When the show Tower Dogs came out for a whopping 2 episodes myself and others in the industry at the time turned off the TV within minutes.

Tower crews are hot dogs. They are the fighter pilots of construction sites. So putting a camera in front of them and saying “Act Normal” is like giving a 5 year old fireworks and a match while saying “Be careful now, ya here?” and then going inside and leaving them with it. In either case it doesn’t end well.

With a heavy hand by a manager a tower crew show could be something interesting, for about 2 minutes. Much of what is done is slow, agonizingly slow. A tall tower can take 30 minutes or more just in ascent, let alone the work itself. Do people actually want to watch us run a Anritsu test for eight hours due to a bad connector? But I digress.

The fab factor is the work, the height, and the danger and make no mistake. It is dangerous. In fact despite Discovery Channels heralding of Deadliest Catch as being the baddest job in the world, per OSHA it’s Tower Climbing.

So with all that in mind it looks like Mike Rowe and the gang at Discovery channel is going to give the tower industry another shot, with what sounds like a better crew.

Details after the jump

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Tags: Communications, Danger, Discovery, Discovery Channel, Great Plains Towers, Kevin Reski, Mike Rowe, National Association of Tower Erectors, Technorati, Tower, Tower Dogs, Tower industry

Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.

Friedrich von Schiller

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The scientific name for an animal that doesn’t either run from or fight its enemies is lunch.

Michael Friedman

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Meditate often upon the bond of all in the Universe and their mutual relationship. For all things are woven together.

Marcus Aurelius

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This article started as a paper for one of my college classes on research, as such it has APA style references etc which I have included at the end of the article for your own bemusement.  I have expounded upon the original story a great deal, as the subject matter is interesting. I draw no conclusions as to the vile of the Project itself. I leave that to the reader.  Sorry it took me so long to get it done! – BloodSpite

From the early 1950’s until the late 1960’s the Central Intelligence Agency in two countries (The US and Canada) conducted a long running series of experiments under auspicious heading Project MKULTRA. Due the clandestine nature of the project, much of the research material has been lost or destroyed; although over 20,000 pages of material were recovered in 1975.

Some 2 years ago, the Senate Health Subcommittee heard chilling testimony about the human experimentation activities of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Deputy Director of the CIA revealed that over 30 universities and institutions were involved in an ‘extensive testing and experimentation’ program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens ‘at all social levels, [high and low], native Americans and foreign.’ Several of these [tests involved] the administration of LSD to ‘unwitting subjects in [social] situations.’ … The Central Intelligence Agency drugged American citizens without their knowledge or consent. It used university facilities and personnel without their knowledge.” – Senator Edward Kennedy, 1977

Numerous leading scientists and world leaders were part of the program, including former Canadian World Psychiatric Association chairperson Dr. Donald Cameron as well as CIA Director Richard Helms. The basis of the program was to use human experimentation with a variety of illicit drugs to identify everything from a perfected truth serum, to brainwashing and the ability to sway the decision-making process in a foreign leader.

The results were anything but what they wanted.

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Tags: Allen Dulles, Army, Charles Erwin Wilson, Church Committee, CIA, Cold War, Donald Cameron, Experiment, Harris Isabel, James Bulger, Janine Huard, Jim Jones, Jose Delgado, Ken Kesey, Linda McDonald, LSD, Mind Control, MKULTRA, Monarch, OSS, Project, Psychology, Richard Helms, Robert Hunter, Rockefeller Commission, Sidney Gottlieb, Sirhan Sirha, Stanley Glickman, Technorati, Theodore Kaczynski