Cosmos: yea or nay?

[FZR1KG]

If evolution was true why do does the moron gene propagate faster than anything else? eh? Answer me that!

[Sigma_Orionis]

Watch This Historical Document and you'll understand

[SciFiFisher]

There may be a grain of truth in this.

[cid]

Musta missed it during the show -- what was the 'asteroid belt' error?

[The Supreme Canuck]

Far, far too many asteroids visible at one time.

[cid]

Far, far too many asteroids visible at one time.

= artistic license

[The Supreme Canuck]

Interesting thing during tonight's episode. FOX programming in Canada is simulcast by a Canadian network called Global. This results in there being Canadian advertisements during the commercial breaks. This was one of the ads that ran. It's an attack ad paid for by the (governing) Conservative Party against the leader of the Liberal Party - see, even though the Liberals are currently third in the seat count, they're also first in the polls.

So. Fine. Attacking Liberal leader Justin Trudeau for being in favour of marijuana legalization. No surprise - the Tories play dirty. Cut from commercial back to Cosmos... and what do we find? Neil DeGrasse Tyson saying something about how cannabis is innocuous, thus linking people who dismiss its legalization out of hand as being somehow anti-science.

Good timing, there, Tories. Perfect place to run that ad.

[pumpkinpi]

I've been able to watch short snippets of most of the shows, and overall I'm impressed! Since I haven't seen any complete episodes I can't give a thorough review of it overall, but there have been some interesting parts, and some of the visualizations are stunning. I think I will enjoy watching the full episodes when they are out on disk. And I'm not upset to have made an incorrect judgement.

Last Thursday, I attended a talk by NdGT. He put on a good show. I can see why people who haven't heard any of the behind the scenes stories about him are huge fans and hold him in high esteem. His talk was mostly about how America is falling behind in the sciences, but with a positive spin in the sense that he put most things in humorous terms. What I found most interesting was the analysis of the currency of about a dozen countries (pre-EU) and how they put not only scientists on them, but also pictures of their accomplishments. For example, a Gaussian (Bell) curve.

But this is why I enjoyed it so much: it was personal for me. We are at the end of a 4 month/1.5 year/10 year campaign to get funding for a planetarium. Literally at the end, as in one week from now we'll know if the state will give us $50M to build a new facilility (as part of a new natural history museum) or if we are stuck indefinitely in our decrepit facility with no room for more than a 15 seat planetarium. I've been neglecting most of my other duties in the past months in order to get people around the state to advocate for us. That's a whole other post in itself. But the relation to NdGT is that my institution was a co-sponsor of the event, and our goal was to get him to advocate for us. And he did. He mentioned it a couple times in his talk, so if even 1% of the 1500 people take action, that's 15 more voices of support we'll get, and every voice counts. In fact, through facebook I learned that one boy was going to get his science class to write letters to their legislators!

So, yay Neil. If we do get this funding, I won't say that it is because of him but like I said before, his voice of support is equally as important as all of the others we've gotten.

Again. Holy crap. I'll know in one week if we are going to get a new facility. If not, I think I'm going to cry for a week. If so,

[Rommie]

That's good- I'm glad to hear it, and hope it happens! Looking forward to hearing the good word.

Interesting detail is I was chatting about this to my editor at Astronomy, and apparently this Cosmos reboot is not really hitting the target demographic much (teens and under 30s)- a big concern is there's more an emphasis on the historical stuff and less on developments in the past 30 years in astronomy. And damn, when you think of how cool it would be to fly through the Hubble Deep Field or an updated model of the galaxy I guess he has a point in wondering how they decided to develop the show and all.

I haven't really been watching the show much so won't comment on that, just throwing it out there.

[pumpkinpi]

That's good- I'm glad to hear it, and hope it happens! Looking forward to hearing the good word.

Interesting detail is I was chatting about this to my editor at Astronomy, and apparently this Cosmos reboot is not really hitting the target demographic much (teens and under 30s)- a big concern is there's more an emphasis on the historical stuff and less on developments in the past 30 years in astronomy. And damn, when you think of how cool it would be to fly through the Hubble Deep Field or an updated model of the galaxy I guess he has a point in wondering how they decided to develop the show and all.

I haven't really been watching the show much so won't comment on that, just throwing it out there.

Yeah it's definitely been different than expected. Last week the entire first 40 minutes were dedicated to a cartoon about Faraday. Cool for a crowd like us but I don't see how it would have kept the attention of that demographic. Perhaps it picked up in the last third, but too late if people had tuned out.

The bonus? Because it was a cartoon, as dull as it was compared to whiz-bang kiddie shows, it kept Buster's attention.