{"id":2425,"date":"2009-11-09T17:38:48","date_gmt":"2009-11-09T22:38:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.net\/?p=2425"},"modified":"2009-11-09T17:38:48","modified_gmt":"2009-11-09T22:38:48","slug":"on-carl-sagans-birthday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=2425","title":{"rendered":"On Carl Sagan’s Birthday"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Writer’s Almanac<\/a> tells me that today, the 9th of November, is Carl Sagan’s birthday. He would have been seventy-five.<\/p>\n

Said Garrison Keillor of Sagan this morning: “[He] published a number of books that helped regular people understand ideas about the universe, including Dragons of Eden: Speculations of the Evolution of Human Intelligence<\/i> (1977), which won the Pulitzer Prize, and Cosmos<\/i> (1980),which is considered the best-selling science book ever published in English.”<\/p>\n

I have read Dragons of Eden<\/i>, which I enjoyed a great deal. Broca’s Brain<\/i> is interesting. Cosmos<\/i> I received at an early age, and I have read it so many times I am surprised that my copy has yet to fall apart. I especially liked Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors<\/i>, his book on pre-human evolution. Comet<\/i> gets overlooked, but it’s very much the spiritual and thematic successor to Cosmos<\/i>; it introduced me to the idea of Dyson Trees<\/a>, which is one of those ideas that are absolutely amazing and I want to write a story about them, but I have absolutely no idea where to begin or what kind of story I want to tell. Sagan’s most recent book, a collection of lectures he delivered in 1985 is entitled The Varieties of Scientific Experience<\/i>, and I liked that a great deal.<\/p>\n

I have never read The Cosmic Connection<\/i>, his book on SETI. It’s a book I’ve wanted to read for, yes, twenty-five years. I just never have.<\/p>\n

And, of course, I remember Sagan’s occasional articles in Parade<\/i>; he’d write about O’Neill Colonies and space exploration and things like that.<\/p>\n

And even though I posted this a few weeks ago, I’ll post it again:<\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch,
\nYou must first invent the universe.<\/i><\/p>\n

For someone who watched Cosmos<\/i> at a young age and had his life shaped by it, this video is really<\/i> cool. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

And if you want the song as an mp3 (because who doesn’t, and I love listening to it), you can download it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Writer’s Almanac tells me that today, the 9th of November, is Carl Sagan’s birthday. He would have been seventy-five. Said Garrison Keillor of Sagan this morning: “[He] published a number of books that helped regular people understand ideas about the universe, including Dragons of Eden: Speculations of the Evolution of Human Intelligence (1977), whichContinue reading “On Carl Sagan’s Birthday”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[128],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}