Neil DeGrasse Tyson's _Cosmos_

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Daughter's initial skepticism was overcome within 5 minutes so I am into this

Her first comment: "why isnt he wearing a spacesuit?"

i thought i was watching a science show. and then he got into a space ship.

it's an imagination ship

right. that does make more sense because i was watching it on my imagination tube.

when he called it that, this was all i could think of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTn7xtVsE6U

How could you not like NDT? The man is a national treasure.

call it an exchange rate issue so

the dizzying intellectual heights of NdGT

http://storify.com/erinleeryan/monday-night-aas223

this is def aimed at kids right? and adults who like kids shit of course.

also that is the terriblest powerpoint by NDT altho i a gen a fan of his i guess?

it's aimed at ppl who fucking love science

And imagination-based spacecraft

it's cute that you guys have so much confidence in the average adult's scientific knowledge in 2014

i dont mean in terms of content! a lot of the stuff i saw in the evolution episode was like cliff notes and cool efx version of some intro college classes i remember. i mean more in presentation, it definitely seems like "what are we gonna do to hook tweens man, SPACESHIP"

i haven't seen it but i can't imagine there's any amount of dumbing down and spazzing up they could do to this thing that wouldn't have it blow my mind this thing is on network tv in 2014

however briefly

i think its def cool that its on too! i just think its target demo is older kids and their parents m/l.

idk i think the spaceship is cool, it's just a clever means of getting ndt and the audience from the outer reaches of space and down to the molecular level w/o it coming off dry. they could have made it way cornier; it's not like ndt is hunched over a command console saying "activate science boosters" or anything

btw i am not a tween

yeah this whole endeavor is m/l Science + Wonder 101 but hats off to fox for producing it, even if it was likely just part of seth macfarlane'a contract negotiation

Uh you guys know the spaceship was in the original, right?

And wasn't the spaceship actually the little flower that Carl Sagan is admiring and lets go into the wind and it flies up into outer space? Or am I making that part up?

Yeah, I was wondering if anyone complaining about the ship had remembered there was one in the original.

I mimed that scene to caek last night... was kinda drunk already

has anyone else been pronouncing it Prince-a-PEE-a for all their lives? anyone? anyone at all?

seems to be a good deal of flexibility (prin-SIP-ee-uh in the US, prin-KIP-ee-uh in the UK, prin-CHIP-ee-uh for those to kick it old school) on the "correct" pronunciation, although i'm sure people occasionally get together and demand that their own regionally accepted way of pronouncing it is the only true way

wasn't the spaceship actually the little flower that Carl Sagan is admiring and lets go into the wind and it flies up into outer space? Or am I making that part up?

Sagan is holding a dandelion tuft while narrating the intro and that "becomes" the ship of the imagination, yeah

cannot believe people are complaining about it if they've decided to reuse the idea

i hadn't the last few months of this thread until just now because i didn't get around to watching the first three episodes until last night, but anyone who is making fun of the ship of the imagination can go straight to hell

High five.

the music is a little disappointing, but i can see why they did it. it's just kind of your standard cinematic imax style, seemingly designed to be ignored. that's the modern, focus group-approved way, i suppose. but i miss the 1980 gutsy approach of trying to make a memorable theme that you can hum along to - the Cosmos song!

xxxxxxxxxxp I always thought it was prin-kip-ee-uh, though I may have just got that from In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg. But I don't think there's ever been a time in my life when I had to pronounce it and I doubt there ever will be.

I loved how he came out of the gate last night with a smackdown of young earth creationism. I almost heard half the nation changing the channel at the same time.

I'd never (or don't remember having) heard it put so succinctly: if the earth and the universe are only 6000-ish years old, and we have calculated the speed of light, how come we can see things that are further than 6000-ish light years away? The fact that we can means "all of creation" is at least as old as the most distant thing we can see.

having come from a Young Earth background when I was 15, the weirdest thing is they don't merely rely on the Bible for that nonsense. Our youth group leader showed us a video of a Christian scientist (don't remember their specialty, possibly biology), who taught us the following nonsense:

*About an inch of dust collects on the moon every thousand years. Because of this, they were expecting much more dust on the moon during our first moon landing, and there wasn't much there at all!

*Organic objects get worse over time - if you leave an orange on the table for too long, it will rot and grow moldly. Evolution tells us organic objects get BETTER over time! That is obv absurd, amirite?

*The sun gets smaller every year - if the world was 6 billion years old, the sun would have been too gigantic at its genesis for other planets to survive (or something, I can't remember the exact nonsense he spouted)

Also my church's preacher claims to have disproven Evolution using a slime mold experiment. Yes, a grey-haired, Allman Brothers loving Georgia preacher did what scientists could not during a retreat in Alabama.

I kind of admire but am also frustrated by the restraint and good taste they had in not having Patrick Stewart's animated character played up for laughs. Maybe in the James Burke Connections reboot...

xp I grew up in the chuch too, but I don't remember a bunch of creation vs. evolution instruction. I do remember having it grilled into me that pre-marital sex was DANGEROUS AND HORRIBLE, though.

there were some folk in my youth group who took that to the next level and said sex itself was 'bad' and acted as if they'd only reluctantly participate when they got married.

meanwhile the guys in the group just whacked off a lot and lied about it

I'm quite enjoying these! They seem to be mixing in more live action stuff w the animated as the show goes on. Also the animation style in some of these really reminds me of South Park, with the 2d cutouts w paper textures. Tho that might just be the standard way to animation things these days...

the second episode on evolution was flat out wonderful, and brought me around the focus of the new series. My patience is still tried by the animated historical segments, but that's nothing. Looking forward to every episode now.

http://thinkprogress.org/culture/2014/03/25/3418425/creationism-is-getting-a-lot-of-time-on-cosmos/

its the best animation seth mcfarlane has ever produced

how come we can see things that are further than 6000-ish light years away?

We can't, we've just been fooled into thinking we can. That's the standard response, right?

I think it will be the Blues For a Red Planet episode next week, so I can't wait for that one.

xp my fave apologetic for that is that god created the world 6,000 years ago, but he created an older world w/ lots of history + stuff including a much older universe, dinosaurs, etc

it's kinda like the "idk get the fuck out of here" apologetic

god put dinosaur bones in the ground to fuck w/ godless scientists

I found it very emotive the first time he mentioned that snowy night in Brooklyn and meeting Carl Sagan as an impressionable young man, 2nd time is fucking pushing it.

how come we can see things that are further than 6000-ish light years away?

because god allows us to see a glimpse of the eternal paradise that can be yours for only $9.99

I want to go visit the Halls of Exinction so bad

http://vimeo.com/56160700

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