"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... on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."
–Carl Sagan (born OTD in 1934)
"The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot."
–Carl Sagan (born OTD in 1934)
"It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience."
"The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff."
–Carl Sagan
"We are starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose."
–Carl Sagan
"What an astonishing thing a book is... [O]ne glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years... Books break the shackles of time."
–Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan explains how the Ancient Greeks, using reason and math, figured out that the Earth isn't flat, more than 2,000 years ago. Amazing.
One of the most fascinating papers I've read for a long time: People dislike their political opponents for views that most don't actually hold. psyarxiv.com/cr23g/ [Preprint; N = 4,993.]
"(Over)estimation of political opponents' agreement with extreme issues predicted cross-partisan dislike, which in turn predicted unwillingness to engage with opponents, foreclosing opportunities to correct misperceptions." psyarxiv.com/cr23g/ [2/5]
"If you empower the government to censor, you are giving the powerful more power... Do you trust what a Biden administration would do with that power? If so, do you trust what the next Trump would do with that power?" areomagazine.com/2021/05/25/ans…
"Censorship doesn't generally change people's opinions, but it does make them more likely to talk only to those with whom they already agree. And what happens when people only talk to politically similar people? The well documented effect of group polarization takes over."
Misguided Criticisms of Evolutionary Psychology #2: Evolutionary psychology provides an excuse for bad behavior – in particular, for the kinds of bad behavior that men specialize in. From #TheApeThatUnderstoodTheUniverseamazon.com/Ape-that-Under…
Misguided Criticisms of Evolutionary Psychology #3: Evolutionary psychology implies that certain undesirable phenomena – old-fashioned sex roles, xenophobia, war and aggression – are ultimately ineradicable. From #TheApeThatUnderstoodTheUniverseamazon.com/Ape-that-Under…
Inspired: Dan Baldassarre (@evornithology) submitted a joke science article to a predatory journal, to see if they'd actually publish it. They did. The paper is called "What's the Deal with Birds?" and it's hilarious. 😂 irispublishers.com/sjrr/pdf/SJRR.…
Come to think of it, though, what *is* the deal with birds? 👇