OT - Patrick Moore RIP

On Mon, 10 Dec 2012 11:45:23 +0100, Martin wrote:

I've met many courteous Germans - I've also met arrogant ones. Much like
the English.

I've met and worked with many good, courteous, friendly Germans and a
few arrogant ones.

Ding. In fact, the vast majority of Germans I've met have been
friendly and courteous and even most of the unfriendly ones had good
manners.

On 09/12/2012 23:13, CD wrote:
The highlight of the month for me on TV, & here's to hoping TSAN carries on
in his memory with his supporting regulars.


i'm always annoyed that they cancel top of the pops for it once a month
- are the bbc 4 schedules really that crammed?


--
Gareth.
That fly.... Is your magic wand.

TOTP has no place on a supposedly thinking man's channel such as BBC4.
I wish they'd stop subconsciously equating old = thinking and filling
the channel with dross that no-one of any intellectual credibility
used to watch when it was first broadcast (unless, perhaps, it was to
take the p*ss) let alone now.

On Mon, 10 Dec 2012 12:30:10 +0000, the dog from that film you saw
wrote:

i'm always annoyed that they cancel top of the pops for it once a month
- are the bbc 4 schedules really that crammed?
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On 10/12/2012 13:04, Java Jive wrote:
On Mon, 10 Dec 2012 12:30:10 +0000, the dog from that film you saw
wrote:

i'm always annoyed that they cancel top of the pops for it once a
month are the bbc 4 schedules really that crammed?

TOTP has no place on a supposedly thinking man's channel such as BBC4.
I wish they'd stop subconsciously equating old = thinking and filling
the channel with dross that no-one of any intellectual credibility
used to watch when it was first broadcast (unless, perhaps, it was to
take the p*ss) let alone now.

Don't worry, any more 'Operation Yew Tree' arrests, and the Beeb will be
stuffing the entire TOTP archive into a Weircliffe

--
Mark
Please replace invalid and invalid with gmx and net to reply.

www.paras.org.uk

On 10/12/2012 07:09, John Hall wrote:
It's a good rant by the Telegraph, which never misses a chance to attack
the BBC, but not borne out by the facts. I've watched many recent
science documentaries on the BBC, presented by the likes of the highly
qualified academics Jim al-Kalil (physics), Marcus du Sautoy (maths) and
Brian Cox (astronomy), where (hardly surprisingly given the subject
matter) there has been no mention of global warming. In fact I would
suggest that this is something of a golden age for the science
documentary, as there seem to have been more in the last couple of years
than I can ever remember.

Sorry, I have to disagree. The presenters you name obviously know their
stuff, so it is presumably their producers who force them to dumb it
down to an almost intolerable level. And they seem determined to spend
our licence fees on their travel budget, jetting off to another
continent every other minute, whether the story-line needs it or not.

I've just started watching my recording of the programme on the Voyager
missions broadcast on 22nd Oct and the first *eight* minutes were taken
up with telling us about the what other events happened around the time
it was designed and launched, e.g. playing us pop music tracks popular
then, and telling us that Elvis had just died. I didn't give up and
delete the recording at that point, but it was a darned close thing.

(Though there has never been a series as good
as Jacob Bronowski's "The Ascent of Man", which I am old enough to have
watched when it was broadcast some thirty or forty years ago.)

Agreed. Many have said that it was Patrick Moore's books which turned
them into scientists - for me they were probably a factor, but it was
also the excellent radio and TV programmes by the likes of Fred Hoyle,
Bernard Lovell, and Hermann Bondi (as well as Bronowski of course). And
history lectures by A.J.P. Taylor. There's absolutely nothing like any
of these nowadays. So it's not surprising that our universities are
half full of people who just want to get a degree in law, or media
studies, or something equally useless.

But I mustn't let myself be side-tracking from saying what a great
presenter and character Sir Patrick was.

Indeed. I got to know him a bit in the late sixties early seventies,
and found him very good company as well as being a very knowledgeable
and able astronomer. When people asked him about his political views,
he used to say that he was a bit to the right of Genghis Khan. This may
have been a slight exaggeration, but it didn't detract from the
excellent work he did. I've seen some comments about his misogynist
views, but my experience is that he did a lot to encourage both sexes to
get interested in astronomy, and in Sky at Night programmes in recent
years he seems to have included a good many female scientists. He will
be badly missed.

--
Clive Page

In article , Mark Carver wrote:

i'm always annoyed that they cancel top of the pops for it once a
month are the bbc 4 schedules really that crammed?

I wouldn't feel personally deprived in any way if they cancelled Top of the
Pops forever.

On the other hand...

Don't worry, any more 'Operation Yew Tree' arrests, and the Beeb will be
stuffing the entire TOTP archive into a Weircliffe

Soviet-style rewriting of the past isn't good either. Like it or not,
popular culture is part of social history, and regardless of Savile's
extracurrucular activities he did play a significant part in it. We
shouldn't obliterate all references to something that happened in the past
just because we don't like it now. We should be concerned if we see any
sign of this happening, regardless of the subject matter.

Rod.
--

In article , Clive Page
wrote:
On 10/12/2012 07:09, John Hall wrote:
It's a good rant by the Telegraph, which never misses a chance to
attack the BBC, but not borne out by the facts. I've watched many
recent science documentaries on the BBC, presented by the likes of the
highly qualified academics Jim al-Kalil (physics), Marcus du Sautoy
(maths) and Brian Cox (astronomy), where (hardly surprisingly given
the subject matter) there has been no mention of global warming. In
fact I would suggest that this is something of a golden age for the
science documentary, as there seem to have been more in the last
couple of years than I can ever remember.

Sorry, I have to disagree. The presenters you name obviously know their
stuff, so it is presumably their producers who force them to dumb it
down to an almost intolerable level. And they seem determined to spend
our licence fees on their travel budget, jetting off to another
continent every other minute, whether the story-line needs it or not.

I suspect there is some truth in that. Overall I think the programmes made
by the presenters mentioned above tend to be good, but marred by too much
'candy' probably added by the director or photographers.

What does bother me is that the programmes all tend to start from square
one, and assume the viewers are clueless about maths or the basics. We get
very little that assumes the viewers have got even to A-level in maths or
sciences. By the time they've added in the wobblycam and sections showing
the presenter driving a car we end up with about 15 mins of actual science
presentation.


But I mustn't let myself be side-tracking from saying what a great
presenter and character Sir Patrick was.

Indeed. I got to know him a bit in the late sixties early seventies,
and found him very good company as well as being a very knowledgeable
and able astronomer.

I did briefly meet him a few times. My main recollections are of him being
a bit untidy and dropping all his slides before a talk. And of being part
of a small group who visited him for a SAN at his home and encountering
some of his non-astronomy enthusiasms.

Slainte,

Jim

--
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In article ,
Jim Lesurf wrote:
I did briefly meet him a few times. My main recollections are of him
being a bit untidy and dropping all his slides before a talk. And of
being part of a small group who visited him for a SAN at his home and
encountering some of his non-astronomy enthusiasms.

I worked on one of the Apollo mission TV progs in the '60s where he was
one of the presenters.
I asked him if the moon really did always present the same face to the
earth throughout time and got a very detailed reply. Much of which I can't
remember - but basically it wobbles a bit. ;-) It actually says quite a
bit about him that I felt him approachable - with some presenters, you'd
keep your distance...

--
*I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Mon, 10 Dec 2012 17:39:47 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:

In article ,
Jim Lesurf wrote:
I did briefly meet him a few times. My main recollections are of him
being a bit untidy and dropping all his slides before a talk. And of
being part of a small group who visited him for a SAN at his home and
encountering some of his non-astronomy enthusiasms.

I worked on one of the Apollo mission TV progs in the '60s where he was
one of the presenters.
I asked him if the moon really did always present the same face to the
earth throughout time and got a very detailed reply. Much of which I can't
remember - but basically it wobbles a bit. ;-) It actually says quite a
bit about him that I felt him approachable - with some presenters, you'd
keep your distance...

That wobble phenomenon is called "libration" and is very helpful to
those conducting amateur EME (Moonbounce) experiments.

I nearly met Sir Patrick in the 80's, he was getting into the lift in
the Grand Hotel (a dump despite its name) in Manchester where I was
the visiting TV tech. I wish I had exchanged niceties with him.


--
Graham.
%Profound_observation%

In article en.co.uk,
Roderick Stewart writes:
In article , John Hall wrote:
In fact I would
suggest that this is something of a golden age for the science
documentary,

gasp!

as there seem to have been more in the last couple of years
than I can ever remember.

Oh I see. You're talking about quantity, not quality.

Naturally the quality has been variable, but there have plenty of
excellent programmes, including those featuring the three presenters
that I mentioned.
--
John Hall

"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong."
Oscar Wilde