Saturday, December 12, 2009

Is Carl Sagan my Guru?

Recently a colleague from work, DR, introduced me to a trippy video montage in which Carl Sagan is made to sing. Aside from being a technological piece of slickness, I found myself thinking about the early years when I used to watch the Cosmos series on PBS. I must have been in middle school and I remember thinking it was interesting and a bit odd at the same time.



Now, so many years later, it seems that Sagan had a bigger influence on me than I thought. Why did I major in Physics? Why do I find science fiction irrestistable? Why am I now a science educator? Why do I love those moments in the curriculum when I get to stick in my (or is Sagan's?) two cents in on how we are tiny little creatures on the surface of a moderately sized rock orbiting a below average star in the backwaters of some rinky-dink galaxy?

But isn't it that super-cool: making you feel special and humble at the same time?

"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch - you must first invent the universe"

2 comments:

  1. omg. that song and video is so you, it's not even funny.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sagan was definitely my primary inspiration for science, and for rational thought in general. Years later I too come back to thinking about him, and he seems an even greater treasure for the world, and it's too bad we lost him.

    ReplyDelete