Episode 3 "The Harmony of the World"

Carl spends a large part of the episode discounting the belief in astrology.I'm amazed that one of his quotes has stuck with me all these years and I used it in conversation just a couple of days before re-watching the episode. The quote is "that the obstetrician at your birth has a greater gravitational influence on you than any planet does." I'm always amazed that people that I consider critical thinkers can put any predictive stock in astrology. When Sagan shows that the patterns of the stars have been assigned different configurations by every culture that looked to the sky, it is obvious that the only significance to the star patterns is the mirroring of each culture's beliefs and fears.

Kepler comes through as one of the great thinkers of science. The fact that he could discard his life-long idea of using the perfect solids and circles to explain the planetary motions and embrace the vile and irregular ellipse as the solution is extraordinary.

From another perspective if I ever was able to go back in time, I think I'd rather hang with Tycho Brahe and his entourage for a night than the strait-laced Kepler. It makes me wonder when Tycho was able to make all those highly accurate astronomical sightings if he was always wining and dining every night.

It also hits home how hard life was back in those times. All the personal tragedy that occured to Kepler in his later life. Much of it caused by war caused by competing religions. That brings to mind a gentleman named Richard Dawkins who was on the Bill Maher show last week. He brought out a t-shirt with the logo, in large letters, "Religion", and in small letters below, "together we can find the cure".

Remember you can watch the updated 1980 Cosmos series on www.hulu.com/#!watch/63327 with commercials included but the price is right. It's free.

The blog by Casey Dreier of the Planetary Society's  called "Cosmos with Cosmos" can be found at, http://www.planetary.org/blogs/casey-dreier/ . His comments on each episode are very insightful and thorough.

Also check out Dean's suggested site www.learnerstv.com for some great science & astronomy videos. I was impressed with the video that showed how to compute a star's parallax, why a telescope mirror has to be shaped like a parabola to reflect all the light to a point and an explanation why a star like the sun swells up into a red giant star when it ages.

Episode 2 One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue

This episode was more about biology and evolution than astronomy. Carl is definitely an evolution proponent. I'm a little more flexible in letting people use their "Faith" to decide how much of the evolution story they wish to buy into. On the other hand, I don't think topics like "Intelligent Design" should be portrayed as science.
In regards to the chance of extraterrestial life, it is heartening to know that Earth's life uses the most common chemical element building blocks of the Cosmos. He also implies that the leap from simple microbial life to inteligent civilizations might be as great as the leap from inert chemical to simple life. I hope that we can soon search locations like Mars, Titan, Enceledus and Europa to see if the Solar System has another sample of simple life. Computing chances of life within the Milky Way or the Cosmos is so hard when you only have one occurance to work with.
With his 10 year followup comments, it's interesting that the asteroid explosion 65 million years ago was new information. It shows how scientific thinking modifies over time.

Episode 1 "The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean"

A few comments where the info might be a little old.
The Local Group of galaxies is thought to include about 40 not 20. The Milky Way is thought to be a barred spiral not just a spiral. Pluto is mentioned as a planet not as a "dwarf" planet.
It's always amazing how advanced many of the astronomers of antiquity were. Eratosthenes, for example, who computed the size of the Earth from the different shadow lengths in 2 Egyptian cities.
It always makes me a little melancholy when he tells about the burning of the Library of Alexandria and all the information lost. It took mankind almost 2000 years to recover some of knowledge. What a waste because it was caused by rioting people, not a natural disaster.
Carl Sagan's use of a year's calendar to represent time since the Big Bang, humbles us as by representing "recorded history" as only a small slice of a few seconds at the end of the Cosmic Year. Now we're humbled in time as well as place (the Earth is only a dot in the vast universe).
There's a great moral at the end of the episode, don't swander our opportunity to acheive greatness by arguing amonst ourselves.

Old Cosmos Series

Planetary Society suggest people watch old 1980 Cosmos Series before new series comes out in 2014. Sounds like like a fun idea. Watch Episode 1 on Oct 13, Episode 2 on Oct 22, etc. Videos watchable at hulu.com but you have to listen to the commercials too.