Re: [ATM] interesting review of movie on John Dobson

[Joe <nss@mwt.net>]

Ok, when and where can this be seen?

Guy Brandenburg wrote:

>An interesting review of the Dobson movie:
>===========================================
>John Dobson is at least as old as some of Tim Burton's
>cadavers, and it may be that humanity is divided
>between those who would let themselves be stopped by
>him in the street and those who would keep walking.
>With some regret, I place myself among the latter. If
>I were to pass him in Greenwich Village or on
>Fisherman's Wharf, the sight of his weathered beret
>and wizened face would stiffen my shoulders. And once
>I'd gotten a load of his telescope and his vaguely
>disreputable come-on—"Come see the moon!"—nothing on
>Earth would persuade me to linger.
>
>But then, Dobson, the 89-year- old hero of Jeffrey Fox
>Jacobs' documentary "A Sidewalk Astronomer" doesn't
>want to show you anything on Earth. Self-taught and
>staggeringly articulate, he's a former Vedantic monk
>who, way back in the '40s, caught a glimpse of the
>heavens and decided, as he says, "everyone's got to
>see this." From there, he created the Dobsonian
>telescope mount, an ingeniously simple apparatus that
>suddenly made stargazing available to the masses.
>
>Today, whether he's lecturing at colleges and
>conventions or treating passers-by to views of the sun
>and moon, Dobson is still entreating everyone to look
>up. He has, like all the best teachers, a gift for the
>honed sentence. "We're made out of the dust of
>exploded stars," he proclaims, a pretty existential
>truism that pales next to this one: "All habitats are
>temporary." And he has, in Jacobs, a tireless devotee,
>who trails him from San Francisco to Vermont recording
>each crotchety opinion.
>
>Your affection for Jacobs' enterprise may be
>determined by your feelings for Dobson. From my angle,
>he seems too reflexive with the quips and too addicted
>to being the smartest guy in the room. (See how he
>bridles when an actual astronomer challenges his ideas
>about the Big Bang and dark matter.)
>And it's an unexplored irony that the man who wants us
>to know everything about the cosmos tells us so little
>about his own universe.
>
>Jacobs' disinclination to probe this prickly fellow is
>what keeps A Sidewalk Astronomer squarely in the realm
>of educational TV But good- for-you can still be good
>for you. 
>
>With its clever use of NASA satellite footage and
>animation, the movie does give us a vivid sampling of
>astronomical wonders. For those of us who would
>otherwise pass John Dobson on the street, we can now
>at least see what he wanted to show us: "Here are the
>actors... hydrogen and helium. What is the name of the
>play? Folly. Where is the theater? In space. Where do
>you go to get there? In time."          CP
>
>
>
>
>Guy  Brandenburg
>Washington, DC
>My home page:
>http://home.earthlink.net/~gfbranden/GFB_Home_Page.html
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