entirely because of ethanol. And my owner's manual for my BMW specifically says to avoid high mix ethanol fuels. So do the manuals for both my motorcycles. Will most vehicles be fine? Yeah probably. But I'm not going to take the risk with mine if I don't have to. I'm sure that pretty much all vehicles rolling out of a factory now are fine, but vehicles made in the 2000's, especially Euro/Jap ones, you could potentially be rolling the dice.

But really the main argument against ethanol is that corn based ethanol is worse for the environment than actual gasoline. It's kind of a joke really. Cane based? That's fine. And it would be amazing if someone could make cellulose based ethanol at industrial quantities at an economic cost. But corn based ethanol in the US really is nothing but a giant corn farmer subsidy.

Eomer_sl said:

I'm not disputing that it's a good doc. However, there's more to long term use of ethanol as a fuel in a vehicle than just the emissions control module. Again, I personally know a guy who did a couple thousand dollars in damage to a motorcycle entirely because of ethanol. And my owner's manual for my BMW specifically says to avoid high mix ethanol fuels. So do the manuals for both my motorcycles. Will most vehicles be fine? Yeah probably. But I'm not going to take the risk with mine if I don't have to. I'm sure that pretty much all vehicles rolling out of a factory now are fine, but vehicles made in the 2000's, especially Euro/Jap ones, you could potentially be rolling the dice.

But really the main argument against ethanol is that corn based ethanol is worse for the environment than actual gasoline. It's kind of a joke really. Cane based? That's fine. And it would be amazing if someone could make cellulose based ethanol at industrial quantities at an economic cost. But corn based ethanol in the US really is nothing but a giant corn farmer subsidy.

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I don't know anything about motorcycles or Canada's auto market. But in the US the manufactured E-85 "flex-fuel" vehicles that have the special yellow gas cap and say "Flex-Fuel" on the car itself are made from the same exact parts as the "non flex-fuel" vehicles. There is not a single difference in the parts. The only difference is that the computer has the "Ethanol" flag shut off which I "think" (I'm not an auto wiz) just adjusts the fuel injection depending on what's in the tank.

But I did qualify the original statement with "made in the US in the last 15 years".

I'd like a chemist to weigh in on this but... Ethanol is Ethanol. Doesn't matter what it was fermented from. And the farmer's wouldn't even need a subsidy, we have a corn surplus in the US:

Weekly Outlook: Corn Prices Fade as Supplies Expected to Remain in Surplus | farmdocdaily.illinois.edu

I can't explain it as well as the documentary does. If you don't want to watch it fine but it sounds like it interests you enough that you should.

P.S. Where did you hear that corn based ethanol is worse for the environment that gasoline? That's a crock of shit.

E-10 Alive: The corrosive damage ethanol gasoline does to your fuel pump | Equipment World | Construction Equipment, News and Information | Heavy Construction Equipment

What You Arent Being Told About Ethanol and Corrosion

E15 and Engines - Can Ethanol Damage my Engine

There are real concerns even for some vehicles less than 10 years old. Just because a documentary said it's a-okay doesn't mean it is. Doc's can have an agenda.

And sorry if I wasn't clear. When I was talking about different types of ethanol in my previous post, I wasn't saying that some are better or worse for damage to vehicles. I mean that from an environmental perspective, corn based ethanol is generally considered to be at very best, slightly less damaging to the environment than petroleum based fuels, and at worst, significantly worse. That's not just looking at carbon emissions, but also water and land use. Sugar cane based ethanol actually IS better for the environment. And cellulose based ethanol may be too, but no one's really pinned down how to produce it in huge quantities at a reasonable cost.

Eomer_sl said:

E-10 Alive: The corrosive damage ethanol gasoline does to your fuel pump | Equipment World | Construction Equipment, News and Information | Heavy Construction Equipment

What You Arent Being Told About Ethanol and Corrosion

E15 and Engines - Can Ethanol Damage my Engine

There are real concerns even for some vehicles less than 10 years old. Just because a documentary said it's a-okay doesn't mean it is. Doc's can have an agenda.

And sorry if I wasn't clear. When I was talking about different types of ethanol in my previous post, I wasn't saying that some are better or worse for damage to vehicles. I mean that from an environmental perspective, corn based ethanol is generally considered to be at very best, slightly less damaging to the environment than petroleum based fuels, and at worst, significantly worse. That's not just looking at carbon emissions, but also water and land use. Sugar cane based ethanol actually IS better for the environment. And cellulose based ethanol may be too, but no one's really pinned down how to produce it in huge quantities at a reasonable cost.

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Well listen, when the flex-fuel Ford Focus uses the same exact parts as a non flex-fuel labelled Ford Focus what kind of damage could occur? What I am saying is that in the last 15 years these auto manufacturers in the US are building all of their cars to safely run on Flex Fuel (unless you're saying even the actual Flex Fuel cars will get corrosive damage from Ethanol).

I feel like you're not actually reading any of my posts. In my first response I showed you links to a converted non Flex Fuel labeled Chevy Tahoe that ran 100k miles on Ethanol and was torn down and no damage was found. Also, like I said... we have a Corn surplus in the US. We don't need more land, room or water to grow it.

And if you make cars that can run on Methanol, which is even cleaner, you can make it from (as I understand it) ANY plant.

But the documentary isn't about replacing Gasoline with Ethanol. It's about creating compeition at the pump so we don't have such a huge dependence as a society on Oil. It's about having Gasoline, Ethanol, Methanol, Electricity and even Natural Gas as choices to fill our vehicles.

I didn't mean to get lost in the Ethanol argument and make it sound like "CONVERT YOUR CAR TODAY". Really, it's about getting our government to take action and stop allowing the oil industry to sweep competing technologies under the rug through campaign contributions and monopolistic business practice. We need choice at the pump and the technologies have existed forever, there is no reason we shouldn't have mass amounts of electric cars or cars that run off various kinds of alcohol or natural gas on the road.

Barraco Bisi_sl said:

Ethanol is booze, right?

Click to expand...

Yes.

That's also E-10 and E-15. The Flex-Fuel they're talking about is E-85. That said, I didn't actually read any of those links so I don't know if they speak about E-85. I'll read them shortly.