Bill's Notebook » Stephen Colbert http://blog.billbrantley.com Random notes on politics, government, science, and technology. Mon, 26 Sep 2011 15:38:25 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Stephen Colbert’s Cosmos: Science Reporting http://blog.billbrantley.com/2010/03/26/stephen-colberts-cosmos-science-reporting/ http://blog.billbrantley.com/2010/03/26/stephen-colberts-cosmos-science-reporting/#comments Fri, 26 Mar 2010 23:11:26 +0000 bill http://blog.billbrantley.com/?p=226 The major intellectual influence in my life was Carl Sagan’s Cosmos.  I remember reading the preview for the series in Science Digest and seeing the very first episode.  I must have checked out the Cosmos book hundreds of times and I spent weekend afternoon devouring the science magazines down at the public library. I watched all the  NOVA programs and hung out with other kids in high school who were science and computer enthusiasts.  I was a geek and quite proud of it.

So it was with a bit of sadness when I read the following in Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum’s Unscientific America:  How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future:

“Arguably, the most important news-oriented science communication today occurs via Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report, popular public-affairs-slash-comedy programs that manage to integrate a surprising amount of scientific content and treat it very sympathetically overall – as long as the scientists who go on air can laugh at themselves, and their profession, a little.”

I like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert but a seven-minute science segment is no substitute for the effect Cosmos had on a generation.

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