Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
3 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,818 Year: 3,075/9,624 Month: 920/1,588 Week: 103/223 Day: 1/13 Hour: 0/1


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   Cosmos with Neil DeGrass Tyson
Tempe 12ft Chicken
Member (Idle past 336 days)
Posts: 438
From: Tempe, Az.
Joined: 10-25-2012


(1)
Message 30 of 206 (721837)
03-12-2014 1:34 PM
Reply to: Message 21 by AZPaul3
03-12-2014 8:38 AM


Re: Do you guys know Brian Cox?
Yeah, Brian Cox is a great educator of science for what we are able to get access to here in the US. One of the few shining examples on The Science Channel. I will agree with Through the Wormhole being a reasonably decent show.
However, outside of that, it appears that The Science Channel falls into the same American television trap of including way too much pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. Although, I did start watching the NASA files, which seems to do a pretty good job debunking conspiracies. They do allow one conspiracy theorist to speak, but it is followed by a few scientists explaining why NASA came up with the answer it did to solve the problem, so people can accept the minimal evidence given by the conspiracy guy or the broad spectrum of evidence NASA's scientists are giving.
Another good thing I recently heard is that I Fucking Love Science is getting a show on The Science Channel coming up shortly, so I hope it will stay true to science as well since Elise tends to do a reasonable job avoiding pseudoscience on her Facebook page.
As for Cosmos, I have always been an enormous fan of NDT because of the ease he brings in understanding very complicated topics and the passion he brings in for science. I will say he seems somewhat reserved in the show, like he is going for the mannerisms of Sagan, but I hope they allow him to bring his passion about the Universe and scientific exploration more into future episodes. The only two real complaints I have heard from any region are these two:
1. Episodes are too short and interspaced with commercials. The original Cosmos was an hour long on Public Access, so no commercials got into the way of the series and it was actually an hour. This complaint then says that the new version seems too cramped in, like they were trying to cram in too much information in the alotted 44 minutes after commercial times. However, I think that is ignoring the fact that the first episode was an extremely broad overview of our place and time in the cosmos.
2. The story of Bruno does not admit that it was more his pantheistic views that earned him the ire of the Catholic Church and the Inquisition. While this is a fact, the Catholic Church ensured to include his belief in other worlds in his sentence of guilt, so it seems they were not oblivious to this fact and wanted to include it within his death sentence. This does show they were against this idea he proposed. Also, who really cares why they had him put to death by the Romans? It was all based upon thoughts and ideas why he was executed, so it still serves the purpose of showing how the religious institutions used ideas to have individuals put to death, thus placing roadblocks in the path of future scientific discovery.
Removing these two complaints, which seem like nitpicking to me, I have not heard any other negative reviews about the show and I think it is a good sign that we have some sort of educational programming being put onto the airwaves and also that the show garnered 8.5 million viewers in week one across all networks that showed the premiere. This doesn't include the DVR audience or any future online watches, which is a good sign for its overall ratings. Perhaps this could lead to a revival of some science programming within the structure of American television.
I F-ing Love Science is getting a TV Show

The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity. - Richard Dawkins
Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. - Issac Asimov
If you removed all the arteries, veins, & capillaries from a person’s body, and tied them end-to-endthe person will die. - Neil Degrasse Tyson
What would Buddha do? Nothing! What does the Buddhist terrorist do? Goes into the middle of the street, takes the gas, *pfft*, Self-Barbecue. The Christian and the Muslim on either side are yelling, "What the Fuck are you doing?" The Buddhist says, "Making you deal with your shit. - Robin Williams

This message is a reply to:
 Message 21 by AZPaul3, posted 03-12-2014 8:38 AM AZPaul3 has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 32 by NoNukes, posted 03-12-2014 3:53 PM Tempe 12ft Chicken has not replied

  
Tempe 12ft Chicken
Member (Idle past 336 days)
Posts: 438
From: Tempe, Az.
Joined: 10-25-2012


(1)
Message 76 of 206 (722481)
03-21-2014 12:34 PM


Isaac Newton
So, this week on Cosmos we will have the explanation of how we understand the movements of the heavenly bodies. This discussion cannot take place without a conversation about Isaac Newton and his mathematical genius that made all of these discoveries even possible. Well, I for one am very intrigued to see how Neil DeGrasse Tyson does with this story. From many of the things I have watched him in (Debates and otherwise) he always gets very animated and emotional when discussing Newton, who he readily admits is possibly the greatest scientist in history.
Here is a small snippet of conversation from BigThink, called My Man, Sir Isaac Newton:
My Man, Sir Isaac Newton
I think that each episode is going to continue to simply present the evidence and make the best case for how we know what we know. Kind of similar to the book, "A Short History of Nearly Everything." However, it is these moments (such as NDT talking about Newton) that I am most interested in because I think that this is where Neil's passion can really come through. We shall see, but I am excited to see this week's episode.

The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity. - Richard Dawkins
Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. - Issac Asimov
If you removed all the arteries, veins, & capillaries from a person’s body, and tied them end-to-endthe person will die. - Neil Degrasse Tyson
What would Buddha do? Nothing! What does the Buddhist terrorist do? Goes into the middle of the street, takes the gas, *pfft*, Self-Barbecue. The Christian and the Muslim on either side are yelling, "What the Fuck are you doing?" The Buddhist says, "Making you deal with your shit. - Robin Williams

Replies to this message:
 Message 77 by Taq, posted 03-21-2014 12:44 PM Tempe 12ft Chicken has not replied

  
Tempe 12ft Chicken
Member (Idle past 336 days)
Posts: 438
From: Tempe, Az.
Joined: 10-25-2012


Message 79 of 206 (722516)
03-21-2014 5:23 PM
Reply to: Message 78 by NoNukes
03-21-2014 3:46 PM


Re: Isaac Newton
I would have to watch the little preview videos they had on the website to verify, but I think that I remember them mentioning Kepler. Please note, this was only about a one minute teaser video.
I do know the video starts out with, "The Astronomer Johannes Kepler had demonstrated some eighty years before that the orbits of the planets around the sun were not perfect circles, but actually ellipses. That the closer a planet was to the Sun, the faster it moved. Why?"
They also mention Robert Hooke, Christopher Wren and Edmond Halley through the segment (not a lot of details just mentioned).
Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, Orbits of the Planets
ABE - In fact, now that I watched the preview again, it does not get into telling you anything about Newton, but rather what would eventually lead to his creation of calculus.
Edited by Tempe 12ft Chicken, : No reason given.

The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity. - Richard Dawkins
Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. - Issac Asimov
If you removed all the arteries, veins, & capillaries from a person’s body, and tied them end-to-endthe person will die. - Neil Degrasse Tyson
What would Buddha do? Nothing! What does the Buddhist terrorist do? Goes into the middle of the street, takes the gas, *pfft*, Self-Barbecue. The Christian and the Muslim on either side are yelling, "What the Fuck are you doing?" The Buddhist says, "Making you deal with your shit. - Robin Williams

This message is a reply to:
 Message 78 by NoNukes, posted 03-21-2014 3:46 PM NoNukes has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 81 by NoNukes, posted 03-22-2014 10:21 PM Tempe 12ft Chicken has not replied
 Message 92 by NoNukes, posted 03-26-2014 8:47 AM Tempe 12ft Chicken has not replied

  
Tempe 12ft Chicken
Member (Idle past 336 days)
Posts: 438
From: Tempe, Az.
Joined: 10-25-2012


(1)
Message 101 of 206 (723479)
04-02-2014 11:21 AM
Reply to: Message 100 by NoNukes
04-02-2014 10:12 AM


Re: Episode 4
NoNukes writes:
That brief mention of YEC seemed like a pretty thorough pounding to me. Nothing new for any of the posters here, but still a pretty explicit labeling of the idea of a 6-7000 year old universe as ridiculous. What struck me was that the debunking could have easily be omitted. It seems like the producers and Tyson are picking a fight.
Not sure the how many of the producers are involved in actively wanting to combat pseudoscience and scientific illiteracy. While I know that scientific literacy is one of Neil DeGrasse Tyson's big points when he speaks. He was asked if he wanted his children to be scientists and his reply was something along the lines of, "I don't care if theyear scientists, as long as they are happy. However, they will damn sure be scientifically literate." He then goes on to discuss how having a scientifically literate mind alters how you take in new information and fosters critical thinking.
Now, on the subject of Seth McFarlane as one of the producers, it is interesting to note that one of his primary reasons for backing the show (besides his love for it growing up) is to combat scientific illiteracy and pseudoscience in America. When you read what Seth has to say about our country, he seems sad to see the rampant dismissal of scientific evidence by the population because of lack of knowledge. He talks about how there are growing areas of pesudoscientific belief growing like wildfire in our country because of no effort to improve STEM education, areas like Anti-vaccine paranoia, global warming denialism, and the massive budget cuts to space exploration.
Interesting sometimes, such as in the case of Seth McFarlane, where you see this desire to remove scientific illiteracy from our culture. I did like Seth McFarlane's line in this interview of how cartoon fans and scientists all fall along the nerd scale so there is bound to be some overlap.
Seth McFarlane Interview, Los Angeles Times

The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity. - Richard Dawkins
Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. - Issac Asimov
If you removed all the arteries, veins, & capillaries from a person’s body, and tied them end-to-endthe person will die. - Neil Degrasse Tyson
What would Buddha do? Nothing! What does the Buddhist terrorist do? Goes into the middle of the street, takes the gas, *pfft*, Self-Barbecue. The Christian and the Muslim on either side are yelling, "What the Fuck are you doing?" The Buddhist says, "Making you deal with your shit. - Robin Williams

This message is a reply to:
 Message 100 by NoNukes, posted 04-02-2014 10:12 AM NoNukes has seen this message but not replied

  
Tempe 12ft Chicken
Member (Idle past 336 days)
Posts: 438
From: Tempe, Az.
Joined: 10-25-2012


(2)
Message 113 of 206 (723825)
04-09-2014 12:29 PM
Reply to: Message 110 by Omnivorous
04-08-2014 5:07 PM


Re: "Your Inner Fish"--3-part series on evolution hosted by Tiktaalik co-discoverer
Thank you for letting us know about this! I have to set my DVR up for it, but I had not heard anything about it leading up to it, which can be explained by the fact that I do not watch a lot of PBS. I will definitely ensure that I catch this program though.
As for Episode 5 of Cosmos, I think they are getting more into the swing of how they want this show to go each episode. While my favorite up until this point was the episode on Evolution, I think that this one has surpassed it and taken the number one overall spot up until this point. We will see how they continue forward if any episode beats it out. I was especially interested in the portions on Mo Tzu and Ibn Al-Haytham because these were individuals that my education growing up did not focus on. It is interesting to see how some of the rest of the world was moving forward while my ancestry was trapped in the darkness of repressive thought control. Very good episode!

The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity. - Richard Dawkins
Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. - Issac Asimov
If you removed all the arteries, veins, & capillaries from a person’s body, and tied them end-to-endthe person will die. - Neil Degrasse Tyson
What would Buddha do? Nothing! What does the Buddhist terrorist do? Goes into the middle of the street, takes the gas, *pfft*, Self-Barbecue. The Christian and the Muslim on either side are yelling, "What the Fuck are you doing?" The Buddhist says, "Making you deal with your shit. - Robin Williams

This message is a reply to:
 Message 110 by Omnivorous, posted 04-08-2014 5:07 PM Omnivorous has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 116 by NoNukes, posted 04-10-2014 3:50 AM Tempe 12ft Chicken has not replied

  
Tempe 12ft Chicken
Member (Idle past 336 days)
Posts: 438
From: Tempe, Az.
Joined: 10-25-2012


(3)
Message 151 of 206 (725403)
04-26-2014 9:56 PM
Reply to: Message 147 by Faith
04-26-2014 7:30 PM


Re: science versus mental conjuring
Faith writes:
I watched the Grand Canyon segment of Cosmos that RAZD recommended and found it the usual bald assertion of what is nothing but a belief about what happened in the past. He pointed to a Precambrian rock and told us that it represents a period of time a billion years ago when the only living things on the planet were a form of bacteria. Evidence? He didn't happen to mention the evidence but we know that it's the presence of fossils of those bacteria found in that rock. Period.
The one thing I was hoping you would notice about that segment was how the layers looked when he expanded them. Unlike a majority of the diagrams that have been used to show the different layers here, the CGI could use the seismic information and expand the layers showing how they are not flat all the way across, but that some pushed into layers above or below and were wider in some areas than others. I thought it was one of the best diagrams I have seen for showing this fact, especially with one of your consistent arguments about the Grand Canyon being how the layers are perfectly flat and show no signs of erosion.
Edited by Tempe 12ft Chicken, : No reason given.

The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity. - Richard Dawkins
Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. - Issac Asimov
If you removed all the arteries, veins, & capillaries from a person’s body, and tied them end-to-endthe person will die. - Neil Degrasse Tyson
What would Buddha do? Nothing! What does the Buddhist terrorist do? Goes into the middle of the street, takes the gas, *pfft*, Self-Barbecue. The Christian and the Muslim on either side are yelling, "What the Fuck are you doing?" The Buddhist says, "Making you deal with your shit. - Robin Williams

This message is a reply to:
 Message 147 by Faith, posted 04-26-2014 7:30 PM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 154 by Faith, posted 04-27-2014 2:51 AM Tempe 12ft Chicken has not replied

  
Tempe 12ft Chicken
Member (Idle past 336 days)
Posts: 438
From: Tempe, Az.
Joined: 10-25-2012


(5)
Message 195 of 206 (725996)
05-05-2014 4:20 PM


Newest Episode
On last night's episode (which I thought was a really good one) there were some great points that were brought up and interestingly enough he showed that sometimes science is not accepting of ideas, even though they will eventually be proven correct over time. I think this was an important thing to mention. It was different from the Lead episode where it was two competing scientists using the same data, but one was purposely misinterpreting it to benefit special interest groups.
In this episode, we got the story of Alfred Wegener, a man who had stunning insights into how the Earth is continually reshaped through continental drift. However, very few of his fellow scientists trusted his ideas on this matter. In fact, they even created an entire conference specifically to discredit this idea and Wegener ended up dying a laughing stock in his field, all while holding the correct ideas the entire time. I think for the show, it was an important thing to highlight that while religion, politics, and big business can get in the way of good science, sometimes all it needs is fellow scientists who cannot grasp your idea or because the evidence is sparse at the time.
Another highlight for me was learning about Marie Tharp, who I was unaware was the scientist responsible for verifying Wegener's ideas nearly 50 years after they were proposed. I am always excited to learn about more individuals who helped to solidify our knowledge about the world, especially ones who do not get much credit through regular discussions about the topics. With her refusal to avoid the implications of her maps, even if it went toward continental drift, she took a chance that could have cost her career and was instead successful. That is a great story to me.
Finally, I like that Cosmos unapologetically took on the climate change deniers this week. I think one of my favorite lines was, "The dinosaurs never saw that asteroid coming. What's our excuse?"

The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity. - Richard Dawkins
Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. - Issac Asimov
If you removed all the arteries, veins, & capillaries from a person’s body, and tied them end-to-endthe person will die. - Neil Degrasse Tyson
What would Buddha do? Nothing! What does the Buddhist terrorist do? Goes into the middle of the street, takes the gas, *pfft*, Self-Barbecue. The Christian and the Muslim on either side are yelling, "What the Fuck are you doing?" The Buddhist says, "Making you deal with your shit. - Robin Williams

Replies to this message:
 Message 196 by roxrkool, posted 05-05-2014 6:00 PM Tempe 12ft Chicken has seen this message but not replied
 Message 198 by Dr Adequate, posted 05-13-2014 2:57 PM Tempe 12ft Chicken has not replied
 Message 201 by foreveryoung, posted 06-05-2015 6:25 PM Tempe 12ft Chicken has not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024