The episode yesterday on building cathedrals kicked off season 38. 38!!
it was darn good. my first Nova episode was on Utzi the iceman back in the early 90’s. i’ve always thought the anthropology/paleontology ones to be the most interesting. If I’m ever was in an argument against capitalism, i cite the difference between how PBS developed Nova vs how the History Channel degenerated into “Top Shots” and “Alien Abductions”.
share your thoughts on NOVA?
Ask my mom what my favorite show was when I was a kid:
Sesame Street
NOVA
Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom
This was in the early-mid 70’s
I still love NOVA, and really enjoy NOVA scienceNOW with deDreamy Tyson. His geekiness is infectious.
I like Nova as it encourages me to read further on my own, but a lot of it really is misleading. For instance, one of my favourites was Nova- Secrets of the Wild Child and it was an excellent show, but it left so much out and made it sound a lot different than the reality.
It just left huge chunks out. And when you have access to the material you shoudn’t do that. Especially when what you leave out really effects the direction.
And there are other episodes like. But I do like the show regardless as it encourages me to go read and look things up for myself
Any episode of Nova was the best science class activity back in school.
My “favorite” was probably the one about the collapse of the WTC…
I loved NOVA during my school years from late 70s to 1990. In particular, I loved the narrator’s voice that was on a number of episodes. I also miss the old annual “National Science Quiz” panel shows they had a couple of years.
PBS good!
One of my favorites was “Back to Chernobyl” with Bill Kurtiss. It really opened my eyes.
I loved it as a kid because it explained scientific subjects in an accessible way.
I show the NOVA episode on trebuchets to my science classes each year. It’s a fun one about two teams of builders that construct large-scale trebuchets that can sling 300 pound boulders.
Yes, a very cool episode. But my friend kept having a conniption about their insistence on doing it by traditional hand-building methods.
That was the whole point of the exercise!
Yeah, nobody doubts people can use modern techniques and materials and make cool devices to fling huge objects. The point was to see what an era realistic trebuchet would be like.
That’s what the rest of us said. But he thought it was foolish not to use power tools.
it is a quality show with high production quality. we are about to see something rarer than hen’s teeth on Nova, a quickly produced show, this about the Chilean mine rescue.
there is a contrast between the new and old shows. the old shows were a slower documentary style, easy to learn from. the newer shows have shorter ‘wow’ segments which are marketed to gamer/500_channel_cable_tv influenced viewers. sparking an interest in science is a good thing that could come from the newer style.
I love NOVA and am excited to have it back but I thought the Cathedral episode sucked. The science and engineering they covered was cursory and rudimentary. It was interesting as a travel channel special, had some awesome photography. The segments emphasizing the biblical dimensions was just stupid and they spent half the damn show on it. It’s like they had 15 minutes of show they stretched into an hour. I hope they get much better than this.