Here's the internet as a force for good, education, etc. - now that the BBC has largely abandoned its lofty Reithian ideals, it's nice to know that you can get hold of some genuinely interesting stuff on YouTube from back in the days before wall-to-wall reality TV cookery marathons and endless re-runs of Guess My Arsehole. Here's episode one of James Burke's Connections from 1978, divided up into five ten-minute chunks (let's call them, for the sake of argument, parts one, two, three, four and five). Burke is a bit of a loony, but he knows how to keep your attention despite some intellectually challenging concepts being thrown around.
Slightly more heavyweight is Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent Of Man, also available in a lavish DVD box set. I also have a soft spot for Carl Sagan's Cosmos, if only to hear the five-course meal Sagan makes of saying the program's title.
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3 comments:
Perfect as a snowflake eh?
Organic as a dandelion seed?
Get me a seat on that ship that Sagan's setting sail in, would ya?
Heyyyy thangyew.
I blame Carl Sagan for the obligatory "we'll be going on a journey" intro that gets tacked on the front of every multi-part documentary series now.
Also, he says: "we'll encounter.....stars of diamond.....atoms as massive as suns and universes smaller than atoms". None of this, of course, is actually true. I think old Carl might have had one too many puffs on the old bong at one of those crazy physics lab parties. It's all still great stuff though.
We arrrre starrrrr dust
Weee are goal-adenn
Annnd we've gat to get ourselves
Back to the garrrrden.
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