cArl SAgan

A definite and total bonus the more I go on in life.

so classic. brings back memories of high school, where my maths teacher would force the class to go to the AV and watch The Cosmos, Monty Python and he would read to us from "Fear and Loathing In las Vegas". Did we do any Mathematics? probbly not! (ps different maths teacher from the one i had a crush on).

still classic. we watched a clip from "cosmos" today in one of my classes in which sagan explained the origin of DNA while standing next to a huge, chintzy-looking sculpture of the double helix.

Maybe I'm a little young, but I am an astronomer and he had negligible impact/profile in the UK.

I know him best for his claim that the $5.5 trillion cost of the US nuclear weapons program was enough to buy everything in the US except the land, which was kind of striking. And the Stanley Tucci character in the Core is supposed to be a piss-take, I think.

I watched Cosmos as a kid, either being allowed to stop up or having the eps taped for me, and it felt like a huge deal at the time. I guess you're right that series didn't leave him with a huge public profile over here, it doesn't even seem to have a PAL DVD release :(

Cosmos introduced me to the googol and googolplex so cheers.

when was it broadcast in the UK?

Early 80s. We must've had a video recorder but we had one by at least '81 so any time round then.

http://jj.am/gallery/d/56335-1/Sagan_weed.jpg

his wife is really cool

maths is always sexy.
-- hamish, Saturday, October 20, 2001 8:00 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Link

incredible dud, the worst case of theorist- as-celebrity foisting his opinions as fact to the public who don't know any better because competing scientists in the field aren't handed newspaper columns and a miniseries. and he hated religion.

-- ethan, Wednesday, October 17, 2001 8:00 PM

and what more like and rong

fake ethan

i cant image e hating on a dude who hates religion

i was just gonna say

Cosmos was shown in the UK, but I don't remember enough about it to have an opinion. The music freaked me out a bit, and I got him confused with the actor who plays Dr. Hewer in "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century". Sagan was in a similar bracket, but far less annoying than, James Burke (the "Connections" TV series), who deliberately seemed to contradict himself five times a minute ("or does it? or does it?").

I'm one FOR Sagan

Sagan rocked

i don't think sagan even "hated" religion, not in the sense that someone like dawkins or hitchens does.

not at all, dude was fascinated by it - not nearly the ignoramous Dawkins is.

The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God.

No disrespect to the guy but that is a dickass quote.

Misrepresentative, too. We could also call "the set of physical laws that govern the universe" Potrzebie, and then say, yeah, clearly there's a Potrzebie. Which is more what Sagan was getting at. Don't make me pull out and quote from The Demon-Haunted World.

And Dawkins is hardly an "ignoramous." He's especially good on the question of "theology" as a legitimate field of study, i.e., just what is it "theologians" are supposed to be studying, and how do we know whether they are doing it correctly?

I have been watching DVDs of Cosmos and I am pretty certain I have a big crush on Carl Sagan.

http://www.emilydavidow.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/valentine-sagan-small.jpg

"A very similar improvement in my appreciation of music has occurred with cannabis. For the first time I have been able to hear the separate parts of a three-part harmony and the richness of the counterpoint. I have since discovered that professional musicians can quite easily keep many separate parts going simultaneously in their heads, but this was the first time for me. Again, the learning experience when high has at least to some extent carried over when I'm down. The enjoyment of food is amplified; tastes and aromas emerge that for some reason we ordinarily seem to be too busy to notice. I am able to give my full attention to the sensation. A potato will have a texture, a body, and taste like that of other potatoes, but much more so. Cannabis also enhances the enjoyment of sex - on the one hand it gives an exquisite sensitivity, but on the other hand it postpones orgasm: in part by distracting me with the profusion of image passing before my eyes. The actual duration of orgasm seems to lengthen greatly, but this may be the usual experience of time expansion which comes with cannabis smoking."

- Mr. X
By Carl Sagan

This account was written in 1969 for publication in 'Marihuana Reconsidered' (1971). Sagan was in his mid-thirties at that time. He continued to use cannabis for the rest of his life.

http://marijuana-uses.com/essays/002.html

dragons of eden is pretty awesome. he's such an excellent speculator about our evolution. my only complaint is that it isn't longer and doesn't get more detailed. i wanna hear more about how early man killed off our cousins, the other humanoid type things we shared the planet with for a good while there of which us and the monkeys and apes are the end of the line (so far)! and how those experiences deep in the past trigger things in our reptilian brains. love that kinda shit.

I wish he was still alive, but am kinda glad he didn't have to live thru the last decade.

We need more science popularizers & presenters for a mass audience.

(From 1981) http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/03/if-membership-is-restricted-to-men-loss.html

Early-1981, following IBM's withdrawal of support due to the organisation's continued exclusion of women within its ranks, renowned astronomer Carl Sagan sent the following impassioned letter to each and every fellow member of The Explorers Club — an international society dedicated to scientific exploration since its inception in 1904 — and argued beautifully for a change of policy.

Later that year, The Explorers Club welcomed its first female members.

------

Dear Fellow Member of The Explorers Club:

Thank you for the opportunity to write to you about the admission of women to The Explorers Club. The human zest for exploration and discovery is the hallmark of our species and one of the secrets of our success. It is a tradition that goes back much further than the 76 proud years in which The Explorers Club has been in existence. When our organization was formed in 1905, men were preventing women from voting and from pursuing many occupations for which they are clearly suited. In the popular mind, exploration was not what women did. Even so, women had played a significant but unheralded role in the history of exploration -- in Africa in the Nineteenth Century, for example. Similarly, Lewis and Clark were covered with glory, but Sacajewea, who guided them every inch of the way, was strangely forgotten. All institutions reflect the prejudices and conventions of their times, and when it was founded The Explorers Club necessarily reflected the attitudes of 1905.

Traditions are important. They provide continuity with our past. But it is up to us to decide which traditions are essential to The Explorers Club and which are accidents of the epoch in which it was institutionalized. Times have changed since 1905. It is very clear that a foolish rigidity can destroy otherwise worthwhile institutions; they are then replaced by other organizations more in tune with the times. IBM's recent withdrawal of corporate support for The Explorers Club because of our "exclusionary policy toward women" should be pondered carefully by every member. Many other former supporters may follow suit.

Today women are making extraordinary contributions in areas of fundamental interest to our organization. There are several women astronauts. The earliest footprints -- 3.6 million years old -- made by a member of the human family have been found in a volcanic ash flow in Tanzania by Mary Leakey. Trailblazing studies of the behavior of primates in the wild have been performed by dozens of young women, each spending years with a different primate species. Jane Goodall's studies of the chimpanzee are the best known of the investigations which illuminate human origins. The undersea depth record is held by Sylvia Earle. The solar wind was first measured in situ by Marcia Neugebauer, using the Mariner 2 spacecraft. The first active volcanos beyond the Earth were discovered on the Jovian moon Io by Linda Morabito, using the Voyager 1 spacecraft. These examples of modern exploration and discovery could be multiplied a hundredfold. They are of true historical significance. If membership in The Explorers Club is restricted to men, the loss will be ours; we will only be depriving ourselves.

The supposed parallelism between our situation and those of other organizations seems to me strained. The Bohemian Club is a resort; The Explorers Club is not. The Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts are for children. Their membership derives almost exclusively from adolescent and pre-adolescent youngsters, who have not yet fully accomodated to the opposite sex. But we presumably are adults, with a special responsibility for interacting with all humans on this planet.

I do not believe that the primary function of our organization is to promote male bonding or to serve as a social club -- although there is certain room for both. I believe that the fundamental dedication of the club is that stated on the masthead of every issue of The Explorers Club Newsletter: "To the conquest of the unknown and the advancement of knowledge." If this is our purpose, then admission should be open to all qualified members of the human species.

Cordially,

(Signed)

Carl Sagan

Watching Cosmos...I have to say that Carl Sagan was incredibly sexy.

hah I see I have posted this before.

i have already decided on this year's halloween costume.

Carl Sagan is the best.

Carl Sagan and Steven Jay Gould both died early - does science do that?

stephen hawking's gonna live forever

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRmz0HrECIQ

Doesn't Hawking have like only one working face muscle left? I saw a movie about it and it made me sad.

he was on the Big Bang Theory recently and it was kinda lovely even though I'm tired of that show mostly

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_memje8YuAj1qdmmiqo1_400.gif

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/psychiatrist-lester-grinspoon-smoked-weed-with-carl-sagana-lot

http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/04/my-dad-and-the-cosmos.html

^^ a really nice piece.

Carl Sagan predicted 2017 on page 40 of The Demon Haunted World. Published in 1996. pic.twitter.com/lhR6HVFKHc

— KStreetHipster (@KStreetHipster) August 7, 2017

the highlighting conspicuously stops just before the passage disparaging beavis and butthead

counterpoint: people are always saying that

Sagan's take on how human nature can undermine democracy, as quoted in those tweets, is rather more nuanced and profound than what people "are always saying". But if you were just referencing his criticism of Beavis and Butthead, then you'd be right.

more specific, too

when i say people i'm referring to people who are rather more nuanced and profound than carl sagan

it's true that most of the people i'm referring to predate the united states of america

the service and information economy bit is prescient, yes

complaints about "dumbing down" around since the greeks iirc

i'm not even disagreeing with carl sagan i'm just saying a big chunk of his 2017 predictions are applicable to broad swaths of history

They've discovered an Egyptian papyrus from about 1800 BC with a screed about how the younger generation is heedless, irreverent and impolite and the world is going to hell, but that isn't quite what Sagan is saying.

alright dude whatever

i also have to laugh because my dad won't watch cosmos with me (he considers carl sagan to be dumbing down the physics!!!)

also just for the record i wasn't referring to that papyrus either ;-)

FU SAgan, dumb and dumber was a classic.

it sucks how Carl Sagan has been a bit of a casualty in the era of Yas Science.

imo he was a far more nuanced thinker and often bridged the gap between science and spirituality. it has been painful to see him Baconized.

I re-read the Cosmos companion book recently. Still mind-blowing, especially the early chapters. The man could turn a phrase.

Sure, he's wrong on Beavis & Butthead, but you can't be an expert in everything.

Sagan's pseudonymous essay on how awesome sex is while high is an uncomfortable read.

nah man that is a classic stoner essay

He unwittingly invented Neil deGrasse Tyson

Baconized?

is that bacon like francis bacon or bacon like bacon, zombies and mustaches?

the latter. he was pretty uncompromisingly godless tho as far as I know

Baconing as specifically by the reddit/new atheists/science activist crowds as kind of re-purposed as a meme or idol for whatever ideology they are convinced is objectively true. philosophically he was far from uncompromising. he was never that way in the Cosmos series or the interviews with Moyer. he makes a point to approach cultures and traditions around the world with respect. you could even say this is one of the mission statements of the Cosmos project. this is an intellectual approach, to encourage cultural literary. morally he seemed to be far more concerned with the Cold War and the nuclear arms race. the destructive force that was and still is an active concern.

Happy 90th birthday wherever the heck in the continuum he is. That quote from Demon Haunted World in full

I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

ouch he nailed it

I like to think I’m sophisticated in my musical tastes, but give me basically any track with Sagan samples and I am sold.

Also, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH3c1QZzRK4