All Entries in the "Memories" Category
Carl Sagan is Dead. Long Live Carl Sagan!
Zane Selvans is an admitted Amatuer Earthling, and is happy to share his thoughts and explorations on what it means to be a member of the adolescent human species. He lives in California, is both a scientist and a cyclist and wrote this exceptional essay that in part discuses two things — 1) how he came to appreciate that the death of Carl Sagan and the corresponding dearth of new works by the deceased scientist ultimately means its up to us to move the conversation forward, and 2) how ‘joyful and persistent understanding’ are, in the words of Nietzsche, our, “highest and most proper metaphysical,” purpose. Enjoy.
Before I finished Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age in the Salt Lake City airport Monday, I found a book by Carl Sagan in the bookstore. “The Varieties of Scientific Experience”, based on his Gifford Lectures from 1985 (and published posthumously, in 2006 by Ann Druyan). I read half of it in the airport, and the other half last night. It went fast, because I’d heard it all before. The main piece of new information was that a decade and a half after the fact, Carl Sagan is truly dead to me. I’ve read most of his books, I’ve seen his television series Cosmos several times. I love his ideas; they’ve shaped me throughout my life, but I no longer hope to find anything new in them. So long as there were pieces of his mind that had been recorded, but that I hadn’t yet been exposed to, it was as if he wasn’t quite gone. He was still, from my point of view, a dynamic entity.
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Doctor Tony Prescribes a Healthy Dose of Idealism and Carl Sagan
Frustrated the modern cultural fixation on cynicism? So is Tony. That is why he’s glad that he’s found Carl Sagan. Check out this post he wrote for his blog, Your Daily Dose of Vitamin T.
I get so tired of cynicism, even in myself. It’s so easy to say that we’re going to, as a species, kill ourselves off, destroy the world, all of that, and I’ll admit that I subscribe to that view myself sometimes when I run into the truly stupid members of our species. That’s why, when I discovered Carl Sagan, a man who was absolutely brilliant and so obviously hopeful for us… it warmed the baseball-glove-sized radiator that I use for a heart.
The Known Universe
Danny Ledonne says, “Beautiful stuff – Sagan would want a front row seat.”
Remembering Carl Sagan
Alex Michael Bonnici at The Discovery Enterprise writes:
Today on Discovery Enterprise we commemorate the memory of Carl Sagan who died an untimely death thirteen years ago today. Carl Sagan, was an astronomer, astrochemist, author, and highly successful popularizer of astronomy, astrophysics and other natural sciences. He pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence [...]
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch…
To celebrate Dr. Sagan’s birthday, Joe and Julie from St. Louis made an apple pie and this photo essay from scratch.
God, the Universe and Everything Else
Here is a video of Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, and Arthur C. Clarke talking about everything and everything’s beginning. It consists of questions and answers. The first point that Carl Sagan makes in this video is about questions and answers. He goes on to talk about answers in his own answers.
Galaxy Garden.
Regular Celebrating Sagan contributor Larry Klaes sent an email notifying us about the new ‘Galaxy Garden’ website.
The Galaxy Garden is a 100-foot diameter outdoor scale model of the Milky Way, mapped in living plants and flowers and based on current astrophysical data.
Artist Jon Lomberg conceived and designed the garden to encourage scientific education about our [...]
Altair VI: Sagan on Mars Landing Sites
Journalist Larry Klaes sent us this link at Altair VI, where David Portee’s wrote an excellent blog post about Sagan’s roll in determining landing sites for a Mars lander.
Carl Sagan, an assistant professor of astronomy at Harvard, and Paul Swan, Senior Project Scientist at Avco Corporation, published results of their study of possible Voyager Mars [...]
Planet Walk.
From the Sagan Gathering:
