What is Digg?53 Comments
- inactive, on 11/09/2008, -1/+49"For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."~ Carl Sagan
- GrandmaSheila, on 11/09/2008, -4/+48I've never ceased to mourn his loss. We are privileged to see few such beautiful minds. We were lucky to have him, and he was worth all the canting televangelists, stupid cultists, and idiot creationists lumped together.
- woonie, on 11/10/2008, -0/+32"The spacecraft was a long way from home. I thought it would be a good idea, just after Saturn, to have them take one last glance homeward. From Saturn, the Earth would appear too small for Voyager to make out any detail. Our planet would be just a point of light, a lonely pixel hardly distinguishable from the other points of light Voyager would see: nearby planets, far off suns. But precisely because of the obscurity of our world thus revealed, such a picture might be worth having."
"It had been well understood by the scientists and philosophers of classical antiquity that the Earth was a mere point in a vast, encompassing cosmos -- but no one had ever seen it as such. Here was our first chance, and perhaps also our last."
"So, here they are: a mosaic of squares laid down on top of the planets in a background smattering of more distant stars. Because of the reflection of sunlight off the spacecraft, the Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light, as if there were some special significance to this small world; but it's just an accident of geometry and optics. There is no sign of humans in this picture: not our reworking of the Earth's surface; not our machines; not ourselves. From this vantage point, our obsession with nationalism is nowhere in evidence. We are too small. On the scale of worlds, humans are inconsequential: a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal."
"Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you've ever heard of, every human being who ever was lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings; thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines; every hunter and forager; every hero and coward; every creator and destroyer of civilizations; every king and peasant, every young couple in love; every mother and father; every hopeful child; every inventor and explorer; every teacher of morals; every corrupt politician; every supreme leader; every superstar; 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 endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings; how eager they are to kill one another; how fervent their hatreds. 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. 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 the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand."
"It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. It underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the only home we've ever known: the pale blue dot."
- Sagan
Truly mind-blowing. - DrunkenDigger, on 11/10/2008, -0/+30You are missed out here, Carl, on this pale, blue dot. Thanks.
- mistertrogdor, on 11/10/2008, -0/+18"An extraterrestrial visitor examining the differences among human societies would find those differences trivial compared to our similarities.
Our lives, our past and our future are tied to the sun, the moon and the stars...We humans have seen the atoms which constitute all of nature and the forces that sculpted this work...and we, who embody the local eyes and ears and thoughts and feelings of the cosmos, have begun to wonder about out origins...star stuff contemplating the stars, organized collections of ten billion billion billion atoms, contemplating the evolution of nature, tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet earth...Our loyalties are to the species and to the planet. Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not to just ourselves but also to that cosmos ancient and vast from which we sprung.
We are one species.
We are star stuff harvesting star light."
-Carl Sagan
1934-1996
Atoms observing atoms... Carl Sagan was an extraterrestrial. - IHaveIssues, on 11/10/2008, -0/+16Don't feed the trolls.
- digrboi, on 11/10/2008, -0/+15Somewhere,something incredible is waiting to be known. - Carl Sagan
- wjappe, on 11/09/2008, -1/+16Absolutely, he is the one during his series, "Cosmos, A Personal Voyage" had finally pushed me over the edge from being afraid of the possibly of god (agnostic) to atheism. His words inspired me not to believe in the nonsense of the unprovable. If God created everything then you have to ask the next question "Where did God come from?". He was a great spokesman for the world of real science, his great eloquence, and I sorely miss him.
- raydeen, on 11/10/2008, -0/+14Billions and billions of diggs. He's cruising the cosmos in his dandelion seed.
- woonie, on 11/10/2008, -0/+14From his wiki page:
In 1994, Apple Computer began developing the Power Macintosh 7100. They chose the internal code name "Carl Sagan", the reference being that the mid-range PowerMac 7100 should make Apple "billions and billions." Though the internal project name was never used in public marketing, it did come up in usenet postings and news of the name grew from there. When Sagan learned of this he sued Apple Computer to force the use of a different project name. Other models released conjointly had code names such as "Cold fusion" and "Piltdown Man", and Sagan was displeased at being associated with what he considered pseudoscience. (He was at the time writing a book discrediting pseudoscience.) Though Sagan lost the lawsuit Apple engineers complied with his demands anyway and renamed the project "BHA" (for Butt-Head Astronomer). Sagan promptly sued Apple for libel over the new name, claiming that it subjected him to contempt and ridicule, but he lost this lawsuit as well. Still, the 7100 saw another name change: it was finally referred to internally as "LAW" (Lawyers Are Wimps). - mistertrogdor, on 11/10/2008, -0/+14What a tragic waste the rest of the universe is; using your logic.
- weeFred, on 11/10/2008, -0/+12Are you perhaps confusing scientist with inventor? Read a book.
- thepoliticalcat, on 11/10/2008, -0/+11Happy birthday, Carl! I'm reading one of his books right now - Broca's Brain.
- saketome, on 11/10/2008, -0/+10This man changed my life. I could (and did) watch Cosmos over and over. An incredible human being, one who is and forever will be greatly missed.
Happy birthday, Carl. - DetpackJump, on 11/10/2008, -1/+11Huh? Sagan is one of the most revered scientists of the modern era. I can't even begin to guess what your agenda is.
- sheeplescareme, on 11/10/2008, -0/+9well said, grandma and w. cosmos is one of my favourites as well. it is important that we remember his musings and pass them on to the next generation.
- wardsac, on 11/10/2008, -0/+8Great submission. Carl was one of the few scientists able to explain what many considered 'illogical' in a logical and simple way.
I still show my science classes Cosmos, and always will. - juggle, on 11/10/2008, -1/+8It's people like Carl Sagan that we should be idolizing and looking up to. Not these priests, politicians, sports figures, and singer/actors that everyone drools over.
It's a shame that most people will never truly experience the wonders of science and the cosmos - I thank you Carl for opening my eyes. - mhmandthen, on 11/10/2008, -0/+6Narut0, browsing through your previous comments I have noted that you have a fundamental misunderstanding of EVERYTHING. Please seek immediate help from some type of educational facility. Thank you.
- Uberperson, on 11/10/2008, -0/+6Smart guy, too bad he was never able to witness Extraterrestrial life in his lifetime.
- Gr00ver, on 11/10/2008, -0/+6"Consider, again, that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us."
You will always be missed Carl Sagan. Rest in peace. - llamarada, on 11/10/2008, -0/+5If I could only digg you up 1 billion times....
- TheIP, on 11/10/2008, -0/+4yeah, because it is no longer the 9th, it is no longer important.
- aussiecarlos, on 11/10/2008, -0/+4Thanks guys for the birthday message... oh.... what's that? Not me... bugger!
- captdonno, on 11/10/2008, -0/+4"on a tiny spit of sand, staring upwards into the obsidian sky..." he was a great man and i'm happy to see him get remembered and dugg enough to be on the front page, even if the dates don't match:)
- mhmandthen, on 11/10/2008, -3/+7Smoke weed err'day.
- Bic823, on 11/10/2008, -0/+4Rest in Peace, Carl. You were a great man, and you'll live on forever in the hearts and minds of those who have had the privelege of sharing your curiosity and sense of wonder about the cosmos.
- dialectical, on 11/10/2008, -0/+3I am making fake digg logins so I can triple and quadruple digg you :) Sagan was someone who kept a steady face for Science for so long. He is missed but not forgotten.
- MacEnvy, on 11/10/2008, -1/+4"Billions and billions" of times, even.
- ak420, on 11/10/2008, -0/+3Every time I read that, or hear him speak those words, I get shivers down my spine; it is so unbelievably moving.
- mikbunn, on 11/10/2008, -2/+4Supporting science by skewing statistics?
- inactive, on 11/10/2008, -0/+2lol, it's no longer the 9th. Seriously, Digg needs to do fix this problem so that current events hit the front page when they are still current. Reddit's system is great.
- wardsac, on 11/10/2008, -0/+2Oh, and obligatory:
"Den why does it say 'da moon rulez' on da side of my Camaro!?" - mhmandthen, on 11/10/2008, -0/+2
- justjoehere, on 11/11/2008, -0/+1I loved his forward in "A Brief History of Time"
- wjappe, on 11/11/2008, -0/+1My previous post was @am0363 I don't know how it got here, I didn't mean so seem to get off subject I was trying to defend a previous post
- lennybird, on 11/10/2008, -0/+1that's pretty cool, thanks for sharing.
- rectagon, on 11/10/2008, -0/+1So you think he's in the afterlife? Let's stay consistent here people.
- wjappe, on 11/11/2008, -0/+1Perhaps it's you that doesn't understand, I have no need for, I don't understand why people need to complicate their lives with, waste their time with, annoy other people with it and bring up morals they have to look up in a book when it should be already in their hearts. Why they want to spend so much time believing in fairy tales. I know what these terms mean and I wonder if you really do or not. And I don't understand why you would aggravate me by by saying that. This post is in memory of Carl Sagan and his teachings, I hope that you know what he was about.
- GrandmaSheila, on 11/11/2008, -0/+1For all Sagan fans, you might want to check out "The Demon-Haunted World", his last book, and so beautiful, so eloquent, witty, and moving, and utterly demolishes various pseudo-sciences.
From Wikipedia, on the book:
"In the book, Sagan said that if a new idea continues in existence after an examination of the propositions, it should then be acknowledged as a supposition. Skeptical thinking essentially is a means to construct, understand, reason, and recognize valid and invalid arguments. Wherever possible, there must be independent validation of the concepts whose truth should be proved. He believed that reason and logic would succeed once the truth is known. Conclusions emerge from premises, and the acceptability of the premises should not be discounted or accepted because of bias."
"Sagan presents a set of tools for skeptical thinking which he calls the "baloney detection kit". Skeptical thinking consists both of constructing a reasoned argument and recognizing a fallacious or fraudulent one. In order to identify a fallacious argument, Sagan suggests the employment of such tools as independent confirmation of facts, quantification and the use of Occam's razor. Sagan's "baloney detection kit" also provided tools for detecting "the most common fallacies of logic and rhetoric", such as argument from authority and statistics of small numbers. Through these tools, Sagan argues the benefits of a critical mind and the self-correcting nature of science can take place.
"Sagan provides a skeptical analysis of several kinds of superstition, fraud, pseudoscience and religious beliefs, such as gods, witches, UFOs, ESP and faith healing. However, based on what he described as "some, although still dubious experimental support," Sagan called for serious scrutiny of a handful of seemingly inexplicable phenomena such as reincarnation and psychokinesis, not because he regarded them as likely to be true, but because anomalous data deserves close scientific study." - DCStarClassic, on 11/11/2008, -0/+1Happy Birthday to Sagen.
That video that's in the link......the song going to it, was that Sigur Ros? - zeblith, on 11/10/2008, -0/+1OMG! Girl! I needs me some D&G right NOW! But it's gots to match me those Gucci shoes or my girl Chantelle will get bulimic all over them!
... Don't you know? Sagan was all about the "PRADA". - raydeen, on 11/10/2008, -0/+1Afterlife, fifth dimensional, whatever.
- dialectical, on 12/29/2008, -0/+1My opinion is not science. What if I strongly support something?
- zeblith, on 11/10/2008, -2/+2To grasp, or even to just try to grasp? Clearly understanding the nature of the Universe would be satisfying, it's all the unknowns that lead to the waffling between reality and fantasy.
But, admittedly, some of us are much weaker people, and I for one need a certain dose of delusion just to go about my daily life and be able to fall asleep at night. - Nallohki, on 11/10/2008, -1/+1It's my birthday, too... :(
- am0363, on 11/10/2008, -1/+0You don't understand Agnostic or Atheism and therefore you should go back to being religious.
- adamroach, on 11/10/2008, -2/+2Can I be cool if I smoke some pot too?
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