Before I get into this, I just want to say that Patrick Moore is not intended to be the only option here. You can have, for example, Heather Couper, Tom Baker, Brian May or whoever you want.
Some people like Brian Cox presenting 'Planets' or other shows in his inimitable smiley style and that's fine. Others are less keen on him. Fortunately we have oodles of audio and video from a certain other presenter of astronomical programmes, namely Patrick Moore. It oughtn't to be that difficult to take a transcript, gather together a relatively huge space-related vocabulary and cobble other words together from various phonemes, autotune them to appropriate intonation and replace the spoken part of the audio track with the result. This could then be made available on whatever medium the series is available. This could also be done in reverse for Brian Cox fans - replace Patrick with Brian in old recordings.
Beyond this, the presence of Brian Cox in videos could be overlaid with a CGI figure which could be given various skins, such as Heather Couper, Brian May and indeed Patrick Moore, allowing for the complete replacement of a presenter with another. And with Brian May, you could actually have an electric guitar accompanied Queen version of the series, maybe with Freddie Mercury on vocals.
And just to make it clear, I have nothing against Brian Cox. He's just an example.-- nineteenthly, Jul 02 2019 Deepfakes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeepfakePretty much bakeable, these days... [neutrinos_shadow, Jul 03 2019] [+]. Brian Cox's voice is like a sack of dead puppies.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jul 02 2019 [+]
Raymond Baxter
// I have nothing against Brian Cox. //
What's wrong with you ? Seek professional help ...-- 8th of 7, Jul 02 2019 Well I have nothing in favour of him either.-- nineteenthly, Jul 02 2019 Because certain jealous people don't like Brian Cox, I think he's brilliant and has achieved much in making science a popular subject, not totally populated by baldy old dribbling men in crumpled suits, who take out their impotent frustrations on cats etc - or each other in some cases here. So glad I live in the 'art world'.-- xenzag, Jul 02 2019 // I have nothing against Brian Cox. //
Frankly, the idea of holding anything against Brian's Cock turns my stomach.
[xen], we're glad of that too.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jul 02 2019 I think most of Brian Cock's programmes could usefully be overdubbed by Brian Blessed.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jul 02 2019 THAT WOULD BE VERY HELPFUL FOR THOSE WITH A HEARING IMPAIRMENT !
// So glad I live in the 'art world'. //
More an alternate reality, actually ...-- 8th of 7, Jul 02 2019 Ha. A compliment from 8th. [imagines him now choking on a cat hair - especially one from its bum]-- xenzag, Jul 02 2019 [xen], Cox could be swapped in for someone else, and don't forget I also mentioned Brian May and Heather Couper.-- nineteenthly, Jul 03 2019 I would like to watch a version of "Planets" which was about a quarter of the length and contained just the 'content' bits, and missed out the random shots of landscape set to music which the programme-makers use as a 5-second pad between any 'hard' bits, the misleading CGI of rocks in space crashing together (hey, BBC! why not replace all the CGI in 'Planets' with actual NASA images? - some of them are very good, you know), and the shots of Brian Cox sitting on the edge of a volcano, gazing wistfully into the distance with the sun behind him and the screen full of lens flare.-- hippo, Jul 03 2019 Yes I know what you mean, [hippo], it's rather padded, and also they seem to be obsessed with shots of raindrops landing on rocks.-- nineteenthly, Jul 03 2019 //seem to be obsessed with shots of raindrops landing on rocks// - indeed, and shooting into the sun to create maximum lens flare when Brian Cox is on screen - it's just annoying-- hippo, Jul 03 2019 Shooting Brian Cox into the sun ... truly, an idea whose time has come.
A fairly modest launcher will be fine, and the capsule won't need life support or, gods help us, communications ...-- 8th of 7, Jul 03 2019 But in the absence of life support, he will not get to experience the sizzle. Just a neutral, technical note there.-- nineteenthly, Jul 03 2019 The second time I saw Brian Cox on TV, he got an order of magnitude wrong in the first few seconds. I now forget what it was, but I'm not a physicist, so it must have been something fairly glaring. It wasn't a live broadcast either, so, not only was there a slip (of the kind anyone might make under pressure), but, much worse, no-one involved in the filming knew or cared that it was wrong and re-shot that bit.
That's why I'm with [8th] on this one.-- pertinax, Jul 03 2019 That illustrates the problem - there's almost no science programming on television now aimed at anyone with even a basic school-level scientific education.-- hippo, Jul 03 2019 At least you're OK, tho ...-- 8th of 7, Jul 03 2019 I think this may be to do with arts and humanities graduates having too much control over the media, [hippo], although it also seems to have been dumbed down and I don't know what that's about exactly. It also comes up in false balance, e.g. evolution vs creationism and anthropogenic climate change vs climate change denial. No real debate there, just a right side and a wrong one.-- nineteenthly, Jul 03 2019 We interrupt a perfectly good idea with this bulletin:
Yesterday my wife bought a Kenmore vacuum cleaner. I propose that we start a band named Ken Moore and The Attachments.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.-- normzone, Jul 03 2019 A deepfake of a "discovered video" of some historical wag predicting a current event "according to my prophecy" would generate all kinds of entertainment. Some otherwise clearly zany figure with enough recording time would do.-- RayfordSteele, Jul 03 2019 The More you Ken...-- calum, Jul 03 2019 // clearly zany figure with enough recording time //
Bill Clinton ?-- 8th of 7, Jul 03 2019 //anthropogenic climate change vs climate change denial//
Well, there's a bias right there. People who don't believe in anthropogenic climate change are, in some cases, expressing legitimate concerns over the validity of the science and saying that they're not sure. Labelling them "deniers" is simply borrowing a label from - and thereby equating them with - holocaust deniers.
Often, these skeptics are intelligent people open to the possibility that they might be wrong; but the warming fundamentalists neither entertain nor allow doubts, and do not even accept that their view _could_ be disproven. Is it getting warmer? That must be ACC. Has it stopped getting warmer for a bit? Well, that's ACC too. Is it colder? Drier? Wetter? All of those things are retrospectively predicted by ACC theorists. If we slip into another ice-age, it will still be ACC.
They also repeatedly state that this speed of temperature change has never happened before in the history of the planet; yet they neglect to mention that if there *had* been a similar rise over 50 years, and then a fall over the next 50 years, it would simply not be visible in the long-term climate record, because things like ice cores and isotope ratios record averages over centuries of time. So, for all we know, short-term rises and falls may have happened thousands of times in the past; we simply don't know.
What I'd like - what would give some credibility back to the climate change debate - is if the ACC brigade said "Yes, if X happens over the next 15 years, it will show that we're wrong."-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jul 03 2019 That's a fair call, [MB]; the Popper test. My working assumption is that the current consensus is broadly true, but having some definite test cases with a definite range of expected results would do much to restore sanity and good manners to the conversation.-- pertinax, Jul 03 2019 My best guess from the physics is that it's false. However, given the consequences of its being true (and my being wrong), it makes sense to reduce carbon emissions anyway. If and when it all goes away, we are at least likely to be less dependent on fossil fuels.
Incidentally, there have been a good number of //definite test cases with a definite range of expected results//, but at no point were they claimed to be validations or potential refutations of ACC. All that happened was that, when the results didn't match the predictions, the models were revised to incorporate the results, and new predictions were made. This is still happening.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jul 04 2019 I vote Magnus-Pyke bot.-- not_morrison_rm, Jul 04 2019 +1, with Heinz Wolff also.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jul 04 2019 This idea heads further towards a world of individual bubbles where computation only gives you what you like and want. Artificial life.-- wjt, Jul 06 2019 random, halfbakery