An Exquisite Balance

It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs:  the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas …  If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you …  On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones.
—    Carl Sagan
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On This Day In:
2022	You Ought To Be Having Fun
2021	Democrats Talking To Republicans
	Talkin’ To Myself And Feelin’ Old
2020	You Are Not Late (Yet)
2019	Too Difficult To Try
2018	Hold Fast
2017	The Only Real Security
2016	Time Said
2015	If Only Common Sense Were More Common
2014	PTI
2013	What Now, Then?
2012	Big C, Little B
	Duty, Honor, Country

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No Implication Of Reasonableness

Very few scientists actually plunge into the murky waters of testing or challenging borderline or pseudo-scientific beliefs.  The chance of finding out something really interesting — except about human nature — seems small, and the amount of time required seems large.  I believe that scientists should spend more time in discussing these issues, but the fact that a given contention lacks vigorous scientific opposition in no way implies that scientists think it is reasonable.
—    Carl Sagan
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On This Day In:
2021	Let Yourself Soar In 2022
	Where You’re Concerned
2020	The Most Dynamic Link
	Looking Forward To 2021
2019	A Proud Assertion
2018	Ask #45 About Anything
2017	Playing Makes Sense
2016	And Fathers, Sons
2015	My Suspect Confidence
2014	Disguised Blessings
2013	Be
2012	The Only Way to Win
2011	Honest Writing

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Only Through Love

For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.
—     Carl Sagan
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On This Day In:
2021	Being Constantly Great
	Hopeful Realization
2020	Sapping Joy
	Blew Out My Flip-Flop
	Really Wheelie
2019	Word Up
2018	But Much Is Worth Learning
2017	Mr. President, About Global Warming
2016	Starting To Stumble
2015	Begin Combat
	I Am A Runner
2014	Just Dig ‘N It, Why?
2013	Additions
	The Object Of Instruction
2012	Telling Her
2011	On Torture

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Closer And Closer Possibilities

The truth may be puzzling.  It may take some work to grapple with.  It may be counterintuitive.  It may contradict deeply held prejudices.  It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true.  But our preferences do not determine what’s true.  We have a method, and that method helps us to reach not absolute truth, only asymptotic approaches to the truth — never there, just closer and closer, always finding vast new oceans of undiscovered possibilities.  Cleverly designed experiments are the key.
—    Carl Sagan
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On This Day In:
2021	Fighting New Guitar Fever
	Bad Trades In The Tunnel
2020	Give And Gain
	Can We Talk For A Second
	Almost Ready To Take A Breath
2019	Transfiguration
2018	2018 Mid-Terms
	Praying For A Blue Tsunami Election
2017	Islam Is Not The Enemy
2016	A Checkered Past, A Checkered Future
2015	Preferences
2014	Have You Taken The Pledge?
2013	Nurture Tolerance
2012	Election Day – Please Hear What I’m Not Saying
2011	Mostly Strange, Always Blue
	What Is It You Want?
2010	MSNBC, Bring Back Keith !!!
	Value..
	Worse Still…
	Afraid So…
	Making It
	Don’t Jump Small
	Time
	Push!!
	I’m Still Here… (A Message To Keith Olbermann)
	Choose
	Not Yet…
	Mean Too
	Still Building (and Planning)
	Hangin’ High
	Always…

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A Way Of Thinking, An Essential Tool

Science is much more than a body of knowledge.  It is a way of thinking.  This is central to its success.  Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don’t conform to our preconceptions.  It counsels us to carry alternative hypotheses in our heads and see which ones best match the facts.  It urges on us a fine balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything — new ideas and established wisdom.  We need wide appreciation of this kind of thinking.  It works.  It’s an essential tool for a democracy in an age of change.  Our task is not just to train more scientists but also to deepen public understanding of science.
—    Carl Sagan
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On This Day In:
2021	Experience A Simple Whatever
	A Thousand Kisses
2020	Talking Politics With Trump Republicans
	In Another Lifetime
2019	People Will Come
	Change Is Here…
2018	Be My Hero – Vote Tomorrow!
	He Was All Of Us…
2017	Black And White
	Advice For #DumbDonald
2016	Mirror, Mirror
2015	Speaking With Forked Tongue
2014	The Code
2013	Eventually Formed
2012	Remember To Vote Tomorrow
2011	It Sounds Like Chaos Theory To Me

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In The Beginning…

If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.
—     Carl Sagan
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On This Day In:
2021	Are We Talking About Health Insurance / Oil Companies, Facebook Or Faux News?
	When MTV Was Young (And Fun)
2020	Resting
	A New Day Just Means We Continue The Struggle (With A Smile)
2019	One For Two
	Why Trump Insults Pelosi and Schiff
2018	The Worst
2017	#DonTheCon In The Oval Office
2016	Are You Like #AmnestyDon And Sarah Palin?
2015	Begin Today
2014	Look Again (At Life’s Illusions)
2013	None Knows
2012	Yet
2011	No End In Sight
2010	Back At It…

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Just Waiting

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
—     Carl Sagan
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On This Day In:
2021	I’ll Keep Trying To Anyway
	She Knows
2020	Respond
	Still Trying To Adjust
2019	The Limits Of My Knowledge
2018	Even Tiny Progress
2017	Real Conservatism
2016	The Business Of Life
2015	Alone Again, Naturally
2014	Agreed
2013	Smile From Your Heart!
2012	Like You
2011	Got Days?
2010	K9 Humor – Has Anyone Seen My Setter?  (Must read!!)
	A Longer Blog Than You Want To Read (Probably)
2009	Back and Forth and Round Again…

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Preparation

If you take a look at science in its everyday function, of course you find that scientists run the gamut of human emotions and personalities and character and so on.  But there’s one thing that is really striking to the outsider, and that is the gauntlet of criticism that is considered acceptable or even desirable.  The poor graduate student at his or her Ph.D. oral exam is subjected to a withering crossfire of questions that sometimes seem hostile or contemptuous;  this from the professors who have the candidate’s future in their grasp.  The students naturally are nervous;  who wouldn’t be?  True, they’ve prepared for it for years.  But they understand that at that critical moment they really have to be able to answer questions.  So in preparing to defend their theses, they must anticipate questions;  they have to think, “Where in my thesis is there a weakness that someone else might find — because I sure better find it before they do, because if they find it and I’m not prepared, I’m in deep trouble.”
—    Carl Sagan
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On This Day In:
2021	No Profit Without Risk
	And One For Me
2020	He’s Forgotten About Drugs And Rock ‘N Roll
2019	I Still Walk Daily
	A Windy Monday
2018	No Religious Test, Yes Religious Ban
2017	Looking At #DumbDonald
2016	No Great Thing
2015	Happy Memory
	Of Two Minds
2014	Sums
2013	Memories & Binging
	Admiration Due
2012	Choices Matter
2011	Acceptance Is The Key
2010	Just A Permanent Crease…
	Bodily Functions

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Tinges…

Humans — who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals — have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain.  A sharp distinction between humans and ‘animals’ is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them — without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret.  It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer.  The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions specious.  They are just too much like us.
—    Carl Sagan
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On This Day In:
2021	The Truth Shall Keep Us Free
	Let Your Hair Down
2020	But What About Tomorrow’s Blog Post?
2019	Don’t Forget Obstruction Of Justice
	An Honest, Unvarnished Assessment
2018	#45 And The Republicans Are Pretending (So Far)
2017	Made
2016	Halves
	Accepted Fraud
2015	Even The Little Ones
2014	Who’s On First?
2013	No Equal Measure
2012	A Single Host
2011	No Exemptions
2010	Memories Of KSA – Inside The Fire

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We Need Both

We wish to pursue the truth no matter where it leads.  But to find the truth, we need imagination and skepticism both.
—    Carl Sagan
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On This Day In:
2021	Broaden The Circle
	The Phone Keeps Ringing
2020	Stay Gentle
2019	Immoral #45
2018	From My Soapbox
2017	The Single Most Effective Thing For Health
2016	A Trumpet Solo
2015	Potential Is A Heavy Burden
2014	Fear Not, Weep Not
2013	Half Way There
2012	Sacrificed Any Lately?
2011	The Value Of One’s Character
2010	Intervals
	On Being Human
	Non-predictive Emergence
	Events
	Bodily Functions
	Standing Thoughts
	Sent Home Is Better Than Fixed

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Sort Of

When there isn’t enough food, the body has to make a decision on how to invest the limited foodstuff available to it.  Survival comes first, growth comes second.  And in this kind of nutritional triage, the body seems obliged to rank learning, last.  It sort of it’s better to be stupid and alive, than smart and dead.
—    Carl Sagan
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On This Day In:
2021	Life Finds A Way
	In The Palm Of My Hand
2020	I’m Not Worried
2019	Forgiving The Chasm
2018	A Sure Sign Of Age
	Before The Fall – Cheat
2017	Distant Goal
2016	More Lives
2015	Go Shopping More
2014	Say What?
2013	Accepting Beauty
2012	Transitional Choice To Ride The Wave
2011	Freedom Isn’t Always Perfect
	Just That Simple

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This Dot – Our Home

Consider again 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.
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.  Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.  Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.  In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life.  There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate.  Visit, yes.  Settle, not yet.  Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience.  There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.  To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.
—    Carl Sagan
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On This Day In:
2021	The Imposition Of Position
	Rainin’ Fire In The Sky
2020	Stand Up!
	Crowd Sourced Scouting Report
2019	Only One Direction
2018	Respect Is Long Gone
2017	Dream Of Dreamers
2016	Dear Automakers
2015	And Some Not So Brave Too
2014	In My Lifetime…
2013	Democracy
2012	Borrowed Expectations
2011	Not Necessarily True

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Or Less Perceptive

Even these stars, which seem so numerous, are as sand, as dust – or less than dust – in the enormity of the space in which there is nothing.
—    Carl Sagan
No other planet in the solar system is a suitable home for human beings;  it’s this world or nothing.  That’s a very powerful perception.
—    Carl Sagan
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On This Day In:
2021	We Need Professional Journalists AND The First Amendment
	It Was Rainin’ Hard
2020	Neither Alone, Nor Lonely
	Giving
2019	That’s Why It’s Called Faith
2018	So We Agree, #45 Is Dumb – Too
2017	The Morality Of Spying
2016	He Doesn’t Remind Me Of Me
	The First Rule
2015	Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow
	The Man Without Fear
2014	I Blame Robocop
2013	Future Trustees
2012	Praise Not The Day…
2011	Educated Living

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Working Out

The brain is like a muscle.  When it is in use we feel very good.  Understanding is joyous.
—    Carl Sagan
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On This Day In:
2021	Fortes Fortuna Juvat*
	Layin’ In Bed
2020	For Sale
2019	Letting Go
2018	Trying To Give More
2017	The Reproductive Value Of A Presidential Election
2016	For Me It’s Been Faith
2015	Where Many Paths And Errands Meet
2014	Rimmed Out
2013	Likeness
2012	Sums It Up Quite Well, Actually
2011	Momentary Abandonment

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A Little Perspective

Who are we?  We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.
—    Carl Sagan
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On This Day In:
2022	A Little Perspective
2021	Put ‘Er There
	Are You Goin’ On Again?
2020	And In The Back
2019	Sunlight Stream
2018	Wars Without Taxes
2017	Multiplication And Division
2016	I Went To The Woods…
2015	I’ve Got To Run
2014	Which Is It?
2013	Making You Stronger
2012	Sick Of Being Sick
	Greater Than Power
2011	Clear, Specific And Measurable
2010	The Runner’s High
	Into The Dark…

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