Is everything we know about the universe wrong?

Did anyone else attempt to watch last night's Horizon? It looked to me like
the recently qualified media studies guys were on the rampage again,
exploding flash, bang. wallop, galaxies at every given opportunity,
interwoven with what looked like in some parts a gothic horror movie, is it
just me, becoming an old dinosaur? because I much preferred the old more
serious scientific presentations of yesteryear, for those who didn't see it
here's a link to a few screen grabs from the programme.
http://www.intempo.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/horizon.htm/

"Ivan" wrote in message
om...
Did anyone else attempt to watch last night's Horizon? It looked to me like
the recently qualified media studies guys were on the rampage again, exploding
flash, bang. wallop, galaxies at every given opportunity, interwoven with what
looked like in some parts a gothic horror movie, is it just me, becoming an
old dinosaur? because I much preferred the old more serious scientific
presentations of yesteryear, for those who didn't see it here's a link to a
few screen grabs from the programme.
http://www.intempo.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/horizon.htm/


Whatever it may or may not have been in the past, today's "Horizon" is
pseudo-intellectualism for ****wits and eejits who like to pretend they're
"clevva".

"Ivan" wrote in message
om...
Did anyone else attempt to watch last night's Horizon? It looked to me
like the recently qualified media studies guys were on the rampage again,
exploding flash, bang. wallop, galaxies at every given opportunity,
interwoven with what looked like in some parts a gothic horror movie, is
it just me, becoming an old dinosaur? because I much preferred the old
more serious scientific presentations of yesteryear, for those who didn't
see it here's a link to a few screen grabs from the programme.
http://www.intempo.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/horizon.htm/

like everything else it's dumbed down. Just switch on ITV London at 8pm on
ANY Saturday evening and you will know EXACTLY what I mean.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

--
John the West Ham fan

In article , Ivan
writes
Did anyone else attempt to watch last night's Horizon? It looked to me
like the recently qualified media studies guys were on the rampage
again, exploding flash, bang. wallop, galaxies at every given
opportunity, interwoven with what looked like in some parts a gothic
horror movie, is it just me, becoming an old dinosaur? because I much
preferred the old more serious scientific presentations of yesteryear,
for those who didn't see it here's a link to a few screen grabs from
the programme. http://www.intempo.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/horizon.htm/

Sound levels were all over the place, too.
--
SimonM
----- TubeWiz.com -----
Video making/uploading that's easy to use & fun to share
Try it today! (now with DFace blurring)

On Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:54:33 -0000, "jamie powell"
wrote:


"Ivan" wrote in message
. com...
Did anyone else attempt to watch last night's Horizon? It looked to me like
the recently qualified media studies guys were on the rampage again, exploding
flash, bang. wallop, galaxies at every given opportunity, interwoven with what
looked like in some parts a gothic horror movie, is it just me, becoming an
old dinosaur? because I much preferred the old more serious scientific
presentations of yesteryear, for those who didn't see it here's a link to a
few screen grabs from the programme.
http://www.intempo.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/horizon.htm/


Whatever it may or may not have been in the past, today's "Horizon" is
pseudo-intellectualism for ****wits and eejits who like to pretend they're
"clevva".


I take it then that you record it for multiple viewing opportunities?

--
Cheers

Peter

On 10/03/2010 13:43, Ivan wrote:

Did anyone else attempt to watch last night's Horizon?

As I said on Facebook at the time (bah, Web 2.0 nonsense, etc. ;-) ) -
"This would be unbearably slow, repetitive and downright patronising if I
was still in infant school. Look! Big Bang! Explosion! Three times
already! Yes! I heard you the first time!"

I could scarcely believe my ears when the programme started to slowly
explain to me that "Scientists" (you know - white coats, beards,
spectacles - let's call them "Boffins") use "Math-e-mat-ics" (you know,
unexplained greek letters, whiteboards, graphs painted on brick walls,
let's call it "Magic") to do "Sciencey Stuff". This was followed by
repeated shots of a weather balloon being inflated, punctuated
occasionally by another "here's how creation works" explosion - sparks
- steel balls - planets sequence. I gave up.

After having done better things through the middle half hour of the
programme I returned with 10 minutes left to find they were only just
getting around to introducing the cosmologist proposing the "dark flow"
theory. He was introduced with a sequence that implied we were for some
reason supposed to be surprised to discover he was a cosmologist, 50
minutes into a programme about cosmologists and cosmology. So, it took 50
minutes before they actually got to the title subject matter which they
pretty much then skipped over - it's multiple universes, innit? Great,
thanks for that.

I know Horizon has been dumbed down over the last few years, but compared
with the new low of last night's broadcast, I've seen higher quality
science programming in a commercial for Pantene Pro V :-)

There seem to be three options:

* Make it less patronising, more informative and more intelligent.
* Just give up and axe it.
* Move it to BBC 3 where it presently belongs. It should sit nicely
between other excellent BBC 3 offerings such as "F*ck Off, I'm A
Hairy Woman" and "Fat Men Can't Hunt" (and you have *no idea* how
much I wish that those titles were fictional).

On the bright side, it may have been little more than coffee table
viewing, but at least "Wonders Of The Solar System" managed to show more
than about three different repeated sequences. It seemed to include some
pretty good quality and reasonably up to date pictures and video footage
obtained from currently in progress space missions of various types. Not
terribly ground breaking or technical, but enjoyable all the same IMHO.

--
TTFN, Andrew Hodgkinson
Find some electronic music at: Photos, wallpaper, software and mo
http://pond.org.uk/music.html http://pond.org.uk/

On Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:43:33 GMT, Ivan wrote:
Did anyone else attempt to watch last night's Horizon? It looked to me like
the recently qualified media studies guys were on the rampage again,
exploding flash, bang. wallop, galaxies at every given opportunity,
interwoven with what looked like in some parts a gothic horror movie, is it
just me, becoming an old dinosaur? because I much preferred the old more
serious scientific presentations of yesteryear, for those who didn't see it
here's a link to a few screen grabs from the programme.
http://www.intempo.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/horizon.htm/

Yes, it was prety cringeworthy. Every time they mentioned "big bang" they
cut to footage of (the same) gas filled balloon being ignited. Every time
they mantioned "inflation" - guess what? same footage of same balloon being
filled.. I don't know where they got the idea that they *must* have a pictogram
for every phrase they utter, but it was getting like a bad game of charades.

"Petert" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:54:33 -0000, "jamie powell"
wrote:


"Ivan" wrote in message
.com...
Did anyone else attempt to watch last night's Horizon? It looked to me like
the recently qualified media studies guys were on the rampage again,
exploding
flash, bang. wallop, galaxies at every given opportunity, interwoven with
what
looked like in some parts a gothic horror movie, is it just me, becoming an
old dinosaur? because I much preferred the old more serious scientific
presentations of yesteryear, for those who didn't see it here's a link to a
few screen grabs from the programme.
http://www.intempo.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/horizon.htm/


Whatever it may or may not have been in the past, today's "Horizon" is
pseudo-intellectualism for ****wits and eejits who like to pretend they're
"clevva".


I take it then that you record it for multiple viewing opportunities?

Most certainly not - sorry old bean.
If you've missed it, I'm sure it's on iPlayer, but then you're probably far too
stupid to work out how to use that.

On 10/03/2010 13:43, Ivan wrote:
Did anyone else attempt to watch last night's Horizon? It looked to me
like the recently qualified media studies guys were on the rampage
again, exploding flash, bang. wallop, galaxies at every given
opportunity, interwoven with what looked like in some parts a gothic
horror movie, is it just me, becoming an old dinosaur? because I much
preferred the old more serious scientific presentations of yesteryear,
for those who didn't see it here's a link to a few screen grabs from the
programme. http://www.intempo.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/horizon.htm/

A dire programme.

Five mins of content padded out with crass 'metaphore' - I get it -
inflating (cue a balloon).

Then some black gloop on the floor.

Repeat ad nauseum...

How this got past the first script meeting escapes me.

G

On 10/03/2010 1:54 PM, jamie powell wrote:


Whatever it may or may not have been in the past, today's "Horizon" is
pseudo-intellectualism for ****wits and eejits who like to pretend they're
"clevva".

So you must really like it.

--
JohnT