An impressive media blitz


PBS has already made a two-hour documentary on Homo naledi available for streaming, and will be airing it next week. I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet! I’m expected to go do my day job shortly, so it’ll have to wait until this evening for me.

Comments

  1. Rich Woods says

    Very impressive. The concept that such creatures (I’m not going to say people, not yet) so long ago might have developed a culture of depositing their dead in such a place is a lot to take in. What would be interesting to know is if the geology was any different in the past, if in some way the cave was exposed and more accessible — yet still so inaccessible that scavengers couldn’t find or access it. Imagine exploring that cave system in total darkness…

    Kudos to the volunteering scientists and the cavers. Just watching people squeeze themselves into narrow spaces underground made me want to panic and flee!

  2. cnocspeireag says

    I would love to see this, but it’s censored by its producer to viewers in the UK.
    Wouldn’t it be splendid if PZ and other bloggers refused to link to routinely censored material and simply described its content and explained why they wouldn’t provide the oxygen of publicity for the original censored source?

  3. says

    cnocspeireag

    You’d need pretty much everyone doing that. Always. Everywhere. And if the entire internet ignored this one, it wouldn’t make any difference. You have to fight copyright law at the roots, though, and it is only getting worse. Everywhere. In fact, you can tell the Beeb the same thing for me, although they aren’t always so bad.

    However, this is public television as well, so i would suggest trying to check it out again now it has actually aired. Although it is in part a WGBH production, and they have shown they want to exercise at least some of the senseless control which other copyright holders so love (and to their own detriment – which is another thing: They already hurt themselves with national barriers, release windows, and such. Refusal to link is not going to get much of their attention.)

    I’ve bypassed ABC (Australia) before and uploaded where people could find it. And quite frankly, i’d do it with this.

  4. Dago Red says

    cnocspeireag#2 : You can get a VPN (virtual private network) connection — there are many free VPN service providers out there (but they are often a bit technical to set up and they tend to be really slow) or you can subscribe to one of the many pay-service VPN providers (which offer an easy “instant” installation d/l for the non-techie computer user) for about $6 USD/mo (or $40 USD if you subscribe for a full year). This will give you access to at least one IP in virtually every media market in the world (copyright restrictions be damned!), Just a suggestion for you, or anyone, who may want a work around for this issue in their lives.

    I just watched this episode of Nova (from France — also barred due to copyright) and found it quite good (at least worth the VPN costs in terms of, perhaps, my moderately frugal budget).