As for cartoons vs actors…cartoons are cheaper. Especially when you figure you don’t have pay for crew, studios, sets, makeup, costumes. We do live in a cartoon world, and shabby animation is cheaper than good acting.

I suggest you check out The Mechanical Universe,

http://www.learner.org/resources/series42.html

an introduction to physics series that ran on PBS a few years back.

Animations were used very cleverly to illustrate mathematical and physical concepts, but actors and dramatic scenery gave the historical background. They also have a real physics teacher, a very talented one,doing the demonstrations and classroom experiments and lectures. All the episodes are still online and downloadable from that website. They are highly recommended. Treat yourself to a few episodes and see for yourself.

Its more textbookish than Cosmos, more of a teaching tool than entertainment, but it gives you an idea of what you can do with television, even without the heavy duty technology available today.

I like Cosmos, but it isn’t as captivating as the original, even with all the razzle-dazzle computer graphics. It isn’t even as good as “The Mechanical Universe”.

I finally managed to catch an episode of Cosmos and, lo and behold, the Creation theory made it in — in the guise of Sir Isaac Newton’s failed attempts at divining codification by any deity in the various Bible translations.

There’s quite a bit on the net covering the very real Newton Codes, but then I guess “Da Vinci Code” has a more flowing sound to it.

I enjoyed the show. The CGI was quite good, but the cartooning of historical characters needs a lot of work. Sagan actually used actors for his demos, but then it’s a cartoon world these days.

I am not anti-theist, but I am anti-fundamentalist. I respect reasonable mainstream religions and I envy those with the gift of faith a little bit. I think that reasonable religion is a plus for families. It seems to add some stability to their lives.

I think this production is directed toward the fundies and I hope it helps. We need to fight neo-luddite religious freaks wherever we find them.

The biggest problem with Cosmos is that it may be too obvious. When you have seen the very good Science Channel shows like “Through The Worm Hole”, “Beyond The Worm Hole”, “Universe”, and others, Cosmos is almost laughable. But then, it is not aiming at me.

But his death was deliberate, planned, and directly a result of a policy that was set in place to discourage questioning and speculation with intimidation and coercion. That’s what I got out of it, not that Bruno was a genius, but that his enemies were indeed evil, and most important, why and how they were evil.

To put it another way, modern science may disagree with the creationist message and the theist world view, but it doesn’t feel any need to exterminate them violently..

Tell ‘em to shape the hell up, no one likes those miserable old bastards. If they can’t be cheerful there is always hemlock, they can at least do the world a favor. If they think their life is tough, I make ‘em listen to my story and point out what candy-asses they are.

Now, ER isn’t really a grumpy old man. Too cheerful, constructive, not old enough. The only one I’m sure of is Bowser, and the dumb bastard hasn’t responded to my treatment method, yet. Maybe he will, but he seems challenged in the cheerful department. And the harder I work on him the worse he seems to get.

Maroon.

I didn’t understand the use of Giordano Bruno as their victim of suppression and unjust treatment for his theories. The opening statements were how scientific discoveries rely on evidence and are reviewed by other scientist and the ones that don’t hold up are disqualified. At the end of Bruno’s cartoon bio Tyson says that Bruno was just guessing and lucky about his views and had no evidence to back his theories. It seemed to contradict scientific philosophy in itself by using Bruno, but I guess showing a person’s life ending with burning at the stake for his lucky theories is a bigger bang for the means.

Have you checked out that album Robert Plant and Alison Krauss did together, “Raising Sand”?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxmTIONiqPQ

[youtube id="qxmTIONiqPQ" /]

On a positive note, I saw Robert Plant last year.