Cosmos

[Stewie]

I’m kind of surprised that there was no thread for this show already.
1st episode aired on Sunday. It was pretty good. IMO it felt like they went out of their way to vilify religion which doesnt really bother me but if you are trying to reach out to the religious you might want to do it with more tact.

[Ragnoros]

It was fine to enjoyable in parts. As a pastafarian I approve of any religious bashing, however I also think they went out of their way to an extent to say how great God is in general. But I can only assume religious folks will hate it. I should probably have my mom watch it, she is the crazy religious one in the family. Also, I still find Neal to be pandering at times, and how is he is a black man who lacks the vocal gravitas of white hippy/scientist Carl Sagan. Mostly, this episode just had to set the stage, it will be interesting to see what they do as far as new material/ideas with the next 8 episodes.

[Merusk]

I’m kind of surprised that there was no thread for this show already.
1st episode aired on Sunday. It was pretty good. IMO it felt like they went out of their way to vilify religion which doesnt really bother me but if you are trying to reach out to the religious you might want to do it with more tact.

They're not attempting to reach out to the religious.  Tyson is decidedly atheist as is McFarlane. They are going to state, "This is the way it is." and not attempt a reach-out to those who have already made-up their mind.  This is about kids, not adults.

That said, the entire story of Bruno was laid-out with no condemnation beyond paining Bruno as the hero.  He was a guy who went against the common belief and was burned for it, later being proven to have had the right idea. If truly wanting to damn religion they could easily have left out his central belief that, "God is bigger than your current thinking" but didn't.

It's also a good way to indoctrinate kids to the understanding that if they get in to science in a big way, they will also have to deal with these sort of thinkers.  Those who don't want to change their current beliefs - from the religious to the atheist climate denialists - because it's frightening and different.

[Pennilenko]

I didn't read into it too deep. Also I let my almost three year old watch it with me. He watches all kinds of science programming with me even though he doesn't understand a majority portion of what is going on. He does ask to watch "space science" with me and this series is going to be good to keep on the DVR.

He also has a thing for any show about volcanoes and dinosaurs. I am excited for where this series is going to go. I eat stuff like this up.

[Tmon]

I didn't much like it, the music seemed way pretentious and most of what was presented wasn't anything I didn't already know.  But I'm not the target audience for the show, it seems like kids liked it and thinking about the presentation I can see how it fits better for them.  What bugs me is that the original Cosmos seemed like it did a much better job of presenting material that captured both adults and children.  Of course it may be that it was just an artifact of there only being 4 channels to chose from where we lived and 30 some odd years of nostalgia.

[Ghambit]

It's the first epi.  Tough to say where the show will go or how it will do-so.  If it's like the original Cosmos, it will pander on ambiguously on many overarching themes.  It's not a series for science geeks, it's a series for pop culture.  Science geeks will watch Wormhole and Rev3 reruns.

No one can replicate Sagan's form of speaking though (which was the highlight of the original Cosmos).  No one.

[Draegan]

I thought this was awesome. I'm looking forward to the whole series.

[Pennilenko]

I am surprised at how delicately they are handling subject matter that is opposed to religious teaching.

[Merusk]

I am surprised at how delicately they are handling subject matter that is opposed to religious teaching.

If you think this is delicate, go to a national park where they discuss the science that created the landscape and ask the rangers what they say when confronted with religion.  I did so last year when we went to Mammoth Cave and they were talking about how the cave systems form over millenia and I wouldn't do the answer justice.  It's a very even-handed statement about how they are explaining only the accepted science but they recognize there are other viewpoints that are best left in those communities for discussion.

Cosmos, on the other hand, is basically saying, "This is how it is. Take it or leave it."

[Trippy]

I am surprised at how delicately they are handling subject matter that is opposed to religious teaching.

Not sure if green or not...the eye example is a classic refutation of Intelligent Design. Richard Dawkins used the same example in The Blind Watchmaker.

[MahrinSkel]

They're not going out of their way to say that Creationists are idiots, but they aren't giving them any slack, either.  Purpose of the show is to present science for a mass audience, not pick a fight in the Culture Wars.

--Dave

[Merusk]

Numbers are good on this which makes me happy.  It was the #2 show with adults and #3 with teens.

Which of course has creationists demanding equal time on the show or in air.   Which lead to  Thson saying that you don't talk to NASA about the spherical Earth then go talk to the flat earth society.  Heh.

[Tebonas]

Can't they make their own "Science" show and air it right after Cosmos? That sure would be funny. The can call it "Fun times with 1000 years old dinosaurs".

[Tannhauser]

Love this show. 

[Ghambit]

The show is too over-arching for my tastes till this last epi, but I do indeed like the time spent emphasizing cultural significance.  Watching Tyson get emotional inside the Abbey where Fraunhofer did his work is very touching (I wonder how difficult it is to even get inside there).  I've had similar experiences on my little science-pilgrimages.  It's very important in sci-eng. to keep tangible historical context; gives you energy to keep going.

[Bungee]

Guess this fits pretty nice in here.

Science poll for US citizens

About 4 in 10 say they are not too confident or outright disbelieve that the earth is warming, mostly a result of man-made heat-trapping gases, that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old or that life on Earth evolved through a process of natural selection, though most were at least somewhat confident in each of those concepts. But a narrow majority — 51 percent — questions the Big Bang theory.

I think those numbers are also pretty representative for any at least western country.

[apocrypha]

I think those numbers are also pretty representative for any at least western country.

I don't know if evolution is a special case or not, but this is from here.

Edit: unreadable, sorry, not able to post a better version atm, but you can see the graph if you follow that link above. It shows responses to the question "Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals" and most of Europe has far higher agreement with that than the US (and Turkey).



As for the show, I've only seen the 1st episode so far and it was pretty good I thought. It was a bit gushy, a bit glitzy, a bit... American (no offense intended) but I thought it made a really good attempt at getting across some of the orders of magnitude of scale in space and time.

I also don't think it's possible to make a show like this, particularly in the US, right now without getting involved in some way in a political/religious debate. The US Christian right will ensure that. Which is why I was surprised to see it was broadcast by the Fox network. Aren't they the media wing of the evangelical right wing in the US?

[Ruvaldt]

Which is why I was surprised to see it was broadcast by the Fox network. Aren't they the media wing of the evangelical right wing in the US?

Fox News, yes.  The broadcast network, however, is not right-leaning.  Fox tends to take more chances on new shows than any other broadcast network so it actually makes a lot of sense (Arrested Development, Family Guy, Almost Human, Fringe, etc).  The show is also being shown on NatGeo.

[apocrypha]

Ahh OK, gotcha, thanks.

[Ghambit]

Netflix actually just put out the pilot series for Cosmos Tyson did with "The Great Courses.'  Called the 'Inexplicable Universe.'  I actually like it much better then Cosmos; it's more to the point, in lecture format as if speaking to a physics class.  More thought-provoking, less lofty.  Cosmos I believe is still hit or miss depending on subject matter.  Not all epis are good.

Really though, the best science series ever done is still "The Mechanical Universe."  Nothing touches it.  I tried in vain to put all 52-vids on youtube and was promptly scolded    My viewers were pissed, and wrote me thank you's for doing-so.  I had 10's of thousands of views.  Evidently it helped get a lot of people through physics class.  The series is so dominant (even after 30+ years), that big schools still use it to teach their phy w/calc courses - at a hefty pricetag of course.  The DoE has to pay to show them in schools (the series should really be mandatory at every public high school); why it isnt free really peeves me.

If you find a set lying around cheap, hold onto it like it's gold.  And by all means, watch it.  It will change your life if you're not already into physics, even in the non-classical sense (it goes into quantum physics later on).  Come to think of it, I might've started a thread on it at some point.  Really deserves one if I havent.  It's that good. 

[Merusk]

You aren't the audience for Cosmos.  The audience is the kids who can't get this from school, people who have forgotten what they learned I high school or those who outright ignored and got a D for diploma on their two mandatory science classes


It's not for people who understand and can debate global warming or have an inkling of understand I got string theory.  All you'd do with a show aimed at that audience is tank. That this continues to get good ratings and is drawing in people is a very good thing.    That it can be informative about how science is used to cloud the issue such as with leaded gas and allow people to draw conclusions about global warming is a better thing

[Ghambit]

Eh, I'd be willing to bet if you modernized a series like the Mechanical Universe and broadcast it on primetime for-profit network TV, that people would absolutely eat it up (especially helicopter parents)... even more then Cosmos.  I'm a cynical guy, but I tend to give people more credit when it comes to deriving science.  Remember, the original Cosmos for its time was fairly neckbeardy.  And it's a classical treasure at this point.

This Cosmos is a "show."  An extravagance designed for pop media.  It's not really a deeply informative science series.  You don't really come away any smarter for watching it, you just come away anecdotally entertained.  I still love it, but I still also believe there's stricter programming out there that could do just as well... consequently also holding up better to the Creationists; who require more empiricism thrown in their faces rather then simple declarations they can easily refute.

[Ingmar]

Creationists will turn it off after 5 minutes anyway.

I would think the repeated failure of science/history cable channels to do anything but descend into a mire of shitty reality programming would demonstrate that no, in fact, people in general (or Americans, anyway) would not eat that sort of thing up anyway.

[Ghambit]

Qualifier:  eat it up to the point that network execs would see similar profits to if they had reality TV.  It's not like it wouldnt do well, just not as well.  Remember way back when, when shows like Cosby or TNG occupied the primetime slots?  Yah well those are now reality TV slots.   

[Surlyboi]

Cosmos for creationists...

http://FunnyOrDie.com/m/8u6b

[Phildo]

God did it.

[Yegolev]

Fox just likes making money.  Right-wing pandering on FOX News gets lots of money.

[Ironwood]

Well, that's it over and it was pretty fucking brilliant.

Elena and I loved it, and she learned a shitload.

Mostly not to ask Daddy Religious questions...

[Yegolev]

Yes.

[Maven]

Religious statistics for America has a majority (though declining) religious population that seems to imply a resistance to scientific / rational thought, notably Darwinism. With some statements I've read from notable right-leaning religious personalities and their sizable audience (Robertson, Dobson, Coulter), I wouldn't be surprised if they were a bit ginger with potentially pissing off a majority of their audience and having to be careful how they present their material.

[Ironwood]

Not sure why you posted that (as it doesn't seem to have a point in here), but I will say that of all those episodes I watched not a single one gave the slightest shit about not pissing off mental crazy people.

They stuck to the facts, even when the facts told you about how Historically Religious nutters were BAD for science.  In fairness, they also stuck to the facts when the facts told you that Bad Scientists and People were bad for scientists.

It was rather awesome how much actual TRUTH they managed to put across.

[Pennilenko]

One shock I had came from one of my teachers after the climate change episode. He was all rage and froth about how they were wrong about climate change. He  previously mentioned the shows several times as being amazing. I was stunned as he outed himself as a climate change denier.

[Ironwood]

'wrong' as in it isn't happening or 'wrong' as in 'there was a detail mentioned on the show that's wrong' ?

Because one of those I might have time for, the other, not so much.

[Yegolev]

Calm down, lead isn't toxic.

[Pennilenko]

'wrong' as in it isn't happening or 'wrong' as in 'there was a detail mentioned on the show that's wrong' ?

Because one of those I might have time for, the other, not so much.

He thinks climate change is a lie manufactured by the liberal media...I was really shocked. I used to respect him so much because he has taught me a great deal about Linux and managing servers and network equipment. He even opens every term with an hour presentation on the concept of an approaching technological singularity. Turns out he is just another fox news wackjob.