Sagan's Cosmos "continues"

[sergeantk]

man, space and shit is dope

[kokoon]

What's the big deal with this deGrasse guy anyway, is he a famous physicist or something? Cause as a show host, he's average at best.

[azatoth]

deGrasse Tyson sees himself as this generations Carl Sagan. He's an astrophysicist and is a science communicator

[lumpenprol]

just watched this on youtube. Points for trying I guess but...jumped around quite a bit, and Tyson was just okay. Seemed to be aimed at the novice, nothing very surprising.

 

It's funny how our horizons have shrunken since the "golly gee" 1950s-70s, in terms of optimism about space exploration. A show like this that really tries to hard for the "wow factor" is really facing an uphill battle. I think most of us (apart from the religious zealot holdouts) know this stuff by now. Fuck I don't know, maybe the problem is me. Maybe I just can't feel wonder any more.

 

Or maybe it's just poorly made. The Planet Earth docs were fantastic, I enjoyed pretty much every minute. But even for an overview, this intro seemed to skip quite a bit, eg., he's flying by the planets and just mentions Neptune and Uranus by name, with no further details. Huh? What? When not give at least a sentence or two. In general, it felt like it just needed more wit, depth, and energy.

[Joyrex]

Damn, I missed this last night - I'll have to catch up and see if it's worth watching further or not.

[azatoth]

just watched this on youtube. Points for trying I guess but...jumped around quite a bit, and Tyson was just okay. Seemed to be aimed at the novice, nothing very surprising.

 

It's funny how our horizons have shrunken since the "golly gee" 1950s-70s, in terms of optimism about space exploration. A show like this that really tries to hard for the "wow factor" is really facing an uphill battle. I think most of us (apart from the religious zealot holdouts) know this stuff by now. Fuck I don't know, maybe the problem is me. Maybe I just can't feel wonder any more.

 

Or maybe it's just poorly made. The Planet Earth docs were fantastic, I enjoyed pretty much every minute. But even for an overview, this intro seemed to skip quite a bit, eg., he's flying by the planets and just mentions Neptune and Uranus by name, with no further details. Huh? What? When not give at least a sentence or two. In general, it felt like it just needed more wit, depth, and energy.

 

Some of the lacking information, might have to do with this being episode 1 of 13...just a thought. And it's going to be made for the layman, most of the science shows come on cable or some other channel, this comes on at primetime on a network channel. It's not going to come with new info for the viewer to watches every science show there is.

[kokoon]

It is really lacking information, compared to Cosmos. I watched the first ep of the original series right after this and it's such a difference. Just like lumpenprol said, planet earth an the bbc life series are so fun to watch, this is just not as good as it should/could be.

[delet...]

Yep. with a little more work on the wonder (there's still that's pretty amazing out there and we have the cG to render it, but maybe not the talking head to explain it this time around) and some information density you can appeal to the layman and the armchair expert alike. It makes me sad that they didn't understand what made the first series so great.

 

Early days though, it could get better.

[kokoon]

Yeah it's sad that they probably didn't even bother with asking what made the original so good. I imagine they just bought the rights and shot a docu by numbers.

 

Also, there were a few things degrasse said that I wasn't sure I heard right. Something along the lines of "and they invented sex", he also said "helluva" and another weird statement, don't remember right now.

[data]

1 in 4 americans thinks the sun orbits earth. i was under the assumption that this was made for them, and for the general public that equate the word science with "boring". i learned nothing new from watching the first episode, but i still enjoyed it for what it was, and even though tyson might not be quite as poetic as sagan, he's still a fun dude to listen to.

Yeah it's sad that they probably didn't even bother with asking what made the original so good. I imagine they just bought the rights and shot a docu by numbers.

 

what? this was written by carl sagans wife, as was the old cosmos.

[awepittance]

I don't think I'll be watching, Carl Sagan never said anything this retarded



seems intentionally deceptive, how could a scientist compare natural selection to a corporation altering the DNA of a food-plant in a lab? It doesn't even make sense

[cichlisuite]

One can be too sure of his own logical thinking, and that goes for mr. deGrasse. These uber-intelligent one-liners of his are nailing it.

What does he mean with "artificial selection"? That people pick good-looking apples and throw away the rotten ones? Now, that's some science!

 

Obviously just another politically correct statement.

[delet...]

Corporationally correct should be the term we use these days, given that the beast has been stripped of it's political cloaking and we now know what calls every shot.

 

I watched it from end to end. There were things that annoyed me, but i agree with data that science knowledge in the US is in a bit of a crisis at the moment. So despite it's obvious failings, that first episode was meant to inspire the younglings resident in the room of the household that watches fox, with both a genial philosophical underpinning for wanting to know more about science and a call to arms against the forces that have traditionally railed against and persecuted the inquiring mind.

 

Some nice CG at the start too.

[Guest fiznuthian]

This series is lame..

As mentioned earlier in the thread, BBC used to pump out good shit.

If you want something genuinely fascinating, may I present Professor Bonner's Slime Molds:

[youtubehd]2L8Uk6WVjwc[/youtubehd]

 

Fucking awesome science.

[Nebraska]

What's the big deal with this deGrasse guy anyway, is he a famous physicist or something? Cause as a show host, he's average at best.

 

he became popular by giving these lectures and discussions where he gets super hyped and suddenly got a large twitter following. because he met sagan as a kid, seth mcfarlene decided "good time to reboot cosmos and have this guy host it" so he got ann druyan and (of all the fucking people in the world) brannon braga and pitched the idea to this shmuck.

 

did anyone notice when he was going through the planets in our solar system he didn't mention pluto? that's because he was one of those people that wanted pluto removed as an official planet.

 

also, the ship of the imagination now looks like a star trek communicator (thanks brannon braga. how did you get that idea?) and the fx when he opens windows to show us stars, meteors etc were so loud and cheesy. the gripe: the animation. this is a case of too many cooks in the kitchen. the story of copernicus and giordano bruno was reduced to this sill 'disney like' animated sequence that made me feel like i was watching the baby channel.

 

anyway, the best part of the episode was the end when he talked about meeting sagan and getting a ride to the train station etc otherwise: fail

[zkom]

I don't think I'll be watching, Carl Sagan never said anything this retarded

 

 

seems intentionally deceptive, how could a scientist compare natural selection to a corporation altering the DNA of a food-plant in a lab? It doesn't even make sense

 

 

One can be too sure of his own logical thinking, and that goes for mr. deGrasse. These uber-intelligent one-liners of his are nailing it.

What does he mean with "artificial selection"? That people pick good-looking apples and throw away the rotten ones? Now, that's some science!

 

Obviously just another politically correct statement.

 

He's probably talking about selective breeding. In this case plant breeding. You know, the plants we eat don't really grow in the wild but are a product of breeding by the people who grow them.

[Nebraska]

Yeah.. fuck that shit. Give me a dude in a turtle neck and tweed jacket staring out of an imaginary spaceship, childlike wonder in his smiling face, glowing in the light of nebulae and supernovae as he incants big numbers and superlatives.

That may sound slightly sarcastic but it's not.

 

[Guest fiznuthian]

Yeah good luck trying to selectively breed wheat to love roundup...

"Cmon you fucker, stop dying when I spray you with poison"

[kokoon]

Regarding gfx, some of it was very nice indeed, especially jupiter's eye. Can't really recall much else, that probably means it was more or less forgettable. Well, except the lens flares. Yeah and the shiny chrome spaceship, which I found distasteful.

 

The original series were at least co-written by Carl Sagan, not just his wife. And it really shows, I'm not even sure how much she was involved with the the new series, she seemed pretty cool in those reissue comments of Cosmos.

 

Also, is deGrasse by any chance a religious person? All the God references in the episode made me wonder.

[azatoth]

I don't think Tyson is one of those adamant atheists that love yammering on about how all religion is bad. I guess he's an agnostic or something.

[zkom]

Yeah good luck trying to selectively breed wheat to love roundup...

"Cmon you fucker, stop dying when I spray you with poison"

 

There actually are superweeds that have developed resistance to roundup through natural selection. It happens especially if a single herbicide is used repeatedly which causes intense selection pressure towards immunity to that particular herbicide.

[Guest fiznuthian]

 

Yeah good luck trying to selectively breed wheat to love roundup...

"Cmon you fucker, stop dying when I spray you with poison"

 

There actually are superweeds that have developed resistance to roundup through natural selection. It happens especially if a single herbicide is used repeatedly which causes intense selection pressure towards immunity to that particular herbicide.

 

 

Yeah, you're right. I still think allowing the genome to mutate on it's own a is a far cry from injecting sequences in labs, only because of the inherent complexity and that we still have very little understanding of how it all works.

 

That said, i'm not particularly opposed to genetically modifying organisms either. I am just willing to admit that there's some degree of chance we might actually fuck up somehow and suffer consequences.

[LimpyLoo]

I don't think Tyson is one of those adamant atheists that love yammering on about how all religion is bad. I guess he's an agnostic or something.

 

'Agnostic' is not a middle ground between theism and atheism. Regardless of what you know, you either believe that God exists or you don't.

 

If you don't know whether God exists, then you don't believe in God.

 

Just like if you don't know whether unicorns exist, you don't believe in unicorns.

[Joyrex]

 

What's the big deal with this deGrasse guy anyway, is he a famous physicist or something? Cause as a show host, he's average at best.

 

he became popular by giving these lectures and discussions where he gets super hyped and suddenly got a large twitter following. because he met sagan as a kid, seth mcfarlene decided "good time to reboot cosmos and have this guy host it" so he got ann druyan and (of all the fucking people in the world) brannon braga and pitched the idea to this shmuck.

 

did anyone notice when he was going through the planets in our solar system he didn't mention pluto? that's because he was one of those people that wanted pluto removed as an official planet.

 

also, the ship of the imagination now looks like a star trek communicator (thanks brannon braga. how did you get that idea?) and the fx when he opens windows to show us stars, meteors etc were so loud and cheesy. the gripe: the animation. this is a case of too many cooks in the kitchen. the story of copernicus and giordano bruno was reduced to this sill 'disney like' animated sequence that made me feel like i was watching the baby channel.

 

anyway, the best part of the episode was the end when he talked about meeting sagan and getting a ride to the train station etc otherwise: fail

 

I think Michio Kaku would have been a better host.

[awepittance]