No problem. Full episodes of COSMOS: A Spacetime Odyssey are available online. This may be a better way to watch it than the commercial-laden version on broadcast TV.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Problem. In my country, Holland, “this content is currently unavailable.”
Also on Hulu.com.
Problem. In my country, Holland, “this content is currently unavailable.”
Don’t you know? The cosmos only includes the United States.
It’s also om Hulu (and only 44 minutes long – if the premiere was two hours, commercial-laden is an understatement).
And is between 6 and 10 thousand years old by the best estimate.
Yeah, only for US viewers.
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.
It will be on in the UK starting at the weekend if anyone is interested, unfortunately not on council telly.
http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/shortcuts/2014/mar/09/cosmos-seth-macfarlane-remade-carl-sagan-tv-series
Yay!
@ Rene 1
You should use a proxy
It was a one hour program. 44 minutes is typical for a 1 hr. broadcast with commercials.
That was an excellent show. Thanks for the link.
Is that the cosmos, or the cosmose? The latter seems confined to the US :0)
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’.
In Canada, the Global website has it (with commercials).
I found the cartoon segments kind of cheesy.
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.
@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.
Where did this rumor that it was a 2 hour broadcast get started?
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.
To be fair, this is supposed to be aimed at people under college age.
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.
@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.
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.
Thanks for this, PZ. Just what I needed.
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.
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.
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.
Me @ 22:
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?
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.
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.
@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.
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/
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.
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.
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….
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.
@24:atheistblog
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.
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
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.
My apologies for starting the two-hour rumor. I must have misread my TV Guide app.