Choose the New PBS Science Show

chinmay7 writes "PBS has posted three different pilots for a new science show, and they want viewers to weigh in and help choose one as the regular science feature. All three pilots are viewable as vodcasts. Wired Science aired on January 3rd. The pilot certainly is polished, as one might expect from Wired Magazine, and deals with interesting topics: 'Meet rocket-belt inventors, stem cell explorers and meteorite hunters.' Science Investigators (air date: January 10) seems to be the most 'science' show: 'The investigators examine 30,000-year-old Neanderthal DNA, vanishing frogs, mind-boggling baseball pitches and more.' 22nd Century (air date: January 17) is pretty gimmicky and loud for my taste, but delivers interesting content — 'In the coming decades will all our brains be wired together like networked computers?' So watch and vote."

Comments

Direct link to 22nd century

[Mr_Perl]

For the browser-plugin challenged:

22nd Century
mplayer mms://wm.z1.mii-streaming.net/media/pbs/windows/ge neral/windows/22ndcentury/22ndcentury_384.wmv

(you'll have to remove a gap as entered by /.'s formatting "system")

While I'm watching that, anyone else feel like digging through the source for the others?

The videos

[ion_]

• Wired Science, 170 MiB
• Science Investigators, 299 MiB
• 22nd Century, 155 MiB

Re:no more 1hr documentaries

[maynard]

Have you compared the NOVA that is broadcast today with what was originally done in the late seventies through the eighties? It has been a pretty dramatic dumbing down over the last few decades. Nature and Frontline, though, are just as good as ever. So... yeah: You summed it up pretty nicely.

"So watch and vote."

[fyngyrz]

Better yet, turn the TV off, and read something like Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science", Dawkins "The God Delusion" or even something off the wall like McCutcheon's "The Final Theory", which will make you at least re-think what you know, though in the end you'll probably come to the same conclusion I did, which is, he's a crackpot. But a really clever one, especially if you read the whole book! :)

PBS... well, it isn't going to teach you any significant amount of science. It's 99.9% a complete waste of time, just like all the other pre-digested gee-whiz shows. If you want entertainment, by all means, head for the TV. But don't kid yourself that a TV show split over multiple subjects is going to be illuminating. It's just drool-fodder.

Re:"So watch and vote."

[fyngyrz]

Personally, I take it that his ego has to be ignored; it definitely infects the writing style. However, the ideas are new, quite elegant, and very, very basic. I don't think they're a rehash, though there are topics (cellular automata) that have had some work done on them. He's not just talking about cellular automata themselves, he's talking about the way the universe works and he actually shows the same mechanisms underlying large portions of math that underlie everything from shell growth to turing machines. Not the other way around. He then turns some ideas over about how we think, reason... I wouldn't sell the book short if I were you. If its too spendy (about $50, I think) get your library to get a copy or just read it online.

I read it somewhat online, then decided I wanted it in my library and bought it, then I started over and read it to the end. I really, really enjoyed it.

Re:"So watch and vote."

[poopdeville]

However, the ideas are new, quite elegant, and very, very basic. I don't think they're a rehash, though there are topics (cellular automata) that have had some work done on them. He's not just talking about cellular automata themselves, he's talking about the way the universe works and he actually shows the same mechanisms underlying large portions of math that underlie everything from shell growth to turing machines.

The ideas are not new. The Santa Fe Research Institute has been studying all of this stuff since the 70s.

He is not doing science in this book, either. Sure, he talks about the way he thinks the universe works. But he doesn't do any experiments to verify his assertions.

Nova?

[Coucho]

I'm sure this has been said already, but why not just reinvest all that funding into Nova? It has truely been one of the best science shows on PBS today.

Re:Anything educational please.

[sholden]

Science is neither of those two things.

Taking a non-reputable study and doing it afresh is perfectly valid science.

There is nothing unscientific about publishing without peer review. In fact it is done *all* the time. Technical Reports are not peer reviewed for example. Peer review is an import an important part of science, however the statement "science also requires that nothing be published without peer review and approval" is completely false.