Comments

  1. mikeconley says

    Problem. In my country, Holland, “this content is currently unavailable.”

    Don’t you know? The cosmos only includes the United States.

  2. tfkreference says

    It’s also om Hulu (and only 44 minutes long – if the premiere was two hours, commercial-laden is an understatement).

  3. marko says

    The cosmos only includes the United States

    And is between 6 and 10 thousand years old by the best estimate.

  4. René says

    Thanks for the Hulu tips (I might subscribe at a later stage, but I’m not much of a movie watcher). Cosmos might air here next weekend, I heard. So, waiting for that at the moment.

  5. RickR says

    It’s also om Hulu (and only 44 minutes long – if the premiere was two hours, commercial-laden is an understatement).

    It was a one hour program. 44 minutes is typical for a 1 hr. broadcast with commercials.

  6. davem says

    Don’t you know? The cosmos only includes the United States.

    Is that the cosmos, or the cosmose? The latter seems confined to the US :0)

  7. says

    I don’t often comment to thank Prof Myers, but ta very much.

    I just watched the first 10 mins or so while on lunch and it looks beautifully made, even if it is presented by that bloke who killed Pluto.

    For those in the Uk (and prolly other places) try these firefox add ons/extensions

    https://mediahint.com/
    http://www.garethhunt.com/modifyheaders/

    Also, as a gift in return, the original radio series of Hitchhikers guide is being repeated on Radio 4 Extra

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03v379k/episodes/player

    Don’t know how you would play it tho’.

  8. colnago80 says

    It’s already available on BitTorrent in HD, with more then 8000 seeders. However, it says that it’s only 44 minutes long. If it took 2 hours to broadcast, that means that more then 1/2 the time was spent on commercials. Hardly worth watching if true. Possibly this is only the first half of the program, which seems more reasonable.

  9. otranreg says

    @13 Danny Butts

    I’m not in the UK, but the Hitchhiker’s Guide is available (Radio 4 usually is in general). Too bad it’s for only 4 more days.

  10. says

    We watched, well, something, last night, which was one hour long including commercials. If it’s a two-hour premier, then I guess some markets got it in two segments.

  11. cswella says

    I found the cartoon segments kind of cheesy.

    To be fair, this is supposed to be aimed at people under college age.

  12. Menyambal --- making sambal a food group. says

    It was NOT a two-hour program. Not never. It was a one-hour broadcast, which means about 44 minutes of content, leaving 16 minutes for commercials. Which is bog-standard for America.

  13. says

    @9 Kroos
    Probably better off finding a US based VPN than an actual proxy server. I’ve found these days standard proxy servers are pretty bad.

    VPN, due to their security, seems to be the best bet.

  14. Trebuchet says

    If your cable system has an “On Demand” feature, you can probably watch it there. I’ll be doing that later today. About the only good thing I can think of about Comcast.

  15. atheistblog says

    If its not for Ann, Tyson and Soter, this Cosmos would have been worse.
    The Sagan cosmos was more attractive because it has that human touch, human drama, this one has frigging cartoon, all because of idiot Seth. He butchered that dramatic element.
    Sagan Cosmos is Cosmos for adults. This cosmos is Cosmos for Kids.

  16. Wylann says

    atheist blog@24:
    While I don’t disagree with your conclusion entirely, I also think that Cosmos for kids might be a good thing. Actually, I watched the original Cosmos as a kid and enjoyed it immensely.

  17. mikeconley says

    While I don’t disagree with your conclusion entirely, I also think that Cosmos for kids might be a good thing.

    I think the general complaint is that virtually all science on television these days is ‘for kids’ — i.e., aimed at somewhere between a 10- and 16-year old age group. When I was a kid I was watching things like Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man, Clarke’s Civilisation, Burke’s Connections (the first series, which was a lot more interesting than the follow-ons), CBS Reports with serious journalism, and the list goes on and on. Even the popular science shows, Nova and Horizon, had far more content in them, and a lot fewer whiz-bang graphics and repetitive narration. They assumed that the audience was educated to a reasonable level.

  18. Trebuchet says

    Me @ 22:

    If your cable system has an “On Demand” feature, you can probably watch it there. I’ll be doing that later today. About the only good thing I can think of about Comcast.

    Forget I said that. They’ve blocked the Fast Forward function so you have to sit through all the ads.

    The show was ok, but I could have done with a whole lot less cartoon Giordano Bruno. And those asteroids near the beginning — ugh.

    Any response/outrage from the creationists yet?

  19. mikeyb says

    Fantastic.

    My only beef is Neil deGrasse Tyson’s is an atheist FAPP – I find his politically correct refusal to embrace the label and so called reasons a rather embarrassing exercise in mental gymnastics for an otherwise brilliant science communicator second to none.

  20. Thumper: Token Breeder says

    I found it online last night, but unfortunately ran out of time and didn’t get to watch it. I intend to do so tonight.

  21. mothra says

    @28 mikeyb-When dealing with faithiests, if you can avoid triggering their auto-brainwashed responses you can make great progress in education. Neil is playing the long game. The game that can win.

  22. says

    This is really quite funny. Right-wing and religious commentators have their undergarments in a bunch over this new version of Cosmos. They are hopping mad.

    http://www.salon.com/2014/03/11/watch_out_cosmos_the_holy_inquisition_is_not_happy_with_you/

    […] “Dear #cosmos, the origin of the universe actually is not mysterious. God had Moses write about it in the #Bible. You should read it sometime.” […]

    (Evolution News and Views, incidentally, is published by The Discovery Institute, a vehicle that seems primarily — although perhaps not so intelligently — designed to help religious right-wing millionaires fund attacks on the theory of evolution.)

    The revisionist “Cosmos” critique concerning Bruno goes like this: He wasn’t even really a scientist, and he was burned to death because of his theological heresies and not his belief in Copernican theory, (SO HE DESERVED IT!) and the main reason he showed up on “Cosmos” at all was because he was “the only one with even a passing association with a scientific controversy to be burned at the stake during this period of history.” […]

    “Cosmos” is labeled “a glossy multi-million-dollar piece of agitprop for scientific materialism” as if that’s a bad thing. I mean, I understand why religious zealots might think it’s cool to slander a science documentary in language suggesting it’s all a Communist plot. (The Big Bang — brought to you by Stalin and the good ole boys at the KGB.) But if there is one thing that the United States sorely needs right now, it’s more effective propaganda in support of facts and the scientific method. […]

  23. Shatterface says

    I think the general complaint is that virtually all science on television these days is ‘for kids’ — i.e., aimed at somewhere between a 10- and 16-year old age group. When I was a kid I was watching things like Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man, Clarke’s Civilisation, Burke’s Connections (the first series, which was a lot more interesting than the follow-ons), CBS Reports with serious journalism, and the list goes on and on. Even the popular science shows, Nova and Horizon, had far more content in them, and a lot fewer whiz-bang graphics and repetitive narration. They assumed that the audience was educated to a reasonable level.

    I listened to James Burke himself on The Infinite Monkey Cage a few weeks back and his conclusion is precisely the opposite of yours.

    If you rewatching those older programmes you’ll find they explain things in excruciating detail because they assume – correctly – that their audience knew little about the subject at that time.

    These days, with pop science filling the bookshelves, the audience for science shows is already quite clued up so assume what they are seeing is dumbed down.

  24. jefferylanam says

    If you are dismissing it because of the animated segments, you are not in the target demographic. Animation, for those who grew up on anime, is not “cartoons”. It’s a medium for presenting serious subjects with lower cost than live productions. The Giordano Bruno segment can be criticized for being overlong, in my opinion, but not for being animated.

  25. woozy says

    I always assumed the original cosmos was “for kids” (well, pre college). Animation? Cheesy? Well, the animatronic Tiktaalik had the cheese factor for me. For visuals during the historical sequence, I’d rather have illustration and limitted animation than actors and cheesy costumes myself.

    Seems kind of a strange conclusion to assume Seth MacFarland was responsible for the animation. I don’t think he had *anything* to do with the writing.

    “Dear #cosmos, the origin of the universe actually is not mysterious. God had Moses write about it in the #Bible. You should read it sometime.”

    …. sigh …. do you know what “mysterious” means? Yes, even if the origin of the universe was *exactly* as written in the bible, aren’t you in the least bit curious how that worked? Isn’t that “mysterious” and isn’t “mysterious” a good thing? … fucking prosaic and boring hypocrites … I’d say “their loss” except….

  26. rorschach says

    Sagan Cosmos is Cosmos for adults. This cosmos is Cosmos for Kids.

    My 6yo is all lined up and ready to watch this when it screens in Oz later this week on various Discovery or NatGeo outlets.

    After all we should never forget that it’s the kids who get fucked up most by zealous religionist parents or peers, so if there is a show now to help them dispel the “God did it” shit the godbothering leeches indoctrinate them with, I’m all for it.

    A series based on Dawkins’ “Magic of Reality” would be great as well.

  27. says

    @24:atheistblog

    The Sagan cosmos was more attractive because it has that human touch, human drama, this one has frigging cartoon, all because of idiot Seth. He butchered that dramatic element.

    MacFarlane is the only reason the new Cosmos exists at all, and he is also the only reason it is being shown on network television. The first science documentary to do that in… how long?

    He was an executive producer, not the director or script writer. No doubt he was consulted on some of the big decisions about the show, but he was not direct involved in the day-to-day decision making that went into creating the show.

    The show was fine. I enjoyed it, even though I know a good deal about astronomy. It’s not aimed at people who will happily tune into PBS for the latest Nova broadcast. It’s aimed squarely at people who don’t normally have any exposure to science at all. That’s why it’s on Fox, Sunday night, prime time.

  28. gearloose says

    Finally managed to view. (With low bandwidth, Hulu is unviewable, as only streaming video is on offer). What does work is thepiratebay, which is now reachable through the Sweden suffix .se

  29. dannicoy says

    I managed to watch it. So far I am pretty happy. It does suffer a bit from having a shorter running time. I didn’t mind the animations, though I did miss the period costume bits from the original series. I wonder if it was wise to do Giordano Bruno in the first episode. Not that I disagree with anything that was said but it was a little confused and could easily be taken the wrong way. I think Sagan’s Eratosthenes bit was a better introduction to the historical side of things. Having said that I am glad that they are covering different bits in both the series.

    On the whole I am eagerly awaiting the next episodes.

  30. tfkreference says

    My apologies for starting the two-hour rumor. I must have misread my TV Guide app.