Most of my readers probably don't know it, but I actually knew Carl Sagan. I won't say we were buddies - I was just a kid all the times I met him at various talks and symposiums and I'm sure he wouldn't have remembered me if I met him on the street - but I always was deeply, deeply enthralled by his vision of what mankind might just be able to accomplish in the future. His enthusiasm, passion and, yes, joy for learning and expanding the sphere of human knowledge was just as wonderfully infectious when I was a kid first watching the Cosmos PBS series as today.
A small piece of that passion can be found in this video. I know it's "gone viral" by now and doesn't need the hits, but I link it here primarily in the memory of a wonderful man and his amazing vision of "what can be". I admit it: I cried a little bit when I first saw this. If you don't understand this, or know where the original video footage comes from, you must, at the soonest possible moment, go to your local library, check-out the DVD collection of Cosmos and watch it. You'll be happy you did, trust me.
Carl wasn't just a physicist... he was a philosopher and a dreamer and an amazing writer possessing the rarest of abilities: he could merge the language of science with those of art and inspiration. Hearing him speak again in the video below reminded me of just how eloquent he really was, and I think he would have liked this funky auto-tuned remix of Cosmos.
I think this line from the chorus says it best:
"The sky calls to us. If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars."
Take it away, Carl - you are deeply, deeply missed...
UPDATE: I just saw that the audio track and a higher-rez version of the video are available as a free download at Colorpulse Music - click HERE for the download page. Instructions on downloading and saving different versions are there.
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