Glorious learning

[RonPrice]

SPACEFILES: The Universe Unveiled is available on DVD in a 260 minute package. On TV the DVD comes in various configurations: 26 x 10, 13 x 20, 8 x 30, 5 x 50, 4 x 60 etc. I am told the series is excellent for internet streaming and e-learning. I have watched three short segments on SBSONE(1) in Tasmania in three 10 minute segments. One was this afternoon just after my wife finished cleaning the lounge-room and I finished my lunch as a dozen years of my retirement from FT work have just been completed and my extensive involvement in Baha'i community building has been significantly decreased in this the evening of my life.

SPACEFILES is a visual compendium of space and astronomy presenting, in a uniquely flexible format, the solar system, our galaxy, and the universe beyond. Each programme or “file” offers a crisp, intelligent, picture-driven story. As a series SPACEFILES is a comprehensive tour de force; indeed it is enthralling. The 26 “files” comprise an incredible overview of our cosmic habitat. A flow of superb graphic animation and the latest images of the planets, their moons, the Sun and deep space deliver a stimulating visual exposition uninterrupted by interviews or an on-screen host. After only 3 episodes I am hooked; I should seriously think of going down to the video shop and getting the DVD. I don’t tend to be a DVD borrower in this the evening of my life, on a pension and keeping my eye on outgoing monies.

Individually, each SPACEFILES episode is a “stand-alone”. For TV the series works for prime-time slots, science magazines, informational and educational programming, and as a perfect schedule-filler. It is during the schedule-fillers that I have chanced to see the 3 episodes that I have thusfar. SPACEFILES, I am informed,2 is the latest in a highly-successful format begun in 1993 with Encyclopaedia Galactica, followed in 1998 by The Complete Cosmos. SPACEFILES carries the genre brilliantly into the 21st Century. Good writing, well-checked science and glorious pictures update and elucidate the fascinating fundamentals of space and astronomy.-Ron Price with thanks to (1)SBSONE, 3:10-3:20 p.m. on 21 June 2011; and (2) “Space Files,” York Films of England, an internet site.

It’s about time that I have seen
some of this series made before
I retired from the world of being
a man employed and having time
filled with meetings & the endless
wall to wall people. I now travel in
the universe of learning; all these
years of my retirement have freed
me from FT, PT and volunteer work.

At last, I can get into science and the
cultural attainments of the mind and
not have to worry about students and
their learning.....I can worry about my
own learning and the feast is endless…
rich and glorious as it was on this cold
winter solstice travelling as I did into all
those trillions of miles of space, & stars!

Ron Price
21 June 2011file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/Ron/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image001.gif

[oosh]

Thanks for the info Ron, sounds like just what I need mate. I'll keep an eye out for it :)

[RonPrice]

Thanks oosh (Jason). Don't forget about the Brian Cox series.-Ron Price, Tasmania
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Brian Cox was on SBSONE TV again in Australia this week.(1) This Part 4 of 5 programs was broadcast in the UK in March 2010 and, as is often the case, programs made and produced in the UK—and the USA--get Downunder about a year later, sometimes more and sometimes less. As I pointed out the last time I wrote about this Brian Cox, he is not the Brian Cox who has drunk cheap wine, methylated spirits and aftershave. He's not been in some of what the sociologist Irving Goffman called total institutions: jails, lockups, and padded cells. He’s not the Brian Cox who until the age of 49 was a self-confessed and hopeless alcoholic, who turned his life around and is now a man with a mission. Again, he’s not that other Brian Cox, the Emmy award-winning actor. I want to talk about here in this short prose-poem the delightful astro-physicist. -Ron Price with thanks to (1) SBS1 TV, “Wonders of the Solar System,” 22 March 2011, 8:30-9:30 p.m.

As I said the last time I wrote
about you, Brian, I had trouble
with physics in high school and
only got as far as matriculation.
You have helped me make up for
my ignorance of physics, & astro-
physics, astronomy and the study
of our universe. As I said 4 months
ago: I dropped physics in ’62 for history
so that I could go to university and I’ve
been into history ever since, Brian. History
has as many wonders as astro-physics, Brian.

Without physics I could not do medicine,
law, engineering, or any of the maths and
sciences. So it was into the arts for me and
there I have stayed for the last 50 years!

Now, in my retirement, I have begun to play
at the edges of astrophysics thanks to, by
sensible and insensible degrees, a series of
media-events, like this Cox chap who could
make you feel the wonder and awe of it all:
3 cheers again for Brian Cox!...Hip-hip-hurray!

Ron Price
30 December 2010 updated to
212/6/'11
__________________

[oosh]

Cheers Ron :) I've seen wonders of the solar system & loved it. Still looking to find wonders of the universe :)