Author Archive for admin
Nick’s Memories
Nick Sagan wrote an outstanding post yesterday – if you haven’t read it, you ought to. From Carl’s dictaphone habits to his distate for Beavis & Butthead and the movie Aliens, Nick lets us in on a little secret; his father was, it’s true, a human being.
Sagan was so clearly a hero to countless people across the globe, and for those of us who can’t help but do a bit of worshiping, Nick’s portrait helps ground that awe without diminishing our hero’s stature. Here’s a choice picture and excerpt:
He had a knack for pinball, knowing just how hard to bump a machine without tilting it. We’d go to arcades together and he’d win bonus games like mad. Videogames were never his thing, though he could appreciate the better ones. I remember the day I showed him Computer Baseball, a strategy game for the Apple IIe. You could pit some of the greatest teams in MLB history against each other. We played Babe Ruth’s 1927 Yankees against Jackie Robinson’s 1955 Dodgers for about an hour, and then he turned to me and said, “Never show this to me again. I like it too much, and I don’t want to lose time. Link.
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Govar from India.
Hi,
This is Govar from India.
Just came to know about the Celebrating Sagan blogathon from Boing Boing and I couldn’t wait to put a post on the subject.
Carl Sagan has, and is, in more ways than one, has given a new meaning to my existence. He’s made me more mature, and yet very small at the same time. Here‘s my post on the subject.
My previous post on Carl a month back.
Thanks a lot for your time.
Regards,
Govar, Chennai, India.
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StokedSkate.
The band SAGAN just sent us a Carl Sagan inspired song to add to the Sounds of Sagan. It is called StokedSkate.
SAGAN has worked on a film that has been informed by the good Doctor and Cosmos. You can read more about their film, Unseen Forces, here, and more about SAGAN there.
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What Sagan Taught (Me).
Of course my garage is also invisible and intangible.
Ten years ago today I was near the end of my first semester as a high school student. A few days later, I would read a letter to the editor of a local newspaper about an obituary. Apparently, the author of the letter was annoyed that obituary praised the man for his contributions to science but mentioned nothing of his atheism. The man who had died was Carl Sagan.
At the time, I had only known him from reruns of Johnny Carson’s impersonation. “Definitely. They’ll need much more hair spray than we originally expected.” Later on, I would learn he was the guy who wrote that “Jodie Foster movie about aliens”. That’s all I would know about him for next nine or so years. A Carson sketch and a sci-fi movie. I wasn’t until this February I picked up Demon Haunted World and read his own words.
How different would my life be now if I had read it ten years ago? Would I have understood it? Would I have liked what he had to say? Where would I be if his message had reached me ten years ago?
With a lot of media, audience is often self-selecting. I didn’t start reading DHW until I was already headed towards scientific skepticism. Ten years ago, I was still arguably a Catholic, though my family was no longer attending church. Five years ago, I was working at a supermarket while experimenting with new age stuff and Taoism. Two years ago, I was a disgruntled web programmer who felt helpless in trying to affect my life. A year ago, I had realized that Sagan was more than a Carson sketch, but I still hadn’t read anything by him. I won’t say that the nine years between his death and my first lesson from him were wasted. It may be that I needed to live all those experiences before I could understand what he was saying. I will say that I am glad that I read DHW.
Sagan’s lesson for me was not so much how to be skeptical or why one should be skeptical. These things I knew something about. So what did I actually gain from reading his work? A deeper understand of what it means to be a skeptic. We are not here to contradict, to nay-say, to coerce or to censor. We are here to patiently and carefully seek out eternally elusive truths. We use what we learn to seek further and to help others. It is our demand for evidence before ascent acts as bulwark against false accusations, frauds and authoritarianism. Ubi dubium ibi libertas. Where there is doubt, there is freedom.
With that lesson learned, I will do what I can so that Sagan’s “candle in the dark” will not be extinguished.
Thank you for your time, Jokermage
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Little Atoms, Update.
Neil writes:
I stupidly forgot to mention where the show is broadcast, it on London’s Resonance 104.4FM, which as you have probably guessed, is broadcast on FM to the London area. Luckily though, its also broadcast worldwide at www.resonancefm.com.
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Celebrando a Carl Sagan
de este astrofisico divulgador que tantas vocaciones, ilusiones y
“Mi memoria es magnífica para olvidar”
Jose, Celebrando a Carl Sagan
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Celebration Link.
Russell says, “No better time than the solstice to celebrate the founding father of nuclear winter.” Check out his dissertation at ADAMANT.
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10 orbits on…
We’ve been 10 times around the sun without him.
Have you ever noticed that there are just some people who seemed to be especially “changed” by Carl Sagan? Those who go so “ga-ga” over him, that even ten years after his death, they still blog, gush, and talk nearly incessantly about him? And these are often the people least likely to otherwise worship, idolize, or even get excited about a professional athlete, celebrity, rock star, authority or politician.
I’m one of those people. My life-trajectory was tugged and defined by the gravity of Carl Sagan. He gave all of us reasons to cherish the pale blue dot and “all that ever was or is or ever will be.” He personified the Cosmos – literally.
He was a gifted scientist, communicator, dad, and human being. He moved millions and millions to see.
But what’s more incredible than how many he did move, is how many have somehow missed the message. Because make no mistake – and he would be the first to admit it – this is about the message not the man. As endearing as he was, this is not a cult of personality, but of the Cosmos.
Carl Sagan articulated poetic and accessible accounts of reality that were so beautiful and simple that once you understood what he was saying, you would never see the world the same way again. Everything was meaningful and awesome. So ask yourself if you understand what he was saying. Do you have any idea what you are missing? Please, take some time to get to know what Carl Sagan was telling us. So many smart, thoughtful, and loving people can’t be wrong. I invite you to join the club.
I often wonder how much better our world be if he were still here to offer his insights and guidance. But he is gone. And the rest of us who did hear him can only forge ahead, doing what we can to open people’s eyes.
Rich Blundell
Omniscopic
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A Poem for the Celebration
Carl Sagan’s works have profoundly influenced my life for the better and informed my whole way of thinking. I’m glad he lived.
I’m including a poem inspired in part by “Pale Blue Dot.” This poem uses religious terms – ‘God,’ ‘Hallelujah,’ but they aren’t intended in a literal, theistic sense. They have resonance because of my upbringing and my culture, but one could replace them with similar words from any culture for the same effect. I think, somehow, Mr. Sagan would have liked it. So here’s my contribution.
- John Sisk
In Good Humor
Cold cables carry warm laughter;
Dark night gently cradles bright-eyed lovers on through morning;
The sun rises and the sun sets.
Brave-chested birds, blue like sky-flecks, like star-flecks,
Like chords from God’s guitar, strut and fly like
The shining gossamer of memory through forests
As green as the eyes of meaning:
Islands in the deep Pacific, themselves born
From spurting streams of rock-as-liquid, are
Stone-as-annihilation from some subterranean sea of fire,
That sea itself the hidden, brilliant rind of the world-fruit,
Tossing brief on a lonely limb of the Universe.
What then is the music of our solitary sphere?
The seed sings the tree, the tree
Sings the leaf, and the leaf’s song
Is the flower, that blood-bright jewel
That kisses my eye for an hour
And leaves as Beauty does:
A gloaming hope, a gleaming vision, and -
Gone, leaving only fragrance.
I sing Hallelujah.
- Copyright John Sisk 2004.
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