I was never a big fan of Cosmos, though I think that it did a lot of good in interesting people in space. I’m listening to a rerun on the SCIHD channel, and I recall why.
Sagan’s voice is too pompous, too arrogant, and the ubiquitous sonorous tone, and pauses, which lent themselves to parody (“billions and billions”) are really arrogant. I wish that he had written it, and someone else narrated.
I’ve never seen the videos. I read Cosmos when I was a pre-teen and it quite literally changed my life. He provided much needed perspective and coherency to the scientific worldview. It’s a damned shame that nobody has been able to fill his shoes since.
My wife recently viewed the 1st episode of Cosmos for the first time. I thought she would walk away after a few minutes (that’s nice dear, you’re watching your astronomy stuff again). Instead, she sat down and watched the whole episode. When it was over, I asked her what she thought. “It was wonderful!” She said she felt as if she had just gone to church, and for once, the sermon was absolutely perfect. Since then, she has shown much more interest in my “astronomy stuff”…
Yeah, too bad Ann Druyan didn’t host the show. She’s pretty easy on the ears – and she’s still pretty easy on the eyes, too.
Carl Sagan = b*tthead astronomer.
Some friends and I had some casual aquaintance with the man. It wasn’t just his voice that was arrogant and pompous. That was him to the core.
Sagan s*cks.
Jacob Bronowski rocks.
I always liked Cosmos, even with the pompousness. Sagan’s points were driven home by an early network use of analogies that were actually usable. Even with his attitude, you could also see his passion for space. Nothing wrong with that.
I recently started watching Connections again for the first time in 15 years or so, but it kind of stalled out, because the casually assumed lefty politics were too apparent and bugged me.
Carl Segan shot his credibility by promoting the “nuclear winter” theory through the public media rather than through the peer-review process.
I just read a fascinating book called “Comrade J” by Pete Early, which is about a Soviet, then Russian spy named Sergei Tretyakov. One of chapters is on “nuclear winter”, which was disinformation cooked up by the KGB to get the European governments to refuse the basing of the Pershing II missiles during the early 80’s. Remember the infamous TTAPS study? It was a sham (me thinks global warming is similarly a sham).
Carl Segan got on “Nightline” and claimed that the burning of those Iraqi oil wells at the end of the first gulf war would lead to global cooling. It didn’t, and he was discredited from that point on.
New work actually seems to show that the science behind nuclear winter still appears to hold up; – see Robock et al., 2007 and Toon et al., 2007. Just about all peer reviewed studies suggest some cooling in the wake of a significant nuclear exchange. I’m not keen on an experimental test.
Sagan was rash to make his statement on the Kuwaiti oil fields, but there is a lot of difference between a couple of burning oil fields and a nation of urban firestorms.
Carl Sagan’s Cosmos was the spark that set my love of the documentary ablaze. Having enjoyed Cosmos as much as I did, I was delighted to discover that the documentaries that preceded and heavily influenced it were, in fact, just as good if not much better than Cosmos was.
I encourage everyone who’s ever wished for “more Cosmos” beyond the original 13 episodes to immediately go out and watch Jacob Bronowski’s “Ascent of Man” (1973)… in my opinion, far superior to Cosmos in every way, but with the same look and feel (even some of the same music) because many of the same people worked on it (later, hired by Sagan and company). Check it out, you’ll be very glad you did.
lk
Carl Sagan’s Cosmos was the spark that set my love of the documentary ablaze. Having enjoyed Cosmos as much as I did, I was delighted to discover that the documentaries that preceded and heavily influenced it were, in fact, just as good if not much better than Cosmos was.
I encourage everyone who’s ever wished for “more Cosmos” beyond the original 13 episodes to immediately go out and watch Jacob Bronowski’s “Ascent of Man” (1973)… in my opinion, far superior to Cosmos in every way, but with the same look and feel (even some of the same music) because many of the same people worked on it (later, hired by Sagan and company). Check it out, you’ll be very glad you did.
lk
There has been an limited experimental test of sorts, it’s called Krakatoa August 26-27 1883.
I am watching Cosmos for the first time, and 5 minutes into the series I am already falling asleep. Whoever used the word sonorous to describe Sagan’s plodding, over inflected, self important speech was dead on. His presentation is a disaster, and he passes himself off as someone interested in the sound of his own voice, despite the tremendous wealth of information they’re presenting.
“Buillions……..buillions of stars…..”
Gawd.