“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home, That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ’superstar,’ every ’supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan from ‘Pale Blue Dot’
Some other Sagan links:
http://www.coseti.org/klaescnt.htm - a lot of information about the movie ‘Contact’
http://www.sciencenter.org/SaganPW/ - A planet walk dedicated to Carl Sagan with numbers given for a scaled down version of the solar system.
http://paleblue.us/about.html - another blog inspired by ‘pale blue dot’
“Do we, holding that gods exist, deceive ourselves with insubstantial
dreams and lies, while random careless chance and change alone control
the world?” — EURIPIDES, Hecuba
“Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?”– Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
The French author and philosopher Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire
(1694-1778) once said that if God did not exist, we would have to invent
him.
“Now can anyone look upon and compare these systems (of Jupiter and
Saturn) together, without being amazed at the vast magnitude and noble
attendants of these two planets, in respect of this little pitiful Earth
of ours? Or can they force themselves to think that the wise Creator has
disposed of all his animals and plants here, has furnished and adorned
this spot only, and has left all those worlds bare and destitute of
inhabitants, who might adore and worship Him; or that all those
prodigious bodies were made only to twinkle to and be studied by some
few perhaps of us poor fellows?” –Christiaan Huygens
(I always wanted to learn more about Christiaan Huygens after I heard about him while watching Cosmos. Anyone know of any good sources of information?)
I was reading the October issue of National Geographic last night. It has the saddest story about elephants in Thailand!
Jokia: was working in an illegal logging place, and forced to keep working while pregnant and then miscarried. She then refused to work and one of her handlers blinded her in one eye with a slingshot. As a response she ended up breaking the arm of her owner, who then shot her in her other eye, leaving her totally blind. Even then they forced her to work in chains - and then beat her when she ran into trees!
Luckily Jokia was rescued by a woman, Sangduen Chailert, who has rescued many animals and lets them live on a forest reserve in peace and freedom.
Apparently it is common for elephants to be trained and tamed by closing them up into a small cage and beating them and depriving them of food, water and sleep for days. Even sometimes stabbing their feet with nails!
In the article it also describes an elephant breaking a stick and using it with his trunk to scratch a hard to reach spot. At one time it was believed that only Homo sapiens could use tools - this has been disproved numerous times now with many species. Clearly these elephants and other tool users are intelligent beings! How can anyone justify treating them so badly? And then to be surprised when they do something violent to defend themselves?
Very sad - and what does it say about us - Homo sapiens? Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised that some of us are so cruel to other intelligent animals considering how we treat each other much of the time. Clearly something is wrong.
Sometimes I wonder if we are flawed in some fundamental way. Maybe our extinction is inevitable - if we are not capable of living more cooperatively with our own and other species - maybe we are doomed to disappear. And maybe that is ok. Maybe this universe doesn’t need our kind.
[Somewhat off topic - recently an infant gorilla in a Congo sanctuary was observed using tools also! Not many people have seen gorillas using tools, so this was a big discovery. Unfortunately I don't have a link to the original story, it was sent to me in an email - I can mail it to anyone if they are interested.]
If you hear a different drummer - dreamer, take a chance …
The road you choose to travel means the difference in the dance.”
- D. Morgan
Nothing is more pliable than water but when amassed,
there is nothing that can withstand its force.
That the soft overcomes the hard,
and the yielding conquers the unyielding
is a fact known to all - yet utilized by none.
- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
