Author Topic: Cosmos - A New Series Begins  (Read 36330 times)

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: Cosmos - A New Series Begins
« Reply #40 on: 03/09/2014 11:56 pm »
There were some good moments, but Tyson lacks the earnestness of Sagan. And a large chunk of the episode was a cartoon about the small minds of the Middle Ages. Seemed dark and out of place.


Much the same could be said about the original series too. Sagan's understanding of the history of science was a caricature.  from what little I have seen and read of Tyson he is no different.  So I would expect more of the same unfortunately.
Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Offline Rocket Science

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Re: Cosmos - A New Series Begins
« Reply #41 on: 03/10/2014 12:09 am »
The intro by the President was unexpected plus! 8)
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Offline Bubbinski

Re: Cosmos - A New Series Begins
« Reply #42 on: 03/10/2014 02:09 am »
Just saw Cosmos and enjoyed it.  Especially the cosmic calendar and flybys of the planets, as well as animation of past and future Earth.  Hope future episodes are even better.
I'll even excitedly look forward to "flags and footprints" and suborbital missions. Just fly...somewhere.

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Cosmos - A New Series Begins
« Reply #43 on: 03/10/2014 02:42 am »
I'm hoping it does well. I get annoyed at people who take potshots at Tyson. Name another prime-time science show on a major network. Just one. They don't exist. Even the basic cable channels have all started to engage in pseudoscience (bigfoot, swamp monsters, ancient aliens, mermaids--MERMAIDS?!!).

So we need this.

Offline Khadgars

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Re: Cosmos - A New Series Begins
« Reply #44 on: 03/10/2014 02:51 am »
I'm hoping it does well. I get annoyed at people who take potshots at Tyson. Name another prime-time science show on a major network. Just one. They don't exist. Even the basic cable channels have all started to engage in pseudoscience (bigfoot, swamp monsters, ancient aliens, mermaids--MERMAIDS?!!).

So we need this.

Couldn't agree with you more Blackstar.  There has been this huge wave over the last 10 years of pseudoscience which makes this series that more important. 

Starts in 10 mins for me!
Evil triumphs when good men do nothing - Thomas Jefferson

Offline Jarnis

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Re: Cosmos - A New Series Begins
« Reply #45 on: 03/10/2014 04:58 am »
Is this going to be online? If so, when?

I know I just asked this question, but just want to reiterate it. I'm excited (though keeping realistic expectations... Sagan can't be replicated... yet! ;) ).

Dunno about legit sources, but it is "available"...

I would imagine that Fox and/or NatGeo would offer it to be viewable on their sites to US viewers?


Offline MATTBLAK

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Re: Cosmos - A New Series Begins
« Reply #46 on: 03/10/2014 05:05 am »
Since it is on Fox - I can't help thinking about poor old 'Firefly'; are Fox going to can 'Cosmos' before it's finished airing if it's ratings slip even one percentage point?! ;) :(
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Offline Dalhousie

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Re: Cosmos - A New Series Begins
« Reply #47 on: 03/10/2014 05:48 am »
I'm hoping it does well. I get annoyed at people who take potshots at Tyson. Name another prime-time science show on a major network. Just one. They don't exist.

Maybe in the US.  But the US is not the world.  Here we have regular prime time science programs.

I agree that this is important, which is why there is no excuse for sloppy history in such a program. Some of Sagan's errors in the original were risible.
« Last Edit: 03/10/2014 05:50 am by Dalhousie »
Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Offline Star One

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Re: Cosmos - A New Series Begins
« Reply #48 on: 03/10/2014 11:16 am »

The intro by the President was unexpected plus! 8)

Not really being as online numerous websites carried the story before it was shown.

Offline mheney

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Re: Cosmos - A New Series Begins
« Reply #49 on: 03/10/2014 02:44 pm »
I watched it with my 13 year old daughter, which improved it, I think.  I especially liked it when she hit "pause" during the stellar evolution bit to ask me "after the stars form, how do they get out of the nebula?"  (Looking back, I should have said "by TARDIS" - but I missed my chance ...)

Offline Hog

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Re: Cosmos - A New Series Begins
« Reply #50 on: 03/10/2014 05:51 pm »
Good introduction, Dr. Tyson has always been an inspiration being to me.  I think he would do great things if he were in the "Admiral chair" at NASA and if he could work independently with at least 1 cent of every Federal tax dollar.(so double what NASA gets now)

He has a great "radio" voice.  I loved the analogy of the Earth and it's history and how that history is only 1 second of the entire history of the Universe.
Paul

Offline baldusi

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Re: Cosmos - A New Series Begins
« Reply #51 on: 03/12/2014 12:21 pm »
I watched it yesterday (we get slight delay for CC translation). I liked it. For my taste it gave too much time to Bruno. The really religious were put off by it (even though it was all true). A gentler introduction would have got them hooked. Personally, I don't think that promoting one thing works by attacking the alternatives.
And I didn't got the goose bumps of the original. But the worst part was that he just said "hundreds of billions", and not "billions upon billions" of stars  :(. But there were some pretty powerful part. The small bio of Carl Sagan, and specially the anecdote about him inviting the host when he was just 17years old, did make quite an impression on me.
But in general it was a nice series. It's just that I have tho whole "The Universe", which, while it had some silly programs (like the sex in space thing, it is the History Channel, after all), most of it had  an amazingly high production value and science explanations. I guess that for the USA, if they get it on an air channel, it might mean it might have more influence.

Offline R7

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Re: Cosmos - A New Series Begins
« Reply #52 on: 03/12/2014 03:17 pm »
For my taste it gave too much time to Bruno. The really religious were put off by it (even though it was all true). A gentler introduction would have got them hooked. Personally, I don't think that promoting one thing works by attacking the alternatives.

I agree. After five minutes of Bruno cartoon was wondering "why do they keep going on about this?". Checked that the Bruno section totaled about nine minutes. One could also argue that Bruno's fate (unfortunate and wrong) was less about cosmological but more about theological, pantheistic views but that's supposed to be OT for the series and even more OT here so I'll just  :-X
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Offline Melt Run

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Re: Cosmos - A New Series Begins
« Reply #53 on: 03/14/2014 10:08 pm »
I'm hoping it does well. I get annoyed at people who take potshots at Tyson. Name another prime-time science show on a major network. Just one. They don't exist. Even the basic cable channels have all started to engage in pseudoscience (bigfoot, swamp monsters, ancient aliens, mermaids--MERMAIDS?!!).

So we need this.
Point well taken but:
Michio Kaku
Brian Cox


Offline Elmar Moelzer

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Re: Cosmos - A New Series Begins
« Reply #54 on: 03/16/2014 02:35 am »
Brian Greene, just to add. But I do like Tyson. He is no Carl Sagan, but he does a great job! The last 5 minutes of the first episode were really sweet, btw.

Offline bubbagret

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Re: Cosmos - A New Series Begins
« Reply #55 on: 03/16/2014 02:54 am »
The producers completely missed the point and purpose of the original Cosmos. It doesn't remotely feel like or even attempt to be of a similar quality to, the first series. I believe comes off as more of a children's show... something shiny and sparkly to gain a child's attention, with an underlying message to believe what you are told rather than to challenge the viewer to think and question as the original series did.

Sagan utilized the opportunity to inform the audience with what was known at the time and asked them to speculate with questions in a way that seemed to engage the audience and challenge them to think about what was postulated, even the way he utilized the camera in an unspoken way as if to ask "what do you think?" made the series interesting.

Tyson, which I used to hold in high regard, and maybe thru no fault of his own, came across to me as somewhat condescending and even a bit arrogant at times. Even the tone of his presentation and the childish inflections that he projected with his voice seemed to take away from the message that should have been presented in this show, as it was in the original; science is not meant to prove an idea or thought to be factual, science should be utilized to increase collective knowledge and to disprove improper theories. Science is logic.

"Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic. And it doesn't work."
— James Randi

Once science is used to drive or enforce an idea, it is no longer science. It has become a cult, a religion. The virtual antithesis of science.

Offline NovaSilisko

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Re: Cosmos - A New Series Begins
« Reply #56 on: 03/16/2014 04:10 am »
The more I think about it, the more the Bruno segment bothers me. It feels more and more wholly unnecessary for the introduction to the episode, and went on for far longer than it should have. And, as has been said, at the very end, Tyson more or less detonates the entire point of showing it by saying "it was just a lucky guess"...

I don't really get it. I liked the rest of the opening episode (though it, of course, does not hold a candle to the original), but am somewhat worried.





Once science is used to drive or enforce an idea, it is no longer science. It has become a cult, a religion. The virtual antithesis of science.

That (somewhat loosely) reminds me of something that's been irking me in recent times. I routinely see things posted on various locations around the internet about some cool visual sparkly thing happening, like, for instance, the gummy bears dropped into perchlorate (I believe that was the substance). But, more often than not, they never explain (or provide a source that explains) what actually is happening, why it's happening, etc. And mostly, people just reply with something along the lines of "SCIENCE!!", or "cool", or whatever.

It feels wrong to me. It doesn't feel like what science actually is, it feels like run-of-the-mill attention grabbing that happens to have a scientific principle used to produce its results. But, the large amount of people talking about how cool and sparkly it is often don't care, or want to care, about the principles behind it, the learning process of it, and so on. I'm not very good at explaining it, but hopefully my point comes across... sorry for the rant, it's just something that's been bugging me lately!
« Last Edit: 03/16/2014 04:10 am by NovaSilisko »

Offline clongton

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Re: Cosmos - A New Series Begins
« Reply #57 on: 03/16/2014 12:40 pm »
What's left is magic. And it doesn't work.
— James Randi

Pure science wouldn't say this. Far too many things that we take for granted today were yesterday's magic. Things like flight, electricity, wireless communications, televisions, alpha and beta brain waves, radiation sickness, etc, etc, etc. Magic, as opposed to slight-of-hand, is simply an event, capability or occurrence that can't be explained by the known laws of science, that appear to operate outside those laws, or in opposition to those laws. There is far more about how the universe works that we do not understand than we do understand. So-called magic eventually turns out to be such new understanding. To say magic doesn't work is to assume that we already know all there is to know. Usually magic turns into real science as our understanding increases. Just because we don't understand how something works, or can't explain it within the framework of known science does not invalidate it when it clearly works. To discount it is not science - it is ignorance. The first and most important tenet of real science is to acknowledge how much we do not understand, not to flaunt how little we do.
Chuck - DIRECT co-founder
I started my career on the Saturn-V F-1A engine

Offline R7

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Re: Cosmos - A New Series Begins
« Reply #58 on: 03/16/2014 01:11 pm »
Point well taken but:
Michio Kaku
Brian Cox

Michael J. Mosley to the list. Kaku is great but I cringed when he said on some show that the biggest problem in chemical rocketry is the "expensive fuel". Boron additives, Syntin, metallic hydrogen?  ::)
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Offline Chris Bergin

Re: Cosmos - A New Series Begins
« Reply #59 on: 03/16/2014 05:00 pm »
Turned up on Sky 1 in the UK. 7pm start...so it overlaps with the live ISS orbit on Channel 4!

Record one ;)
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