dondon151 Posted March 21, 2014 Share Posted March 21, 2014 (edited) I'm surprised there hasn't already been a topic made for this show! Having read Sagan's book and having seen clips from the original Cosmos series, I had never been more excited for a television series before in my life when I first heard the announcement of a series reboot. None of the subject matter in the first two episodes thus far was really new to me (nor will, I think, content in future episodes), but I was still enthralled by the presentation. I think Neil deGrasse Tyson is an amazing presenter, and the narrative of the show is complemented extremely well by the visuals and the soundtrack. (And, like any good scientist, I was bothered by inaccuracies in the depictions of the asteroid belt in episode 1 and DNA in episode 2, but whatever.) Was anyone as excited for this as I was? Edited March 21, 2014 by dondon151 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bookofholsety Posted March 21, 2014 Share Posted March 21, 2014 (edited) as someone who really enjoyed Sagan's original, i've been looking forward to Tyson's for a while, and boy does it deliver on my hopes. it's excellent so far, although it could do with toning down how much they're fellating Sagan. like yeah he was really great and i'm pretty damn fond of him, and Tyson's story about meeting him was touching and all, but it really feels like they're pushing the Sagan worship way too far. that said, the bulk of it was certainly in the first episode, so i guess that'll be less prominent a thing until the finale other than that, though, absolutely no complaints Edited March 21, 2014 by bookofholsety Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dondon151 Posted March 21, 2014 Author Share Posted March 21, 2014 (edited) as someone who really enjoyed Sagan's original, i've been looking forward to Tyson's for a while, and boy does it deliver on my hopes. it's excellent so far, although it could do with toning down how much they're fellating Sagan. like yeah he was really great and i'm pretty damn fond of him, and Tyson's story about meeting him was touching and all, but it really feels like they're pushing the Sagan worship way too far. that said, the bulk of it was certainly in the first episode, so i guess that'll be less prominent a thing until the finale other than that, though, absolutely no complaints i have the feeling that they're going to tie every episode back to the original series in some way, seeing as how the original series was more of a personal project for sagan than this is for the producers involved. i did think that the throwback in episode 2 was a bit forced; as much as i love 4 billion years in 40 seconds, the clarity of evolution is lost without sagan's commentary in the original, where he explained some defining characteristics of each stage of evolution and where some life forms diverged on the evolutionary tree. here it just seemed like we transformed from polyps to humans, which is sure to confuse any less scientifically savvy viewer. i really do appreciate that the script is very careful about being as correct as possible. like i said earlier, the only qualms i have are with the artistic inaccuracies, though i did glimpse the preview of next week's episode and was pleased to see that they depicted a comet tail properly (it's always pointing away from the sun, because the tail is formed by the solar wind rather than drag caused by the comet's trajectory). Edited March 21, 2014 by dondon151 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chiki Posted March 22, 2014 Share Posted March 22, 2014 I had an issue with the assertion that bacteria could "see" because they developed receptor cells. That's just wrong, since bacteria don't have any phenomenal experiences. They can still sense it, but there is no "seeing" from the point of view of the bacteria. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phoenix Wright Posted March 22, 2014 Share Posted March 22, 2014 (edited) yeah, i was pretty excited. i don't care about the scientific inaccuracies at all (because, ultimately, they don't matter. otherwise, tyson wouldn't have allowed it). what i dislike is the intentional oversimplification of the historical aspects featured on the show. the original cosmos was basically half-space and half-history. it was fantastic. the new series is dumbed down to the point that i feel like it's insulting to viewers. i knew about tyson's meeting with sagan before the previous episode, but to hear it in greater detail was really touching. i hope to meet one of my heroes in astrophysics one day. jonathan fortney is a professor at my school and i want to do research under him soooo bad. i really like tyson's charisma. i think he's comparable to sagan, which is apparently not a very common opinion. overall, though, the visuals, man. the visuals. jupiter's atmosphere in the first episode was drop-dead gorgeous. i want that to be my wallpaper but i'm too lazy to screen-grab (if anyone has a high-res version send it my way!) Edited March 23, 2014 by Phoenix Wright Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dondon151 Posted March 24, 2014 Author Share Posted March 24, 2014 this most recent episode was pretty good. i greatly preferred the story of halley and newton to that of bruno in the first episode. as much as i loved the narrative aspects, i would still much prefer there to be more of a balance between history and science. the history is compelling, but cosmos doesn't seem to be trying very hard to engage its viewers in any sort of mental exercise this time around. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bookofholsety Posted March 24, 2014 Share Posted March 24, 2014 to be fair, at this point in the original wasn't the balance fairly similar? as i recall, the first three episodes were dominated primarily by the histories of eratosthenes, the alexandrian library and johannes kepler, with the more substantive stuff coming slightly later on (i'm less certain about the original episode two, but the new episode two didn't lean much on the history either, at least compared to the other two so far) also wow they got through an entire episode without putting their mouth anywhere near sagan's dick. i'm impressed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phoenix Wright Posted March 24, 2014 Share Posted March 24, 2014 i liked this episode. the style of narration, namely simplifying the history so as to assume one side "good" and the other "bad," is getting annoying. it's my least favorite part of the new series. it's to be expected when telling newton's story, though, i guess. tyson almost loves newton more than his family. almost. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dondon151 Posted March 25, 2014 Author Share Posted March 25, 2014 they did pay a fair amount of lip service to hooke, though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jiodi Posted March 25, 2014 Share Posted March 25, 2014 Carl Sagan was so god damn far ahead of his time. The subtext of the original Cosmos holds up so well in this day and age and the fact that the new Cosmos is building off Sagan's pet project and paying tribute to him I don't mind one bit how often he has been mentioned. I noticed the asteroid belt thing and giggled a little. Could you imagine an artistic representation of the actual asteroid belt? I will quickly create one for you in text: {asteroid} {asteroid} Very exciting, amirite!? Anyways, I know I should be criticizing the same stuff that's already been criticized here but it's just freaking awesome that this is being put out there. We need this kind of stuff nowadays, we need to make people excited about science. I'll stop fanboying and nerdgasming all over this thread now D: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dondon151 Posted March 26, 2014 Author Share Posted March 26, 2014 I noticed the asteroid belt thing and giggled a little. Could you imagine an artistic representation of the actual asteroid belt? I will quickly create one for you in text: {asteroid} {asteroid} and even that would be too high of an asteroid density! we would be lucky if tyson's spaceship passed by an asteroid at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dondon151 Posted March 31, 2014 Author Share Posted March 31, 2014 the sagan fellatio is strong in this one recent episode started out great. i wish they had taken time to explain why light is the cosmic speed limit rather than dive into so much speculation about black holes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jiodi Posted March 31, 2014 Share Posted March 31, 2014 I have not watched it, yet. Do you happen to listen to NDT's podcast, StarTalk? A couple weeks ago he said "Billions and billions" and I laughed out loud XD Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dondon151 Posted April 1, 2014 Author Share Posted April 1, 2014 no, i like listening to tyson give presentations, but he does trend toward obnoxious when in group discussions because he always claims the spotlight. startalk is something that i could listen to in the background, but then i'll just be neglecting the discussion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dondon151 Posted April 22, 2014 Author Share Posted April 22, 2014 earlier episodes of cosmos have been all over the place in terms of subject matter, but the threads in this latest episode tied in with each other beautifully. props to them for telling a story about a scientist whom i knew almost nothing about! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jiodi Posted April 22, 2014 Share Posted April 22, 2014 It's cool seeing stuff come together. I haven't watched the most recent, but the prior week's episode was going into the sense of smell and I noticed the pattern of each episode going into a sense and thought that was really cool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jiodi Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 Farraday didn't know math!!!!! That's awesome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dondon151 Posted May 13, 2014 Author Share Posted May 13, 2014 i was hugely impressed by faraday's willingness to do all of those royal institute christmas lectures. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phoenix Wright Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 i'm far behind, on ep. 6. ep. 8-10 seem extremely interesting to watch. ep. 12-13 will probably be my favorite episodes. i am disappointed that there will not be an episode on exoplanets and planetary systems, as far as i can tell. i can understand why, but still, i wanted to know what ann druyan had to say about it. and i wanted ndt to talk about my area/future area of study... :( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phoenix Wright Posted May 20, 2014 Share Posted May 20, 2014 ep. 11 was absolutely fantastic. very interesting theory proposed as well, the possible sharing of life amongst most of the inner planets for the the billion years or so is quite fascinating to think about. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rehab Posted May 20, 2014 Share Posted May 20, 2014 I caught it last night, Jesus it owned Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dondon151 Posted May 20, 2014 Author Share Posted May 20, 2014 i kind of dislike the amount of time dedicated to an unsubstantiated theory (the panspermia hypothesis), but the themes of the episode were very good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jiodi Posted May 29, 2014 Share Posted May 29, 2014 i kind of dislike the amount of time dedicated to an unsubstantiated theory (the panspermia hypothesis), but the themes of the episode were very good. I found it interesting, but that was really because I hadn't heard of it in such detail before. The thought of picking shit up from our solar system's travels around the galaxy is really provocative. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chiki Posted May 29, 2014 Share Posted May 29, 2014 (edited) I didn't know where else to post this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/massimo-pigliucci/neil-degrasse-tyson-and-the-value-of-philosophy_b_5330216.html This gave me a good laugh. I think he's right to say that philosophy hasn't had any contributions to physics in the last 100 years, though. each of which falls so far out of what you can deduce from your armchair that the whole community of philosophers Don't mathematical physicists make the most contributions nowadays, for example in string theory? That's all from the armchair. ut the frontier of the physical sciences does not appear to be among them. This is complete crap. People like David Chalmers, Richard Montague and Noam Chomsky etc. are/were leaders in cognitive science and formal semantics and syntax, respectively. Arguably the hardest problem in science (the problem of consciousness) is, ironically, mainly tackled by philosophers, though some scientists like Giulio Tononi have important contributions too. Edited May 29, 2014 by Chiki Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jiodi Posted May 29, 2014 Share Posted May 29, 2014 As huge a fan of NDT as I am, I have to agree with you here. Science was built off of philosophy. Philosophy allows us to ponder the more abstract things that affect us and apply what we learn from science to those abstracts. At least that's what I take from it, at a holistic level. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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