Speaking of Connections..

This time, Connections by James Burke -

They're on YouTube.

I am all kinds of geekishly overjoyed. :D

One day, Mr. Burke, I will buy the Connections series of series (1, 2 and 3). But right now, I'm a little short of the $150 to $200ish per series. So YouTube it is for my geekfix.

One of these days, though. Promise. :)

Edited to add:

Why buy instead of continue to watch at will on YouTube? A few reasons.

First, they are copyrighted. Even the person who posted the series on YouTube acknowledges this, has links for purchase posted, and has said that he hopes that Mr. Burke honors the intent of his posting the series - to make it available for the sake of those who cannot purchase (and in hopes that those who had never seen it may stumble across it and might purchase it, all coming about b/c of his posting the series). As such, if I do wish to continue to view them, I should try to make sure they get their fair dues for the series, yaknow? Not only that, but they may be yanked at any time, so purchase ensures that I'll have them when I want or need them.

Secondly, that "...need them." part. As of right now, my plans are to homeschool the kiddos. Or at least, consider doing so - with Patrick already taking speech therapy from the school, and doing so well hearing other children talking (and therefore imitating speech patterns and such), we'll be seeing where things stand when he's ready for kindergarten. Regardless, though, I'd like to have some things ready, and certain series stand out in my mind as supplements I really want to have available - Connections, Cosmos (there is still no better explanation I've seen of relativity in understandable form) and Drive Through History are the big ones as of right now.

"But Connections darts all over the place through history, how do you place it?"

Obviously you can't easily. Perhaps you place each individual episode at the start - if it begins with, say, the plow, you cover that episode when you're at that point in history (or perhaps one of those locations - when you do Ancient Egypt would be another great time for that episode, which is the first one of the first series). Or if it ends with the A-bomb being dropped on Hiroshima, you cover it then (or when discussing the Manhattan Project, or covering radioactivity, or...). So it really isn't easy to drop it into place. But that's the point - it's easy to relegate history to a string of events, dates, and names; but it's far bigger, and far more meaningful, to look at the big picture settings of the times and events. So a series like Connections, which can make such a good point of how the time period or location in which something happens or is discovered is so HUGE a part of what happens afterward makes it, I think, a good series to watch.

Someone knocks a metal signholder over in front of a mall store, making it crash to the floor with a resounding bang, in the middle of an ordinary shopping day, well, everyone jumps, but nothing big happens. If, however, a large fight has broken out, and someone knocks over the same type of signholder...? Then you have shrieks and rumors of gunshots, and the mall never quite recovers. Not a perfect analogy by any stretch of the imagination, but the same event in two different scenarios produces two different results. The mall that suffered the second scenario, by the way, is up for online auction now (with the exception of the few remaining anchor stores that are still open - only two, I believe - or still own their portions, though closed).