Extent |
Review refers to just a few scattered programs. |
Categorization |
Akin to Horizon (1964). |
References here: Explained (2018). |
moving picture non-fiction series |
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Entry:
“Creatures of Light” (2016) IMDb
Extent |
Seen in 2018.
Seen edited for Vetenskapens värld. |
Subject |
Bioluminescence and biophosphorescence. |
Commentary |
Beautiful, with substantial scientific depth, looking for reasons as well as applications. |
episode moving picture nature non-fiction |
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Entry:
School of the Future (2016) IMDb
Extent |
Seen in 2017.
Seen edited for Vetenskapens värld. |
Commentary |
Largely shallow and uncritical, especially with regard to material reward for good behaviour and fostering blind self-esteem (positive thinking). |
episode moving picture non-fiction |
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Entry:
“Extreme Animal Weapons” (2017) IMDb
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Entry:
Decoding the Weather Machine (2018) IMDb
Extent |
Seen in 2019.
Seen with Swedish-language narration on SVT, as a two-episode series. |
Commentary |
Despite the Koch money, it’s a fair overview of climate-change science and general avenues of conservative mitigation, from Fourier and Tyndall to perovskite and no-till farming. |
moving picture non-fiction series |
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Entry:
Black Hole Apocalypse (2018) IMDb
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Entry:
“First Face of America” (2018) IMDb
Extent |
Seen in 2019.
Seen in its Swedish-language adaptation on SVT. |
Subject |
Naia, an almost perfectly preserved skeleton found with the bones of megafauna from pre-human America, driven to extinction by the first people there. |
episode moving picture non-fiction |
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Entry:
“Prediction by the Numbers” (2018) IMDb
Extent |
Seen in 2018.
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Subject |
A non-technical introduction to probability theory as used, for example, in predicting the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election. |
Commentary |
It’s got Nate Silver and Moneyball (2011), but it’s shallow and cheaply dramatized. |
moving picture non-fiction |
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Spin-off:
Nova Wonders (2018) IMDb
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Entry:
“Dead Sea Scroll Detectives” (2019) IMDb
Extent |
Seen in 2020.
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Subject |
The history of the conservation and forgery of (the) Dead Sea Scrolls, including some amazing X-ray tomography of carbonized parchment from the ark of a burned ancient synagogue, where the scrolls are tessellated partly by hand so they can be unfolded on computer only, and the ink is readable by its slight difference in opacity due to metal content. After all this labour, it turns out to be a scroll of Leviticus (ca. 500–400 BCE), providing another piece of evidence for when the text reached its modern forms. Other experts debunk forgeries bought by the Green family, owners of Hobby Lobby. |
Commentary |
As usual, the overall takeaway is “Don’t put tape on stuff you’re keeping, and be careful with UV light.” There’s a fascinating chapter on the archaelogy of Qumran, the monastic community to which a lot of the scrolls are attributed; it’s fun to think that such a twisted, almost bureaucratic, somewhat marginal place could have a significant influence on our ability to know what was happening to the religion, in roughly the same way as, but not directly connected to, the way the Nag Hammadi library over in Egypt popularized gnosticism through The Gnostic Gospels (1979). The shadiness the Hobby Lobby smuggling scandal adds a touch of Delta Green potential to the resurfacing of these cults thousands of years later. |
moving picture non-fiction |
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Entry:
“Kilauea: Hawai’i on Fire” (2019) IMDb
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