MetaFilter posts tagged with carlsagan

Mr. X

chronkite — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:28:08 -0800

'Listen closely, you sonofabitch of the morning! This stuff is real!'

We are all connected

bwg — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 03:01:04 -0800

Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye, sing to us (auto-tuned in a way that I actually don't hate), in We Are All Connected*. *Possibly NSFW owing to sidebar video links. Something similar was mentioned here previously.

I miss Carl Sagan.

jiawen — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 23:06:54 -0800

I miss Carl Sagan . I miss Carl Sagan . I miss Carl Sagan . Previously. Inspired by .

Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking lay it out, in song

Earl the Polliwog — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:36:23 -0800

A still more glorious dawn awaits
Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise
A morning filled with 400 billion suns
The rising of the milky way

Billions and Billions....OK, make that 29 years ago

waitingtoderail — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 15:53:09 -0800

Cosmos: A Personal Voyage premiered on PBS on September 28, 1980. (Previously). With Carl Sagan as guide, on a "cosmic journey across space and time," on a "spaceship of the imagination," few shows inspired as many people to investigate science, many of whom went on to be scientists. It was the most-watched PBS series in history before Ken Burns's The Civil War and won three prime time Emmys and a Peabody Award. As Astronomy magazine said upon Sagan's death in 1996, "The universe lost one of its best friends a few days before Christmas 1996," and "he accomplished more to interest the public in astronomy and space exploration than anyone else of his time." All thirteen episodes of Cosmos are now streaming online, thanks to Hulu.com.

A Pale Blue Dot

empath — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 16:43:11 -0800

A Pale Blue Dot - An Unauthorized view. Some time before he died in 1996, Carl Sagan recorded a partial audio version of his 1994 book "Pale Blue Dot". Often described as the "sequel" to Cosmos, the audio version of Pale Blue Dot is, at this moment, regrettably out of print. This video is "episode one" of an unauthorized attempt at producing a series of videos based on Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" audio book combined with a soundtrack and appropriate video and still images intended to recall the feel of the classic documentary series "Ascent of Man" and "Cosmos"

the universe is bananas.

6am — Thu, 11 May 2006 15:49:47 -0800

Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man. Direct Google Video link to a fruitcake-tastic half-hour film of "a symposium held at Boston University on November 20, 1972 that explores the implications of the possible existence of extraterrestrial life within the galaxy and the universe. " Well worth scrubbing through for some good moments if you don't have time to watch the whole thing. Other cool old NASA videos on google video include Who's Out There?, starring a cigar smoking Orson Welles squinting a lot and reading off the cue cards, and Debrief: Apollo 8: "Happiness is bacon squares for breakfast".

Thoughts on the origins of violence

crasspastor — Sun, 02 Mar 2003 22:42:24 -0800

Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence. If this 1975 article from the The Bulletin of The Atomic Sciences were written today, the "Body Pleasure" bit would have probably been left out. But that doesn't mean this article isn't worth the time to read. Also see this cite of James W. Prescott's work in Carl Sagan's bestselling book and PBS series in chapter 13: Who Speaks for Earth?

Pretty_Generic — Mon, 11 Nov 2002 17:15:23 -0800

Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit. Yeah, seems pretty faultless to me.

botono9 — Fri, 13 Sep 2002 21:17:07 -0800

Sometimes a kind of existential perception of the absurd comes over me and I see with awful certainty the hypocrisies and posturing of myself and my fellow men. Carl Sagan commenting (circa 1971) on an experience he had while high on Cannabis over at Marijuana-Users.com. One of the only efforts (along with Cannabis Consumers) to get people to "come out" and help remove inaccurate stereotypes from the mind of the public.

thanotopsis — Mon, 09 Sep 2002 06:53:00 -0800

22 years ago, 13 hours of television changed my life. I was just 11 years old when I saw Cosmos for the first time. Carl Sagan's explanation of the "Billions and Billions" of stars in our universe was often heckled, but I always related to the wonder of the magnitude that he was trying to relate. Vangelis was responsible for the soundtrack (the same folks behind the music from Chariots of Fire and Blade Runner), and listening to it today, I feel the stirrings of emotion that brought me running to Science at an early age.

If you're looking for a gift for a child in your life this holiday season, I suggest the DVD Compilation. Make sure to buy it from the carlsagan.com site, as 10% of the proceeds go to the Carl Sagan Foundation.

stevis — Mon, 31 Dec 2001 08:49:24 -0800

The Universe in One Year Every year on December 31 since I was in 7th grade I think of something I saw in an episode of Carl Sagan's Cosmos. I found this: Imagine that the history of the universe is compressed into one year—with the Big Bang occurring in the first seconds of New Year’s Day, and all our known history occurring in the final seconds before midnight on December 31. Using this scale of time, each month would equal a little over a billion years. Dinosaurs ruled the Earth for almost two hundred million years - from December 25 to December 30 on this time line. Most of our entire written history fits into the last 10 seconds of the year. It's something to think about while watching the ball drop tonight.