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Science Television: Does Joe Public Care?
AVIDJockey writes "Wired News has an article about a new science television network. As someone who is a fan of TV shows that lack a shiny veneer of stupid, such as those found on UWTV, UCTV and ResearchChannel, I've wondered if hard science or technology programming will ever catch on with the general public. What do you think?"
A perfect example of this is the Spoof Science Series "Look Around You" which was on the BBC a couple years back (series two filming now...) which would not have been anywhere near as good without the narrator. If anyone wants a copy, and by copy I don't mean BitTorrent, then Amazon and other retailers have the DVD of series 1. It WILL make you laugh if you grew up with crappy science programmes like I did :) Enjoy...
The Science Channel is available on DirecTV. Watched a decent show a couple weeks ago on the science that goes into the construction of a new house and it's materials. Actually made watching paint dry interesting :p
Michalangelo Progr
I don't know about a continuous channel, but you can get a few hours per year from the Royal Institution's Christmas lectures which are shown on British TV (and available to buy). Alternatively, if you don't mind the lecturers being somewhat unfashionable, the BBC shows Open University courses overnight.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
Science is not only for the 'chosen' ones and television doesn't have to be made for stupids. In Sweden, for instance, the state television has no commercials and commercial interest since it it financed by a special fee with all that non-commecialism implies, i.e., sex, drugs, violence. On the other hand, it produces didactic programs that have won European awards, especially one for kids (Högaffla Hage). Knowledge and education should be available for everybody even for that 99.99999%+ who does not care about /. or the /.ers who consider themselves above Joe Public.
For those who haven't heard about the G4 takeover (gutting?) of TechTV, what basically happened is that Comcast bought the channel and put the CEO of the underperforming G4 network in charge. Thus, most of the staff of TechTV was fired, including a large chunk of hosts, and the remaining ones were moved to Los Angeles and given pay cuts. The only tech show that remains is The Screen Savers, which has been turned into a joke. They replaced the main host with a loud talking guy with no TV experience and with little background in computers besides a CS degree. Then, they cut the real "tech" content in half, replacing it with game reviews, game promotions, game giveaways, chit chatting, and Mac smashing. And to top it all off, they override the first 3 minutes of the show with videogame hockey highscores. They basically bought TechTV just for the distribution.
Also, it is evident that they don't treat their employees near as well as TechTV did. Since the first day of the takeover, when they were still in San Fransisco, the hosts seemed very very unsure of themselves. Before, they were quite confident - before their coworkers started getting the ax and themselves shoved around and forced to relocate with 30 days notice. Now, they seem much more uptight. They are actually having censors bleep out bad words coming from the hosts now - not just the callers (as they have with other G4 shows for quite some time) and the energy is gone. However, the show cannot be said to be anything but energetic, as the new host has enough energy to power an entire city.
No, that's possible. "Average" is not terribly specific, but the mean is a form of average and you can have 95% be below the mean. Consider these data points: 1,2,3,1,4,3,5,1,7,2,6,6,3,2,1,6,1,5,3,100. What's the mean? 8.1. What percent of data values are below the mean? 95%. The same thing would occur if you have 19 values of 99 and one of 100 (The mean is 99.95, but 19 of 20 is below it).
Now, there are other averages (mode, median, and range come to mind, and ISTR something about "upper and lower whiskers" but stats was LOOONG ago), and one would have to question a data set with one value way out of whack with the rest of the data, but you can have a 95% of things are below average if you have a weird distribution of data.
It's unrealistic, but there's nothing inherent to the definition of average that precludes it.
Until Comcast ruined TechTV with their annoyingly mindless G4 drivel. The quality of the programming on G4TechTV is hopelessly pathetic. Many of the great shows they did have on there have been dumped for reruns of Arena, Filter and PLayers.
Also, the majority of people who made the original TechTV worth watching have already jumped ship.
Who knows... maybe if were lucky, the Discovery channel will create it's own version of what TechTV once was... but for now, the outlook is pretty grim.
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Can Sciend and fun be put together? The answer in Two Words:
Myth Busters
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To take your example: if you present Fourier transforms as a series of integrals, then it might not be too interesting. But as a way of moving between time and frequency domains, they're something we use without knowing it all the time.
Your inner ear effectively does Fourier transforms! It takes a sound wave in, and has tiny hairs that vibrate at different frequencies, each one triggering a different nerve impulse. Similarly, the spectrum analyser, tone controls or graphic equaliser on your hi-fi system are working in the frequency domain. Piano keyboards, radio tuners, synthesisers, and many other things are all concerned with Fourier transforms and their effects. Most of use think of sound in the frequency domain!
Even if you restrict yourself to the mathematics, they underpin MP3 and pretty much all forms of audio compression; JPEG, MPEG and many forms of graphic compression; the circuitry behind CD players (those digital filters), and so on.
I'm sure a good director could come up with a really fascinating programme about them!
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Yeah, damn them, they split that off into a 24-hour channel called The Science Channel and a companion called Discovery Health which covers human biology and related issues.
Pretty rotten of them, huh?
There's also National Geographic Channel with shows like Seconds from Disaster and Megastructures. History Channel has Tactical to Practical, Modern Marvels and Guts & Bolts. History Channel International has a significant number of shows about how structures were built.
Yeah, too bad there isn't any decent science on TV.
Mythbusters has it all -- two geeks, skepticism, science, folklore, and stuff blowin up real good.
The concepts can only be parodied in a 45 minute program. Without the theoretical background, based in Math, the science is only an approximation.
So that's what we do when we brainstorm on new engine designs, or work out how to make Nuclear Fusion work. We simply "approximate" by saying "I want Nuclear Fusion", then we write a formula. Right.
Or maybe we figure out how an engine or fusion might work, then run the numbers to see if it will work. Don't believe me? Here's an equation for you:
k = f - l
What does that mean? Does it unlock the secrets of the universe for you? No! Of course not! It's just an equation to describe the total amount of fission by neutron capture. It doesn't explain that fission is accomplished by making the atom too heavy instead of blasting it apart with energetic collisions. Someone smart had to figure that part out!
Same thing with e=mc2, or Isp=EvG. These formulas merely descibe the physical properties of the universe in a form that allows us to know exactly how things will behave. Many times they are approximations themselves.
Besides, if someone gets interested enough in a scientific subject from watching a Science show, then they can spend the time with a book or on the Internet to look up the formulas.
I knew how a rocket worked when I became interested in the subject, but I learned to calculate mission profiles from the information present on the 'net. So why does a show have to drill math into your head before you even know what the math is for?
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