If you want to make an apple pie from scratch...

To celebrate Dr. Sagan's birthday, Joe and Julie from St. Louis made an apple pie, from scratch.

Play it again

John Boswell, the madly brilliant sound-chemist who Auto-Tuned his way into our hearts with “A Glorious Dawn” featuring Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking, has launched the laud-worthy project “Symphony of Science” which is “designed to deliver scientific knowledge and philosophy in musical form.” You couldn’t ask for a better goal than that.

-- Chris Hardwick, Nerdist

Sagan Mashup

via ajboyer on Twitter.

Galaxy Garden.

Regular Celebrating Sagan contributor Larry Klaes sent an email notifying us about the new 'Galaxy Garden' website.

The Galaxy Garden is a 100-foot diameter outdoor scale model of the Milky Way, mapped in living plants and flowers and based on current astrophysical data.

Artist Jon Lomberg conceived and designed the garden to encourage scientific education about our place in the Universe.

www.GalaxyGarden.net

a Pale Blue Dot

The Icecore Scientist put together this song and film called Pale Blue Dot. They dedicate it to 'Carl and his wife, Ann Druyan.'

StokedSkate.

The band SAGAN just sent us a Carl Sagan inspired song to add to the Sounds of Sagan. It is called StokedSkate.

SAGAN has worked on a film that has been informed by the good Doctor and Cosmos. You can read more about their film, Unseen Forces, here, and more about SAGAN there.

A Poem for the Celebration

Carl Sagan's works have profoundly influenced my life for the better and informed my whole way of thinking. I'm glad he lived.

I'm including a poem inspired in part by "Pale Blue Dot." This poem uses religious terms - 'God,' 'Hallelujah,' but they aren't intended in a literal, theistic sense. They have resonance because of my upbringing and my culture, but one could replace them with similar words from any culture for the same effect. I think, somehow, Mr. Sagan would have liked it. So here's my contribution.

- John Sisk


In Good Humor

Cold cables carry warm laughter;
Dark night gently cradles bright-eyed lovers on through morning;
The sun rises and the sun sets.

Brave-chested birds, blue like sky-flecks, like star-flecks,
Like chords from God's guitar, strut and fly like
The shining gossamer of memory through forests
As green as the eyes of meaning:
Islands in the deep Pacific, themselves born
From spurting streams of rock-as-liquid, are
Stone-as-annihilation from some subterranean sea of fire,
That sea itself the hidden, brilliant rind of the world-fruit,
Tossing brief on a lonely limb of the Universe.

What then is the music of our solitary sphere?

The seed sings the tree, the tree
Sings the leaf, and the leaf's song
Is the flower, that blood-bright jewel
That kisses my eye for an hour
And leaves as Beauty does:
A gloaming hope, a gleaming vision, and -
Gone, leaving only fragrance.
I sing Hallelujah.

- Copyright John Sisk 2004.

Cosmos and Love

When I was at turbulent time, I wrote this poem dedicated to a girl I loved inspired by Cosmos and by Mr. Sagan.

Los átomos de tu cuerpo

Alguna vez leí
que en el inicio del universo,
todos los átomos
que componen la materia que lo forma
estaban tan comprimidos que ocupaban el mismo espacio.
Entonces imagino,
todos los átomos
que componen las moléculas
que componen tu cuerpo,
y el mío,
ocupando el mismo espacio...

Thank you for everything, Carl Sagan

ReAnimated.

Hello. My name is Andrew Lyman, I am a scientist who bungled his way into Art School instead. I maintain a number of blogs, but I made a post for Dr. Sagan on my Young Team Manager Blog today in honor of the 10th Anniversary of his death.

The image was made as a joke by me about the fact that I won the affection of my current girlfriend through (A) A ReAnimator T-shirt, and (B) Carl Sagan's Cosmos. Yes, she almost went home that fateful night, but when she asked what I my evening had in store, I did not lie, I
said: Probably just read, watch some more of Carl Sagan's Cosmos and go to bed. She was intrigued and has thus, stuck around for 9 months now (a purely factual and in no way symbolic amount of time).

But all that aside, Carl Sagan and Lewis Thomas were my two absolute role models. Darby Crash and Jello Biafra got thrown into the mix later and I ended up with a BFA in Experimental Animation, but the one common aspiration in my life has been that of the philosopher scientist. I can think of no nobler goal. All I hope is that there will be increasingly more and more kids growing up with role models like this.

All the best to all of you. Have the fun.

Missing Carl Sagan

Bonnie-Ann Black writes:

I realized back in august, just before attending WorldCon, that Carl Sagan had been gone an incredible 10 years. I did several art pieces to sell at the convention, some of them prints, and they did sell fairly well. In tribute to the man and his work, I'm participating in the blog-a-thon on my website: www.dubhsidhestudios.com.

My Homage...

While I don't want to plug my own music, my wife and I have a band called SAGAN and we released a cd/dvd movie called "Unseen Forces" - which is VERY informed by COSMOS. Here's the trailer:

Unseen Forces

I still miss him.

Thats all.

jlsr

Mural

I recall with great fondness watching Cosmos with my Grandfather. To a curious 10 year old boy, the show was amazing; and it was one of the few shows Grandpa even bothered to watch on television.

He grew up during the depression on a small, dust bowl ravaged farm in rural Oklahoma. I suspect his family was too poor to migrate to California like everyone else. In the 6th grade he quit school so he could help support his parents and sisters. Although his education was cut short, many years later Carl Sagan captivated this man with lessons on physics and astronomy. Sagan brought out in my grandfather a child-like wonder about the Universe.

Almost thirty years later, as I watch Cosmos for the first time, again, I am left with the same wonder. Sagan was a master story-teller. Not only could he explain complex theories so that almost anyone could understand them, but he also presents them in a way which leaves me hungry for more knowledge.

There are already much more eloquent and insightful tributes to Dr. Sagan here than I am capable of, so I have kept my commentary brief. That being said, I would like to share a piece of artwork I photographed recently during my 20th High School reunion. I found this mural in the Science Hall of U.S. Grant H.S. in Oklahoma City. The school is scheduled for demolition sometime in 2007, and this painting will most certainly go with it.


Travis Church, Texas

Apple Pie Recipe

Here's an old recipe, tried and true.

I often bring up Sagan's quote when people say they've "built a PC from scratch" and such. Of course, I don't say it to make a philosophical or cosmological point of any sort, but to be the sort of linguistic jackass you know me as.

Neven, Florida

Originally posted to The Missing "O" on March 03, 2006.
Also see Neven's Flickr page.

Thank You Dr. Sagan

Thank you for being a tremendous and positive influence on a young girl that thought she was the only geek in the universe.

Thank you for opening a lot of eyes.

Thank you for your enthusiam!

Thank you for teaching me. I am still learning, it's amazing that your show is still running on the Science Channel and is still as wonderous as it was.

Here is a piece of art made for you.


- Susan Anastasia