On Sunday, on Channel 25 at 9PM, the new version of Cosmos with Neil Degrasse Tyson begins. Much like Cartman and the WII console, I am finding it difficult to wait until Sunday Night at 9PM to arrive. I loved the original Carl Sagan Version and watched it every time it was rerun on PBS and I have very high hopes for this version.
Have a great weekend everybody.
Please share widely!
Daylight Savings Time – don’t forget to “spring ahead”!
Been a while since I cared about something on the telly.
And NDT is a more than worthy successor.
Incidentally Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country still holds up after 20 years.
The spaceship was a little overdone (they just loved it, apparently), but it was pretty entertaining.
I highly recommend Sagan’s last book.
They went heavy on the special effects and light on the content. It was like a heavily dumbed down version of Nova.
My understanding is that shows like Nova are targeted towards an audience already familiar with the topic, but this is trying to reach out to a broader audience. When they showed the Earth as one large continent Pangea in the distant past, I was hoping for more on the shift plate tectonics, but it was just an overview, I think that it will be covered in detail in a later episode.
Nova doesn’t usually doesn’t assume you already know. They just treat you as someone who can think.
Was it really necessary to spend 12 minutes on a weird cartoon depiction of the life of Giardano Bruno? That chased my wife right out of the room. A lot of this program was painful to watch.
I hope the future episodes are better, but despite my interest in the subject matter there is a good chance I won’t bother to watch.
and revisit the topic after a few more episodes. Dr Who should be starting up by April, so I suspect there will be a Who diary (probably but not necessarily by me before too long.)
Within the first minute Tyson used the word “infinitesimal”. Is that a word that welcomes the average FOX/tv viewer, or average American? Not really.
The show uses a time-honored educational technique:
1 – Say what you’ll be explaining (Where most matter comes from)
2 – Explain it in challenging technical language (Nuclear fusion in stars, spread by supernovae)
3 – Summarize it in very accessible language for those who couldn’t get step 2. (you’re made of star stuff)
That way, when you build on this, everyone understands it.
I loved it — the emotional invocation of Sagan, the unapologetic cosmology and evolutionary biology*, and tale of Giordano Bruno. The spaceship was pretty dumb, as a device and as spaceship, though. It looked like EVE from Wall-E.
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* In other words, FOX Sunday night programming is smarter than FOX’s program on Sunday mornings now.
1 – Tell ’em what you’re gonna tell ’em.
2 – Tell ’em
3 – Tell ’em what you told ’em.
That’s usually how I hear it said.
Cosmos is aiming for a diverse audience. That’s why you scaffold. Your technique works when you can assume everyone is at the same level…not the case here, hopefully. Ideally, Cosmos attracts space nerds, while still enticing casual viewers.
Worth a look. It’s short.
Episode two, I think that is. Tyson and Charlie Cook get down.
n/t