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skoob has a point TBD :(
I had never heard of this girl until today by the way.

I'm in the same boat... The name seems vaguely familiar but I feel slightly warm and fuzzy at not having heard of her in any kind of memorable fashion.
 
I'm in the same boat... The name seems vaguely familiar but I feel slightly warm and fuzzy at not having heard of her in any kind of memorable fashion.
What worries me is TBD tells me about her once before and I had no memory of it. This tells me 2 things, either she made no impact on me or I'm demented. I suspect a bit of both.
 
Hopefully in a month or so I'll have a nice crop of snow peas, cherry tomatoes and forget-me-nots. While I despise New Farm, I do like having the room to have my own garden again.
 
Watership Down was bad.

I had to turn off Plague Dogs after the first five minutes.

I seriously wonder what on earth Richard Adams thought when he pitched these as kids books/films?!
 

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Grave of the fireflies is a great kiddies film.

Brutal.

On another note, the first episode of the reboot of Cosmos has aired in the states and subsequently become available on the usual haunts of the web and it is truly something special.

Those who are friends with me on Facebook are no doubt sick of be banging on about it, but there are once in a generation TV events that people NEED to watch and this is one of them. Had a lot to live up to with the remarkably special standard that Carl Sagan set with the original series but they have done this right. Seth MacFarlane (yes the Family Guy dude) deserves a medal for getting this off the ground.

Might be a little confronting for those of faith, but frankly it's time those views got challenged anyway.

Airs on National Geographic later this week if you are patient enough not to download it in the meantime.

Sickens me to think of how many people will pass it by in favour of the latest episode of My Kitchen Rules or whatever their chosen brand of Reality TV soma happens to be.





 
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Looks like an American version of Brian Cox's documentaries.

Really turned off by the trailers but I guess there going for a broad audience.
 
Looks like an American version of Brian Cox's documentaries.

Really turned off by the trailers but I guess there going for a broad audience.

Heh, actually it is a reboot of Carl Sagan's groundbreaking 1980 series Cosmos which inspired a whole new generation of budding scientists including Brian Cox.

You are entitled to your opinion of course but your interpretation of the trailers isn't accurate. They are going for a wide audience as all good science programs should, but if you think it is watered down to appease the masses, you are wrong.

This isn't just a show to preach to the already converted (which sadly is what most science documentaries do). This is a show designed to point the world back towards rationality, free thinking and a humanist philosophy that doesn't need fabricated gods to find meaning in the universe.

It might sound like hype, but if you saw the original series you'd understand.

I love Brian Cox and my Wonders of the Universe Bluray gets a flogging but Cosmos is something bigger. Where science meets philosophy.
 
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Brian Cox on Carl Sagan and the original Cosmos.

Carl Sagan was a huge influence. Cosmos was on TV in the U.K. when I was 12, in 1980. So that would be the perfect age for a kid who is into astronomy anyway, as many are. And to have that series capture your imagination at that age, it makes an indelible impression on you. I think one of the reasons that Sagan is still relevant today, and one of the reasons he’s very relevant in television, is that his shows were partly polemic. They were not simply—as is the fashion today—these kinds of presentations of what we know and don’t know about the universe, which is exciting and spectacular, but there’s more to it than that. There’s an agenda. Not to science, but to him. He had an agenda. He thought he would build a better world if everybody understood the value of the world and behaved in a scientific manner. He really believed that. He was passionately involved in that perspective.

And that perspective is not that we’re very small or insignificant. To Sagan, the perspective was that because civilization is so rare in the universe, then our rarity could have value. Stepping away from the Earth, observing our existence on Earth, and putting our place in the universe in its proper context, for him, should make us on the planet behave in a more sensible and rational way. He recognized that we’re a village. I agree with that. The Wonders Of The Universe program has that [approach]. It has messages in it. It tries to contextualize these discoveries as well as present them. And why not? In the U.K., I am quite political. I work at university, and I am involved in the political process. I lobby really hard for funding and support for scientific and engineering programs, because I feel that those are the ways that we will progress as a civilization and as a country. That’s what I share with Sagan’s view, that you can be an activist—a scientific activist—and you should be able to do that on television and with books.



So there you go, looks like Brian Cox is a British version of Cosmos ;)
 
Brian Cox on Carl Sagan and the original Cosmos.

Carl Sagan was a huge influence. Cosmos was on TV in the U.K. when I was 12, in 1980. So that would be the perfect age for a kid who is into astronomy anyway, as many are. And to have that series capture your imagination at that age, it makes an indelible impression on you. I think one of the reasons that Sagan is still relevant today, and one of the reasons he’s very relevant in television, is that his shows were partly polemic. They were not simply—as is the fashion today—these kinds of presentations of what we know and don’t know about the universe, which is exciting and spectacular, but there’s more to it than that. There’s an agenda. Not to science, but to him. He had an agenda. He thought he would build a better world if everybody understood the value of the world and behaved in a scientific manner. He really believed that. He was passionately involved in that perspective.

And that perspective is not that we’re very small or insignificant. To Sagan, the perspective was that because civilization is so rare in the universe, then our rarity could have value. Stepping away from the Earth, observing our existence on Earth, and putting our place in the universe in its proper context, for him, should make us on the planet behave in a more sensible and rational way. He recognized that we’re a village. I agree with that. The Wonders Of The Universe program has that [approach]. It has messages in it. It tries to contextualize these discoveries as well as present them. And why not? In the U.K., I am quite political. I work at university, and I am involved in the political process. I lobby really hard for funding and support for scientific and engineering programs, because I feel that those are the ways that we will progress as a civilization and as a country. That’s what I share with Sagan’s view, that you can be an activist—a scientific activist—and you should be able to do that on television and with books.



So there you go, looks like Brian Cox is a British version of Cosmos ;)

So therefore it's fair to say that Cosmos is like and American version of Brian Cox.
 
So therefore it's fair to say that Cosmos is like and American version of Brian Cox.

If you wanted to speak in meaningless chicken/egg soundbites and ignore the parts about Cox's programs being inspired by Cosmos being as philosophical and political as it is scientific... I guess?
 
If you wanted to speak in meaningless soundbites and ignore the parts about Cosmos being as philosophical and political as it is scientific... I guess?

You seemed to take it personally that I said the trailers turned me off to the show and that it was similar to Brian Cox but then agreed that they are similar.
 
You seemed to take it personally that I said the trailers turned me off to the show and that it was similar to Brian Cox but then agreed that they are similar.

Not personally.

Perhaps mildly irritated at your reply being trite and seemingly intimating with little evidence that it is Brian Cox lite for the mainstream. No skin off my nose if you watch it or not.

Reckon everyone else should though. Trust the Dog on this one peeps.

Or trust one of the respected TV critics on the web...

Alan Sepinwall... His Breaking Bad recaps were the bomb.
 

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You don't think the trailer failed to promote it as a serious science show? I thought it was more like a trailer for an Apocalypse movie or tonight's episode of A Current Affair.

I was gonna download it today before I saw the trailer and decided not to bother.
 
You don't think the trailer failed to promote it as a serious science show?

No I don't think that at all. Being familiar with the original series I was able to contextualize the various pieces quite well. That said, the scope of the series is so broad I can't think of a way to do an effective trailer that would give the uninitiated the full picture.

Regardless, trailers are normally made by the network to get viewers, and not by the production company that actually created the show, so drawing massive conclusions from trailers is a fool's game.

But I'll humour you... what parts are you referring to? The partial use of animation? Animation does not necessarily translate to a lack of seriousness. Much of the series is about the history of scientific achievement and the animation in tonight's episode was certainly used for that end and it told a very dark story indeed (that of Giordano Bruno).

It's Neil deGrasse Tyson, one of the leading astrophysicists and is building on the legacy of Carl Sagan with the assistance of his widow. Rest assured it is a "serious science show" to use your quaint terminology.

I was gonna download it today before I saw the trailer and decided not to bother.

You're funny.

And I bet you cave. ;)
 
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No I don't think that at all. Being familiar with the original series I was able to contextualize the various pieces quite well. That said, the scope of the series is so broad I can't think of a way to do an effective trailer that would give the uninitiated the full picture.

Regardless, trailers are normally made by the network to get viewers, and not by the production company that actually created the show, so drawing massive conclusions from trailers is a fool's game.

But I'll humour you... what parts are you referring to? The partial use of animation? Animation does not necessarily translate to a lack of seriousness. Much of the series is about the history of scientific achievement and the animation in tonight's episode was certainly used for that end and it told a very dark story indeed (that of Giordano Bruno).



You're funny.

And I bet you cave. ;)

How you promote the show tends to go for the type of audience you want it to attract and I was turned off big time. It makes it look gimmicky and high in special effects and low on science and thought provoking discussion.

I was turned off by all the special effects with the spaceships, etc. the apocalyptic voice over. The fact that it is American and on FOX which doesn't make me me think it'll be at all intelligent and thought provoking.

I haven't seen the original but have obviously heard great things. However that does not mean the new series will be as good as the old.

I probably will cave but I was going to watch it based solely off the trailers.
 
How you promote the show tends to go for the type of audience you want it to attract and I was turned off big time. It makes it look gimmicky and high in special effects and low on science and thought provoking discussion.

I was turned off by all the special effects with the spaceships, etc. the apocalyptic voice over. The fact that it is American and on FOX which doesn't make me me think it'll be at all intelligent and thought provoking.

The spaceship has an important context, again, if you'd seen the original you'd immediately understand. Or google Spaceship of the Imagination.

As for the trailer being bombastic, it is to attract a wide audience. Any true budding scientists and fans of the original were going to watch it anyway on name value alone. The trailer is to bring in the rest. As I already explained, the intent of both the original and reboot of Cosmos isn't to just preach to those who are already on board, but to open science up to those who have been indoctrinated by religion or just haven't been paying attention. Carl Sagan was an educator and so is Tyson. What is the point if they can't open more minds.

Not sure what the link between "American" and "not thought provoking" is... seems a pretty ludicrous argument to me. They may have a large contingent of backward types, but it is the country that brought us NASA (and Carl mother****ing Sagan). What would you say if someone judged the intelligence of all British television based on viewings of Bottom and Are You Being Served?

The FOX stuff was heavily debated when the reboot was first announced but this isn't Fox News propaganda. Don't forget Fox also broadcast the Simpsons which was genuinely politically subversive and took the piss out of conservatives for years. Druyan, Tyson and MacFarlane were given free reign on this production.

Can't believe I have dedicated so much time addressing what even you must admit are pretty shallow but cocksure preconceptions based on little evidence. A bit of Googling will paint a fuller picture of the background to the show.

I can't force you, but I recommend you watch it, even if it doesn't tell you anything new. One episode in it looks to be a pretty remarkable TV achievement much like the original. Life, the universe and everything in 13 episodes.
 
My two points in the original post that you took issue with we're the fact that I didn't like the trailer because it made it look like the show was aimed at a broad audience which you have more or less agreed with and that it looked like an American version of Brian Cox's work which again you have more or less agreed with.

I never it said it was a bad show just that I didn't like the trailer and it looked similar to Brian Cox which is a good thing.
 
My two points in the original post that you took issue with we're the fact that I didn't like the trailer because it made it look like the show was aimed at a broad audience which you have more or less agreed with and that it looked like an American version of Brian Cox's work which again you have more or less agreed with.

I never it said it was a bad show just that I didn't like the trailer and it looked similar to Brian Cox which is a good thing.

I think your subsequent extrapolations painted a very different picture.

Anyway, this side show is over.

Cliff's notes... Cosmos is cool as **** people. First episode gives an appetiser for the places the following episodes is going to dig into. Check it out! :thumbsu::rainbow:
 

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I think your subsequent extrapolations painted a very different picture.

Anyway, this side show is over.

Cliff's notes... Cosmos is cool as **** people. First episode gives an appetiser for the places the following episodes is going to dig into. Check it out! :thumbsu::rainbow:

Really?
 
I just read two people arguing over trailers.

Does that say more about me or the people arguing?

They're just two guys argued over a trailer...

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