Pharyngula

Posted by: Phodopus | November 7, 2009 8:54 AM

The Cosmos is just out to kill us all! I will not be intimidated into worshiping It by Its supernova big bang asteroid scare tactics!

Posted by: mayhempix | November 7, 2009 9:09 AM

The name "littlejohn" says it all.

Posted by: Brock | November 7, 2009 9:18 AM

Also, someone needs to start work on "Happy Monkey, Carl Sagan: A New Atheist Holiday Special".

Posted by: Matt Penfold | November 7, 2009 9:19 AM

Littlejohn seems to be a bit confused.

Sagan was married three times. He was still married to his third wife Ann Druyan at the time he died.

Posted by: Matt Penfold | November 7, 2009 9:22 AM

Thanks 'Tis.

Posted by: Sandra S | November 7, 2009 9:38 AM

So, uhm, forgive my ignorance, but why is today Sagan Day? I thought his birthday was the 9:th.

Posted by: Matt Penfold | November 7, 2009 9:46 AM

So, uhm, forgive my ignorance, but why is today Sagan Day? I thought his birthday was the 9:th.

It is.

I imagine that the organisers chose today because it was a Saturday and more people would be able to attend.

Posted by: Garbledina | November 7, 2009 9:52 AM

There is a newer video out:
http://www.symphonyofscience.com./
"we are all connected." Bill Nye really looks like he is in a gangsta rap video. It's awesome.
My son memorized a few astronomy facts before he went to school today, so he could share Carl Sagan Day with his peers.

Posted by: Wonko the Sane | November 7, 2009 10:11 AM

It seems a 7" record is to be released on November 9th featuring the song:

http://thirdmanrecords.com/news.html

Posted by: LMR | November 7, 2009 10:16 AM

I'm not sure why the linked article uses the 'Pale Blue Dot' video that it does (with all the Hollywood movie clips) - a much better version (with newsreel footage) is available here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmMUuR--Qvo

And, as long as we're admiring the scale of the cosmos, this is always a good video to watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAVjF_7ensg

Posted by: Sphere...Coupler | November 7, 2009 10:29 AM

For Carl Sagan day (in his own words)

We are all cousins, if you trace our ancestry back far enough,
you find, that all of us ultimately come from a small area in east
Africa. The species Homo Sapiens began there a few hundred
thousand years ago. The human family began there a few million
years ago. Initially, we were small, struggling, groups of family
members, itinerant, wandering, following the game, our numbers
were few, our powers were feeble. In the intervening years we have
expanded to every Continent on Earth, some of us even reside at
the ocean depths and for brief periods a few hundred miles over-
head in space. We now number 5.6 billion of us and our powers
have reached formidable if not awesome proportions. A celebration
like this is a kind of gathering of the tribes, a bringing together of
the far-flung members of the human family and a recognition of
our common origin and common goals. We are in the process
of a great unification of the human species.
We have only recently
and quickly moved from the fastest rate of communication being
how fast a human could run to the speed of light, according to
Special Relativity the ultimate speed limit. Comparable increases
have been made in the speed of transportation. We now are
entertained on a Global scale. The economies of the nations of
the world are now integrated, the stock markets coalesced, the
economic well being of one country affecting the economic well
being of many others. The global environment, changes in the
global environment are a common threat to everyone on earth.
A molecule of chlorofluro carbon that rises over Chicago affects
the health of people in Chile. A carbon dioxide molecule that
rises into the atmosphere over China affects the climate in
Europe. These molecules do not have passports, they are
foolishly unaware of the importance of national boundaries and
national sovereignty. In the current, serious, environmental
crisis, we are all in the same boat. No one generation and no
one nation has been responsible and no one generation and
no one nation can by itself solve the problem. This is a multi
generational, multi national task and if we fail in it we fail the
future of our species. We are forced not by ideology, not by
philosophy but by our common interest in survival to work
together. This is also true in the somewhat receding threat
of nuclear war, a major thermonuclear exchange would affect
not only the people in the so called northern hemisphere
target zone but through changes in the climate people every
where on earth, people who had no possible connection with
whatever the quarrel might have been to initiate global thermo-
nuclear war. And lately another common threat has arisen one
which sounds like the sheerest science fiction but which is
very real and that is, that a comet or an asteroid one kilometer
across or larger would impact the earth and the resulting climate
change pose serious problems for the continuance of our global
civilization. Sixty five million years ago an asteroid or comet ten
times as large hit the earth, resulting in the extinction not only
of all the dinosaurs but of most of the species of life on earth
this too is a threat common to everyone on earth and the
solution to this problem involving at least inventorying these
asteroids and comets and ultimately learning how to effect
small changes in their trajectories is also a task for all
humans together. The powers, the incredible powers of our
technology, what we can do not just on purpose but even
inadvertently forces on us levels of prudence, foresight and
responsibility that have never been required before, not just
on those who devise the technologies but on those who
employ them, and of course this requires a widespread
understanding of science and technology, otherwise the
decisions will be made by a very few people who may by
no means represent most of the people on earth. We have
designed a civilization based on science and technology
and at the same time have arranged things so that almost no
one understands anything at all about science and technology.
This is a clear prescription for disaster. (applause)
We may for a awhile get away with this mix of ignorance and
power but sooner or later it is bound to blow up in our face.
It is not the technology is by itself and without amelioration
dangerous, much less evil. We have always been
technological. Our ancestors of a few hundred thousand
years ago were technological. It was a stone-age technology
to be sure but we chipped and flaked stones to make tools
which were the means of our survival. It was the only
edge we had on the other animals. Today we are still
tool using, our tools are much more powerful but they
are responsible for a great deal that we tend to forget
about. If not for agricultural technology the earth would
support only some tens of millions of people, instead
of more than five billion people. The vast majority of people
on the earth owe their lives for this reason alone to
technology. Medicine, not just antibiotics but the full
sweep of public health and medical technology and
pharmaceuticals is responsible for the fact that in
many parts of the earth, the expectation value of the
human life expectancy is seventy or seventy five or even
eighty years now, when only a few hundred years ago
it was only twenty five or thirty years. And I myself am
a recent beneficiary of the recent only over the last few
years advances in medical technology. And by the way
I would like to thank from the bottom of my heart the
fact that people in this congregation, so many of them
produced prayers and good wishes for my health and
survival, I'm deeply grateful and while I think it would
be too much to say that it worked, the net result is
that I seem to be fully recovered. (applause)
There is a widespread view that the alienation and
loneliness that is so endemic especially in the non-
traditional societies of the planet can be blamed on
science. But I think it is clear that this alienation and
loneliness are really due to a decline in the traditional
societies especially the hunter-gatherer style extended
families, to our immense numbers and to our ethnic and
cultural diversity and also to deficiencies in our educational
system. Science is merely an extremely powerful method
of winnowing what's true from what feels good. Without
the error correcting machinery of science we are lost to
our subjectivity, to our chauvinism, to our longing to be
central to the purpose of the universe. One of science's
alleged crimes is revealing that our favorite most
reassuring stories about our place in the universe and
how we came to be are delusional. Instead what science
reveals is a universe much older and much vaster than
the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors.
We have found from modern astronomy that we live on
a tiny hunk of rock and metal, third from the sun, that
circles a humdrum star in the obscure outskirts of an
ordinary galaxy which contains some 400 billion other
stars, which is one of about a 100 billion other galaxies
that make up the universe and according to some
current views, a universe that is one among an immense
number, perhaps an infinite number of other universes.
In this perspective the idea that our planet is at the center
of the universe much less that human purpose is central
to the existence of the universe is pathetic. Does life
thereby lose all meaning, I think not. I think we make our
lives meaningful by the courage of our questions, by the
depth of our answers, by how widespread our understanding
is of the essential tools for managing our future, for how
skeptical we are of those in authority and of our obligation
to care for one another. It was my great good fortune. It has
been my great good fortune to be involved in an extraordinary
enterprise over the last thirty five years in which the human
species sent robot exploratory vehicles to rummage through
the planetary part of the solar system to survey our local
swimming hole in space. One of these spacecraft, a two
spacecraft mission, was called voyager and in 1989 after
its brilliantly successful explorations of the Jupiter, Saturn
Uranus and Neptune system, it became possible to do
something I had wanted to do from the very beginning of
that mission and that is to turn the cameras around and
look back from beyond the outer most planet at our world.
We succeeded in doing this and the image that resulted
was of a single pale blue dot momentarily in a sunbeam.
I look at that dot and I think that's here, that's home,
that's us. On that dot everyone you love, everyone you
know, everyone you ever heard of, every human-being
who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all
our joy and suffering thousands of confident and mutually
exclusive religions, ideologies and economic doctrines,
every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every
creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant,
every young couple in love every mother and father, every
hopeful child, every inventor and explorer, every revered
teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar,
every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history
of our species lived there on a mote of dust suspended in
a sunbeam. The earth is a very small stage in a vast
cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all
those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph
they could become the momentary masters of a fraction
of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants
of one corner of the dot on the scarcely distinguishable
inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent
their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one
another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of those who
derived their self esteem from dividing the dot into two
hundred still littler patches. Our posturings, our imagined
self- importance, the delusion that we have some
privileged position in the universe are challenged by this point of
pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in a great enveloping
cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness their is
no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from
ourselves, it is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is
a humbling and even character building experience. There
is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human
conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. For me
it underscores our responsibility, our profound responsibility
to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and
cherish that pale blue dot the only home we have ever
known. (applause)

Carl Sagan Speech "Visions of the 21st. Century"

Posted by: Matt Penfold | November 7, 2009 10:49 AM

Cosmos came out whilst I was doing my O-Levels at school.

Out physics teacher decided Sagan could do a better job than him instilling a love of science in us, so he recorded it and we got to watch it each week.

I was a good call on his part.

Posted by: Silič O'Nopolitanopoulos, Färschdbischuf Beesknees aus Ulm und Klein Elguth, Elector Pharynguline. | November 7, 2009 10:56 AM

I keep meaning to go pick/collect the last apples. Tomorrow perhaps.

So no applepie for Saganday.

Posted by: Dire Lobo | November 7, 2009 11:17 AM

Speaking of Carl Sagan - Dorion Sagan, his son, will be interviewed this Thursday at 6pm Pacific on Virtually Speaking, the virtual reality net talk show.

You can attend the interview LIVE in the virtual reality environment of Second Life, of you can listen LIVE via the Web [ http://blogtalkradio.com/virtuallyspeaking ].

Attendees in Second Life can participate by contributing questions to Dorion during the interview. To learn more, visit:

http://virtuallyspeaking.ning.com

Drion Sagan has written and co-authored many books on evolution, most recently Notes from the Holocene and Into the Cool, co-authored with Eric D.Schneider, on the subject of non-equilibrium thermodynamics. He and his mother, evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis, founded Sciencewriters Books, an imprint of Chelsea Green Publishing for science books.

PS. PZ was a guest on Virtually Speaking on April 17th, 2008. You can listen to the Podcast of that interview here:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/virtuallyspeaking/2008/04/18/Virtually-Speaking-with-Jimbo-Hoyer

Posted by: Andrew T | November 7, 2009 11:25 AM

Carl Sagan's death at the age of 62 was far too early. It's great that we have since had several people (like Bill Nye, Neil deGrasse Tyson and others) who have stepped up to try to fill his shoes in bringing science and reason to an irrational world. I have yet to see anyone with the sheer power of inspiration that Sagan had, though it hasn't been from a lack of trying.

A tiny part of me hopes that he's sitting in a cryotank somewhere, and that perhaps later this century the world would have him back. Wishful thinking I know, but if Sagan taught us anything it's that you don't have to stop being a dreamer in order to have a scientific mind.

Posted by: Ll | November 7, 2009 11:52 AM

Stand Curve @31:

He was illustrating whale songs. (the videomaker cut 'Whale' out of 'I'm not very good at singing whale songs, but...')

Posted by: Matt Penfold | November 7, 2009 12:44 PM

Since when is it bad to go through two divorces? It's not ideal, but sometimes life happens.

It also seems pretty irrelevant to Sagan's professional life.

Posted by: ESPness | November 7, 2009 1:07 PM

New Zealand electronica artist Rhian Sheehan makes use of Sagan quotes on his album Tiny Blue Bioshpere. Check out a video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0NUs-1CAfo

Posted by: Polyester Mather DD | November 7, 2009 2:03 PM

Holy hagiography !

Those wishing to celebrate the birthday of the good and great science educator who wrote Cosmos have ten months grace to prepare.

This may be the anniversary of one of Jacob Bronowsky's lesser plagiarists , but Alexander von Humboldt was born on September 14 1769

Posted by: Tim | November 7, 2009 2:51 PM

I watched a few excerpts of Cosmos on youtube. I cried a little.

Posted by: Frink | November 7, 2009 4:51 PM

How appropriate--my Cosmos DVD set arrived in the mail today.

Posted by: Polyester Mather DD | November 7, 2009 5:58 PM

Himself, 'tis as if the remake was father to the prequel.

Posted by: Janet Holmes | November 7, 2009 7:24 PM

If you've been divorced twice, obviously you have twice chosen the wrong person to marry. This argues for poor judgment if nothing else.

Posted by: Aquaria | November 8, 2009 2:13 AM

Happy (belated) birthday, Matt P.

You waged a heroic battle at the Crapasection--er, Intersection--over Mooney's dishonesty in attributing one of my posts to PZ. I can't thank you enough for your relentlessness on the issue, since you saved me the effort of waging war against that facetious fucktard (come on, Mooney, cry for me, you whiny-ass titty baby). There I was, getting used to a complete schedule change at work, little realizing...

Posted by: Catullus | November 8, 2009 3:10 AM

The "science on social policy" link activates virus/trojan programs. This happens frequently on your site Prof. Myers. Since I'm hardly a web expert I wonder if anyone knows why this is happening.

Posted by: ESPness | November 8, 2009 4:27 AM

Janet, if you're still married to your highschool sweetheart I'm happy for ya. Some of us aren't that lucky. Can you give me some pointers on what kind of women I should be avoiding or should I just stay single?

Posted by: Aquaria | November 8, 2009 5:17 PM

Yeah, you have to pick your battles. But I'm glad one of them you took up was that one.

If I'm ever in the UK, I'll buy you a drink (or two or...).