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From: lew@ihlpa.ATT.COM (Lew Mammel, Jr.)
Newsgroups: sci.misc,rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: Watch for THE RING OF TRUTH on PBS
Message-ID: <5977@ihlpa.ATT.COM>
Date: Wed, 21-Oct-87 22:40:44 EST
Article-I.D.: ihlpa.5977
Posted: Wed Oct 21 22:40:44 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 25-Oct-87 01:04:19 EST
References: <21372@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Distribution: na
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois
Lines: 40
Keywords: PBS, BBC, ITV
Summary: only so-so
Xref: mnetor sci.misc:597 rec.arts.tv:4210

In article <21372@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>, tedrick@ernie.Berkeley.EDU (Tom Tedrick) writes:
> I saw the first episode last night, and it was superb.

Hmmm. I liked it alright, but I didn't think it was superb. The picnic thing
at the beginning was pathetic, and the whole optical illusion shtick was
not really in line with the thrust of the presentation, which was about
the importance of instrumentation. It was at least relevant.

I liked the Galileo stuff, since I'm something of a buff, and I enjoyed
the craftsman angle.  I think he erred in not showing the tiny field of
view Galileo had to put with. ( He represented the magnification by zooming
from a panoramic camera shot. ) There was more he might have mentioned,
such as how the crater Copernicus was tremendously oversized in Galileo's
drawings ( he did show the drawing and discuss the crater.) I think this was
due to his tiny field of view, which prevented him from seeing the whole
moon at once. Come to think of it, this would have tied in the optical illusion
stuff a little better.

And why couldn't he have shown a visual recreation of Galileo's telescopic
views of the moon and the Jovian satellites? I would have loved that.
He could have showed the successive improvements in resolution, right
down to the lunar soil and sodium volcanoes. YEAH!!! But he didn't.
Instead we got talking heads.

> It got a bad review in the local paper, but I doubt that
> the reviewer is a scientist ... I guess the reviewer didn't
> appreciate the subtlety of some of the points that were made.

Well, I wish it had been MORE detailed and MORE technical. I think
he ( "he" is Philip Morrison, by the way ) ended up in a no man's land
where he bores the casual viewer and afficianado alike. He should have
gone the whole route and made a hardcore educational series out of it, like
Mechanical Universe or Earth Explored. Earth Explored! Now there's a
science series!

> Anyway, I recommend it highly.

Ok, I'll watch.

	Lew Mammel, Jr.