Comments on: NOVA Science Now premiers tonight

By: John

John — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 17:45:56 +0000

Wow, I can’t believe nobody commented yet on Mr Median in the “Wisdom of the Crowds” segment.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/0301/04.html

Is it just me or doesn’t he look a wee bit familiar?

By: ElHombre

ElHombre — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:22:38 +0000

I’ve got some good news. My almost-ten-year-old son watched the show Wednesday night. Now he wants to read about Dark Matter and is annoyed since he can’t find any books about it in the kid’s section of the library.

Thank you, NOVA!

By: ARP1234

ARP1234 — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:08:36 +0000

I like Neil Tyson, but I don’t like how Nova has been watered down
in the past decade or so.

Don’t believe me? Find some older Nova program from the 1980s
and going back to its origins circa 1975. They are less flashy, less
FX gimmicky, and spend more time explaining things and having
experts talking longer on said subjects. I would even go so far
as to say they are “calmer” than today’s programs. Kids and
adults don’t need to be hyped up any more than they already are.

These ScienceNOW programs distress me even more. Bite-size
bits of science info for the attention deficit disorder generation.
Water down our education even more and why even bother?

And I wish Tyson would stop trying to be funny. I don’t want
him to be humorless, but I feel he tries to be a bit too hip by
attempting to seem funny and clever more often than he should.

The world has enough comedians; what we need are more serious
scientists and science programs, not infotainment.

By: !AstralProjectile

!AstralProjectile — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 11:22:01 +0000

# Sailor on 25 Jun 2008 at 7:35 pm
Neil Tyson does an excellent primer course on astrology

Cool. I wrote a program called Astromates once. You enter your Sun sign, Moon sign and Rising, and it tells you who you should date. Maybe I shoud get him to endorse it.

By: tacitus

tacitus — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 06:10:50 +0000

Phil’s really only Neil’s friend because of just one thing….

Neil’s been a guest on the Colbert Report more than anyone else on the planet (true, dat).

Once Neil puts in a word to Phil gets a toehold on Colbert as a guest to hawk his new book, then Phil will drop him like an incandescent meteorite as he seeks to usurp Neil’s spot as Colbert’s BFF.

Just you wait and see!

By: Quiet Desperation

Quiet Desperation — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 06:02:53 +0000

Eh, I don’t want fun and informal science! I like shows where they actually say what a Planck length is and they have a dozen super old scientist guys telling us about quantum weirdness and how gravity might be a force from another universe. Now that’s *meaty* science that sticks to your ribs, baby! If at least one equation does not appear on the screen, it’s *wussy* science. WUSSY, I tell you!

Example:

WUSSY: String theory states that all matter is made up of little strings of energy. Wow!

MEATY: String theory arose partly from the observed relationship between mesons and Regge trajectories.

By: Ragutis

Ragutis — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 05:33:02 +0000

Good episode. I figured the Dark Matter one would be about all that would grab me, but the memory one was darn cool too. Neil’s awesome. Sometimes a little hokey, but his enthusiasm is infectious.

KC: Science Now! distills 3 topics down to shorter segments instead of devoting an hour to one topic in greater breadth or depth as NOVA does. Also more relaxed and humorous. It seems aimed for jr. high/high school aged kids, but plenty entertaining and educational for adults too.

Why isn’t Max Tegmark on more shows? I saw him on a BBC doc I downloaded a while ago, but here at best you see him chiming in with a sentence or two. I don’t know too much about him or his work, but he seems like another one of these guys that’s good at explaining difficult scientific concepts to lay people.

(Did the young astrophysicist remind anyone else of David Mitchell, or just me?)

Neil was good on Colbert, as usual. Now he’s Stephen’s B.F.F. “Best Friend Fysicist”.

Actually, Colbert seems quite a science fan. We need to recruit him. He has a lot of scientists on that you don’t see anywhere else. Can you think of anyone else that’s had Neil Tyson, Brian Greene or Ken Miller on multiple times? Were Neil Shubin and Tiktaalik on any other shows? Seen Lisa Randall anywhere else? Charlie Rose is the only other talk show host that I can think of that might feature scientists as often.

(If your agent/PR person doesn’t get you on both of those for the new book, Phil… give ‘em the boot!)