Announcing the second annual Carl Sagan memorial blog-a-thon

Later this month, on December 20, 2007, we will reach the eleventh anniversary of Carl Sagan's passing — and the first anniversary of the wildly successful first-ever Carl Sagan Memorial Blog-a-Thon. Far exceeding my wildest expectations, this became a truly worldwide celebration, with more than 250 posts in 11 languages. And for those who like nice round anniversary numbers, this year also saw quite a number of significant Sagan-related ones: the tenth anniversary of the release of the film Contact and the Planet Walk in Ithaca, NY; and the thirtieth anniversary of the launch of the two Voyager spacecraft. I am launching a new blog-a-thon exactly a year after the first one; for full details, see the main announcement post on my personal blog. See you on the 20th!

Planet Walk.

Journalist Larry Kales wrote in with this link to a great Sagan-Blog-a-Thon post featuring Dr. Sagan's Planet Walk in Ithaca.

The entry was posted by Stephen Frug and appears on his blog, Attempts. Aside from a detailed description and excellent photographs, Frug also links to the podcast audio tour, written by Sagan, and voiced by Bill Nye. Now you can participate from anywhere!

Three Bedrooms – A Tribute to Carl Sagan

Scott Thompson emailed us the link to his blog-a-thon post, which is a worthwhile read. Here's a excerpt:

When I was a young teen in 1980 there were three televisions in the house: One was in the small family room, and was typically shared by my parents. Another was in their bedroom - used primarily by my father to watch Kansas City Chiefs football games on crisp fall weekends. In my own inner sanctum - my bedroom, I had a little 13-inch GE black-and-white set, which I mostly used for watching PBS and Star Trek. It was on my little television that I learned about the coming premiere of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos.

Cosmos so intrigued me that I was motivated to leave the electronics and Lego and book-strewn confines of my own bedroom in search of a color television. I knew I needed to see stars and galaxies, nebulae and molecules in vivid color. I persuaded my parents to let me use their bedroom color television to watch the series, no small task given their dubious view of science-fiction, their abhorrence of evolution and general mystification regarding science. I eventually won the argument with assurances of the series’ educational value and reassurance of “non-sinful” content. Every week, I’d find myself plopped on my parents white king-sized comforter, propped-chin-in-hands, waiting for the next astonishing (my favorite Cosmos word) installment to propel my mind far from my pedestrian Ozarks home.

Carl Sagan, gone for "ten trips around the Sun"

Tom Moore emailed us with the link to his blog-a-thon post. Here it is in full:

Carl Sagan was one of the strongest and most enduring influences on my choice to pursue teaching and then science. His view of humans as "a way for the universe to know itself" echoed and extended themes I'd read in Alan Watts. Carl's many books and shorter articles guided and inspired me up through his untimely death. They shaped my interests and led me to specialize in the science of the solar system. Many were critical of what they saw as Carl's excessive participation in the cult of personality through the media. But from my perspective, Carl was the ultimate modern renaissance man, with interests that spanned the universe in a way that few others came close to expressing. He excelled not only in communicating the excitement of science to the general public, but also led a generation of scientists in seeing the broader relevance and impact of their work, helping us to get beyond the mentality of the cold war. He is deeply missed.

There is a detectable web competition for the title of "Next Carl Sagan". It's a very tough act to follow on the world stage. But we do need others to tell us how wonderful is the world as revealed by science, how little we really need our illusions and superstitions, and how much more sound is a simple reverence for life and all the forces that have created it.

- Tom Moore

Govar from India.

Hi,

This is Govar from India.

Just came to know about the Celebrating Sagan blogathon from Boing Boing and I couldn't wait to put a post on the subject.

Carl Sagan has, and is, in more ways than one, has given a new meaning to my existence. He's made me more mature, and yet very small at the same time. Here's my post on the subject.

My previous post on Carl a month back.

Thanks a lot for your time.

Regards,

Govar, Chennai, India.

More Blog-a-thon Posts

Sorry it took so long to get these up, it's been a busy day and blogger has been giving us some trouble. Here's another list of blog-a-thon posts that were sent our way:

Chris McCoy aka El Destructo has a Sagan quote of the day at Memphilter.

John Newman at campuscodger.

Phil says Carl Sagan was one of the greatest people of the twentieth century. I agree.

Mark Madsen at Extended Phenotype has a nice post and a nice blog name, too.

Heber Rizzo gave us two links, here and here. Both en Espanol.

Kent Cline at Carbonfish.

Chris Patil at Ouroboros.

And Ms. Sid Simpson in Pinellas Park, Florida, participates on her livejournal page.


Thanks everyone!

Joel Achenbach has blog-a-thon post in his Washington Post blog today. Check it out, it also links to a post he did on Sagan earlier this year. Here's what he posted today - his Style Section excerpt from December '96.

Carl Sagan warmed the universe.

His cosmos was not cold and dark and impenetrable. He believed the universe was surely filled with life, intelligent life, innumerable civilizations unseen. In his younger, dreamier days, he thought advanced extraterrestrials might know how to cruise the galaxies in ramjets -- spaceships with massive openings that scoop up hydrogen atoms from interstellar dust clouds and use them for fuel. In Sagan's crowded cosmos, even empty space wasn't empty.

He told The Washington Post earlier this year: "Organic matter, the stuff of life, is absolutely everywhere. Comets are made one-quarter of organic matter. Many worlds in the outer solar system are coated with dark organic matter. On Titan, organic matter is falling from the skies like manna from Heaven. The cold diffuse interstellar gas is loaded with organic matter. There doesn't seem to be an impediment about the stuff of life."

The world needed Sagan, who died yesterday of pneumonia at the age of 62. We have needed Sagan ever since Copernicus removed us from the center of the universe. It is a perplexing fact of human life that we live on a rock that orbits an ordinary star on the outskirts of an ordinary galaxy in a universe that is indescribably large. Sagan knew how to describe it, to convey our humble position without demeaning us. With Sagan we felt in the right place.

Sagan said, "Everybody starts out as a scientist." Every child has the scientist's sense of wonder and awe. Too often we beat it out of the kid. "The job of a science popularizer," Sagan said, "is to penetrate through the teachings that tell people they're too stupid to understand science."

Little Atoms Radio Show

We produce a radio show in the UK called Little Atoms. We have a special edition commemorating Carl Sagan this Friday 22nd December.

This is the listing for the show:

"The 20th December 2006 marks the tenth anniversary of the death of the astronomer, astrobiologist and populariser of science Carl Sagan. This program will explore aspects of the life, work and influence of Sagan, and includes a number of short interviews with Sagan's family, friends and former colleagues.

Contributors include Ann Druyan, Founder of the Carl Sagan Foundation and wife of Carl's for nearly 20 years until his death. Louis Friedman, co-founder with Sagan and current Executive Director of The Planetary Society, Steven Soter, Research Associate, Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History, New York, and collaborator with Sagan on the Emmy award winning television series 'Cosmos: A Personal Journey', Carolyn Porco, Senior Research Scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, an Adjunct Professor in the Department of
Planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona, and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder, member of the Imaging team on the Voyager missions, and leader of the Cassini-Huygens imaging team, and A.C. Grayling, Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, Rationalist, skeptic and Little Atoms favorite".

The show is an hour long, and is broadcast between 4:30pm and 5:30pm UK time. It will also be available to download from our website Friday morning (UK time again).

Ann Druyan and I talk briefly about the blog-a-thon on the show.

best wishes,

Neil Denny

website: http://www.littleatoms.com
blog: http://little-atoms.blogspot.com/

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.

More Blog-a-thon Posts

We've been getting lots of emails linking to people's blog-a-thon posts, and it's hard to choose excerpts, so here's a small collection of links we've received:

On MySpace, from Lisa.
Random Precision, In Portugal from Luis.
The Bretorium in Massassachusetts.
Larry Klaes' Ithaca Times article.
Anonymous Dave's blog-a-thon post.
Kevin Jung's humble attempt at memorial.
Bret at bretorium.com.

Blog-a-thon Post

river2sea72 writes:
I have huge respect and admiration for popularizers of science, and Carl Sagan was one of the premier examples of such a person. Although they risk their reputations immenseley by reaching out to the public and taking on controversial issues, they inspire unknown multitudes of children to pursue careers in science or at least to appreciate its role in society.

Who will do for my child what this man did for me? There remains a huge void.

A Love Affair & A Thank You

Well, today is the day. Not only does today mark the tenth anniversary of Carl Sagan's passing and the beginning of a new moon, it is the day that a certain someone returns from overseas and into my arms. Dr. Sagan is partly responsible for this lasting love affair of mine, and after thinking all week about what to write today for the blog-a-thon, this seems appropriate.

Cosmos first aired a year before I was born, and so I didn't come to know Carl's face until college, when my dear friend and roommate began borrowing the series from the public library on VHS. At this point, I had a couple of the doctor's books under my belt and an amateur passion about science. My introduction to the Cosmos television series coincided with the beginning of a relationship with a certain young lady, and those late nights on the living room couch - the VCR humming, Vangelis swirling about us, and Carl's entrancing enunciation - helped to seal a bond which continues to grow after four years. Dr. Sagan helped us share the wonder of existence with each other, and for this (among countless other things) I am immensely grateful to him.

Nine days ago, while daydreaming in my cubicle and chatting with Bryan H., we decided to start celebratingsagan.com in order to commemorate this important man's passing. I can't express what a fulfilling project it's been. I want to thank everyone who has contributed; I share your sentiments whole-heartedly. I also want to give a special thanks to Joel for conceiving of today's blog-a-thon, to Nick Sagan for helping to spread the word, to boingboing for their post yesterday (surely the biggest reason we've been getting so many hits), and to Ann Druyan for her encouragement.

Carl articulated something that no other scientist has managed to do. All chemistry and physics aside, WE ARE STAR STUFF. The fact of that sentence still gives me a profound sense of security. It is a timeless four word poem for all of humanity. For an atheist like myself (albeit a reluctant one some days), reading and rereading Carl's words are akin to prayer. Feeling small, it seems to me, is the beginning of understanding the truth about who and what we are. We are star stuff. We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself.

Thank you, Carl.

Falling Hard for Sagan.

Lauren at Liquid Logic sent us a link to her blog-a-thon entry, and we just couldn't help but excerpting this passage:

I remember liking him and finding his stuff cool. But it was later in life, in my late twenties, in fact, that I fell hard for the guy. I’m not sure if it was The Demon Haunted World or The Dragons of Eden that hooked me. But I do know that it had something to do with his rigorous devotion to truth and his improbable optimism about human nature.

Please read the whole entry here.