I am almost caught up with my recordings of the DNA series on PBS. Really great stuff, although I have to say I question a practice that I first saw in the PBS series on Time Travel, both imported from England. It’s the whole idea of having the real people participate in video reenactments, enhanced with computer graphics. In one sense, it’s mesmerizing and is sure to get the attention of the attention deficit crowd, but in another, it is a little dishonest in that it lends to dramatizing real life. Like the two old codgers hanging out at that Cambridge bar who then go fishing and model the double helix, or the atomic bomb guy running around King’s College sneaking peeks at the x-rays of the helix. Or in the Time Travel series where the virtual 23rd century Asian schoolteacher and her little charges have a conversation with that (real 21st century) scientist who is being credited as the father of time travel, when he hasn’t exactly done it yet (from our 2004 perspective). Really cool, but makes you say, “Hummmh”.
About DNA and Time Travel
I’m behind on the DNA series, but have been taping it too. The whole Jeff Goldblum narration is still spooking me out. (He has such a science-y/sci-fi voice).
Still reading the “Genome” book (see my previous post on the DNA stuff); looks like these British scientists/geneticists are always in pubs while making their revelations. What is it that these pubs are serving to people that makes them such geniuses?