DRS_Education - 2019-01-21
"Distant Voices" suggests that telecommunications exist because Normans had stirrups for horse riding which in turn led them to further advancements in warfare. Deep mine shafts flooded and scientists in search of a solution examined vacuums, air pressure, and other natural phenomena.
A great communicator in an era when TV assumed complicated ideas could be explained and in an entertaining way ....I can imagine this series being commissioned in these times when large audience and low risk is the order of the day for programme makers .I enjoyed this series back in the day when I would have been in young teens. It holds up well without appearing slow or dated as some stuff does
Amazing how old the history of the horse is yet how recent the stirrup is.
I expect it's more to do with what you wanted to do on horseback, so when someone tried to use the horse as a stable platform, it was invented to accommodate that.
@Cheepchipsable Very true, but just the simple stability of a saddle and stirrup. You would think it would have been more of a priority. Obviously not.
If you had the stirrup but no lance, it wasn't a huge advantage over a Rider without one
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirrup Like so many things, it appears to have been invented in Asia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirrup - invented in China.
James Burke mentions how our radios and radars will eventually get us in touch with the "galactic civilization that almost certainly exists."
I can appreciate this thought. Having just invented these things that allowed interstellar communication seemed like the logical middlestep to advancing our global community from a fractured boiling pot of hundreds of differents of civilizations to unite us to one civilization - the society of earth. It only makes sense that the society of earth, then, would get in touch with the other societies out there.
Sadly, there doesn't seem to be absolutely anything out there for us. Having waited for soon a century for this interstellar message to come in, we're realizing that it's a very certain possibility that we are absolutely alone. But I will give James one thing, then: Even, perhaps especially if we're absolutely alone, we need to be a global community now more than ever.
Well I for one think he does a fantastic job! I watched these when they originally came out on PBS and I enjoy them even more today than I did then.
I too saw this in the 1980s. I was fortunate to have a color TV. I'm enjoying it now as much as I did then. Thanks for posting!
Love this series! Many thanks!
This show was the one that guided my career choice in to computer science with it's explorations of computers. This episode is very interesting to me. One of my mothers ancestors was at the battle of Hastings on the Norman side.. ;-)
Watched this episode for the first time today, and immediately recognised Arecibo.
The Arecibo radio observatory collapsed just a few days ago (as I write this comment). Without a doubt, Connections is still relevant.
?? What happened?
The vertical driving shot up the mountain is worthy of classic Top Gear.
I thought I was a weird kid when I'd spend hours watching shows like this on PBS....Now. Today....I'm like a fat kid in a candy store because I can watch these all the time now on YouTube....
i was a child when i saw this program....i remember my house , my mother...i grew up with James Burke....greetings from argentina....and God bless the queen and this Great country....excuse my poor english..
Your English is great!
Thanks for posting. I LOVED Connections! I hope you'll post the rest of the series. (But only this series, the sequel shows were not nearly as good.)
They're on archive.org
The Day The Universe Changed was just as good. The 90s versions aired on TLC weren't.
I watched this series on a small black and white TV in 1980. I had a TRS-80 Model 1. Good times.
Rat Madness my grandfather bought me a Model I in 1979. I still have it in storage.
@lohphat a valuable gift at the time! I don't know what I would be doing now if I hadn't started when I did.
@Rat Madness RS made a ton of trash-80s and they were a popular machine. An Apple mid-range system cost $1500 or more in 1980 dollars. Plus you could go to RS and play with their machines so you knew exactly what you were getting.
@alex carter ordered mine March 1978. It arrived in June. December 1978 I was in a Radio Shack. A woman came in asking about the TRS-80. I watched her leave with her new computer. Those days were magic.
I miss those album-sized floppy disks! I never owned one, but used one in my BASIC class lab. My first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000. Unfortunately, I was no chef, so I had no recipes to enter.
Shame to hear Arecibo is in such damaged condition. I hope they can make the needed repairs.
Crecy (1346) was actually the first major use of the longbow. Actually, after Agincourt long bows themselves were not really all that effective. It required a lot of training, and its effectiveness was inconsistent, because tactics adjusted to take away its advantages. It had nothing to do with people having too much fun. Seriously...
The bow is a bit of a mystery. It must have been effective, since it was in use such a long time, but we know that during Agincort or Crecy, the bow would not have pierced high quality armour.
@Patrick Harris The piercing is debated, also it didn't need to pierce the armour, the horse would be down, but Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt are witness to the effectiveness of the long bow? And the written accounts of Agincourt are mainly French, who reckon the number of French dead, and attributed in large part to the archers.
@Patrick Harris Well he did say the horses were taken out from under the knights as they slogged through the mud. A knight without his horse would be exhausted pretty quickly from the weight of the armour, assuming the horse didn't fall on him and he was able to stand and move.
Who need to kill the driver when you can incapacitate the tank?
LOL. He was saying society had changed enough that people were less inclined to spend hours training. People had better things to do, and one of them was go to local markets/fairs.
@alex carter Yes, people are very "well regulated" with their weapons.
Dad makes me watch this: 😠
Thinks it will take my whole day:😐😢
Watches it :😲
After watching it :😄
I love this series
First saw this in a junior high school science class around 1982 - on film via movie projector. Our teacher threw the focus out for the nude lady bathing scene at 20:09...we had no idea what he was doing....The whole thing was really above our heads but the opening scenes about the Battle of Hastings inspired my lifelong interest in history. I later visited both Hastings and Azincourt battlefields as an adult - right where Burke was in the film.
Watched this with my dad he liked it when it was first broadcasted and I love it
James burk gran maestro 👏 maestro de maestros 👏 🙌 👍 👌 🕳🦹🧝♀️🧞♂️🪶🐠🦠
I like to think that the horses and cows, and many animals featured believe that James Burke is talking to them.
The best science show ever
The bit about archery practice .... it was a huge thing. Kind of like compulsory military service in some countries now. Men were required to practice on weekends, and the backstops for the targets were called "butts". This is why you hear about someone being the "butt" of a joke. The joke, the arrow, sticks into the butt, or the victim of the joke. And also why some towns in England have "Butts" in the name. This even carries down to the United States' 2nd amendment to their constitution. Americans were enthusiastic about rifle shooting enough that they didn't have to be required to do it, as there were all sorts of fun shooting contests, "rifle frolics" they were often called, with events like the turkey shoot. So the idea was not to compel men in the US to practice shooting, but to simply make sure they always had access to guns and the practice would take care of itself. And this is why, in the 2nd amendment, the term "well-regulated" militia is used. "Regulated" refers to the "regulation" or adjustment, of the sights. And "Well-regulated" means what we mean when we say "well practiced" today. Someone who shoots regularly will keep their sights in adjustment and be pretty much ready to go if called up for military service, like against those pesky British coming around with their tea taxes and all.
the best and worst of 70's synth music and fashion
(the suits would sell for a pretty penny these days, as do the synths the music was made with)
all rolled up into a nice little thought-provoking package
I haven't seen Connections II yet but I've seen the first and third since I'm renting them from the library. The first is definitely superior. The third seemed like a reach what with going from the Internet to the Humane Society and all. Nothing seemed to really fit together.
10:58 A young Zaphod Beeblebrox before the third arm and second head. A connection that goes British Monarchy-->Shakespeare-->Betelgeuse-->rescue of the last two humans when the Earth is destroyed.
36:05, oh James, if only you knew how fast information would become
36:50 I thought Mercury was extremely toxic - can it safely be touched like that?
Wonderful series. Or parallel. ;-)
Hard enough controlling a horse let alone a lance
Shame the reflector antenna will be decommissioned.
Love ol' Jimmy, the King of HPS, but as we say in the obscure minor pope business, "Never go full Aricebo."
You lose too much money on the merch sales when the congregation starts making their own tinfoil hats and accessories.
RIP, the Arecibo Observatory Receiver.
As he mentioned in The Day the Universe Changed. The West had preeminence of the individual. That originally stems from the Ancient Greek's reverence for the hero and intellectual freedom. This brought us Democracy Western Science and the celebration of the artist and the arts as something kinda heroic. This is Faustian Western Man. The very idea of " Progress " as we think of it was a product of this point of view. It isn't a universal concept it's an invention of Faustian Western thought.
James Burke for the win
August 2020 sees The Arecibo Observatory damaged and its future uncertain.
Also, war is still very much a thing - sadly.
Also, still no contact with an Alien civilization.
@ttun100 The huge collars and lapels in this video scared them all away from our galaxy.
@puirYorick So leisure suits have kept aliens away?
@ttun100 Synthetic blends and dyes not found in nature... Probably interpreted by aliens as a sign of humanity's expertise in chemical warfare. Lol
@ttun100 Not entirely. That's Zaphod Beeblebrox reciting Shakespeare at 10:58
Okay, I wasn’t imagining the saucy puns.
Looking back 40 years later, the atom bomb drama music is pretty absurd.
26:32 European Christian scholars did the same thing.
44:47 Scientists have. They name "the unit of the auxiliary magnetic field H in the centimetre–gram–second system of units (CGS)" after him.
If you add "(ft. naked ladies)" in the title, you'll see a spike in likes. It's no different than why Burke included them in the first place. So be it. He deserves a new generation of fans.
Watch how it is actually done, Hammond.
damn, rest in peace arecibo
47:05 rip Arecibo radiotelescope ☹️
Is it just me who winced when he stuck his finger in the bowl of mercury?
It's just you.
I'm sure he knows the danger.
It can't be that bad, James is still with us, aged 84
(Elemental mercury is "ok", just don't drink it, and avoid the fumes. He was outside when he played with it).
The question at the end 48:52 is for social media.
Bad things.
10.56 Mark Wing-Davey, AKA Zaphod Beeblebrox from The Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy
1066: Not enough Saxon violence.
OMG has Lars since this? He's gonna sue that guy lol.. Day Le Metallica! \m/
5:45 Gustav Mahler's symphony 5
This is probably a dangerous episode that should disappear from the internet net completely I think it will give bad humans bad ideas
Max Tom - 2020-08-19
Connections James Burke. Still holds up after all these years.
softshoes - 2020-09-21
Everything but that hideous leisure suit.
colin young - 2020-10-17
Absolutely. That's a voice from my childhood, still remember him from the moonshot coverage.
Dave Davis - 2021-01-01
@softshoes it was the style of the time.
softshoes - 2021-01-01
@Dave DavisI lived through the times. I had one just like James', that too was hedious:)
Dave Davis - 2021-01-01
@softshoes I was born in 1966. When I was either in the second or third grade, I had a lime green suit, for my school picture. I also had a brown denim jacket, with matching pants for another school picture. I blame the CIA. I think they spiked the water supply, because we lost all fashion sense, back then.