Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Thursday, September 3. 2009

A couple o' Sagan clips


I was rummaging around the ol' archives yesterday and came across a couple of video clips from the great Carl Sagan series, "Cosmos". Thought you might like to see them. If you want to watch them in full-screen mode, click on the little symbol on the player's tool bar.


The first is how Eratosthanes calculated the earth's circumference 2,200 years ago to high precision. This remains my favorite scene from any documentary. You get the feeling that if the world had just STOPPED... at that moment and everyone had listened to Eratosthanes and his colleagues, our civilization would be about 2,000 years more advanced than it is today.




And if you've ever heard the term 'perspective is everything', here's demonstrative proof.


First, to help you picture how far outwards we can go, there's this:



  But what's truly amazing is that we can go just as far in the other direction.





Posted by Dr. Mercury in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 14:50 | Comments (13) | Trackbacks (0)

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Comedy & Videos - Index
Videos: The Deafening Silence — My favorite 'airline disaster' episode Men & Women of Film — A Hollywood collageTrain Story with a Twist(er) — Kids! RC Madness — Three R/C airplane vids Happy Guy Fawkes Day — How this day has been spun around
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Tracked: Apr 20, 18:11
Doc's Videos
Newer ones get added to the bottom. The Deafening Silence — My favorite 'airline disaster' episode Men & Women of Film — A Hollywood collage Train Story with a Twist(er) — Kids! RC Madness — Three R/C airplane vids Happy Guy Fawkes Day — Ho
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Tracked: Jul 10, 07:10
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Newer ones get added to the bottom. The Deafening Silence — My favorite 'airline disaster' episode Men & Women of Film — A Hollywood collage Train Story with a Twist(er) — Kids! RC Madness — Three R/C airplane vids Happy Guy Fawkes Day — How this
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Tracked: Aug 04, 16:22
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Newer ones get added to the bottom. The Deafening Silence — My favorite 'airline disaster' episode Men & Women of Film — A Hollywood collage Train Story with a Twist(er) — Kids! RC Madness — Three R/C airplane vids Happy Guy Fawkes Day — How this
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Tracked: Aug 04, 16:56
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Newer ones get added to the bottom. The Deafening Silence — My favorite 'airline disaster' episode Men & Women of Film — A Hollywood collage Train Story with a Twist(er) — Kids! RC Madness — Three R/C airplane vids Happy Guy Fawkes Day — How
Weblog: Maggie's Farm
Tracked: Aug 28, 15:39

Comments
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Great videos! But here's one that's maybe even better for a perspective of our size in the Universe:

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/planets-and-stars-perspective-animated.gif

[it's a gif file, so it'll take a few seconds to load.]
#1 Smokey (Link) on 2009-09-03 16:38 (Reply)
Merc,

The wonderment of the universe and life...can be overwhelming, if we let it.

A+ for the selection and arrangement of vids.

Garry
#2 Garry on 2009-09-03 17:00 (Reply)
Smokey -

You're right, that was terrific. I love the final shot, with "The Sun" so tiny that it didn't even deserve a single pixel. Poor little fella!

Garry - Thankee, glad you enjoyed. I have a fairly interesting post coming up tomorrow where sun size will play a key role.
#3 Dr. Mercury on 2009-09-03 17:07 (Reply)
Merc,

Sign me up!
#3.1 Garry on 2009-09-03 17:59 (Reply)
Dr M, nice post.
I think about that lost library a lot, and imagine where we would be if it was not lost.
#4 jappy on 2009-09-03 18:27 (Reply)
Reminds me of a short film that I saw in HS - Cosmic Zoom
damn spam filter... http://www.nfb.ca/film/cosmic_zoom/
#5 The Distributist on 2009-09-03 19:26 (Reply)
Unfortunately, Eratosthenes' argument is based on the assumption that the rays from the sun are nearly parallel, i.e. the sun is very far away. If the sun is close, the observation works for a flat earth.
#6 Sam Hall on 2009-09-03 19:46 (Reply)
Sam,

Good point but...if the sun was much closer would we be here to discuss it?
#6.1 Garry on 2009-09-03 19:59 (Reply)
Stribs - Very interesting video, thanks for the link. I like the way it showed the vastness of space by reducing the entire galaxy down to a single pixel...and then no pixel at all. As far as I know, the camera could have kept pulling back for another hour before another galaxy appeared. Space is truly immense.

BTW, I've hit the spam filter a few times recently, but I just click 'Submit' again and it goes right through.

Garry -

"...but...if the sun was much closer would we be here to discuss it?"

You're going to dig tomorrow's post. The above nails a key element of it.

Doc
#7 Dr. Mercury on 2009-09-03 20:17 (Reply)
Hmm...the Anthropic Principle, I presume?
#7.1 KRW on 2009-09-03 23:38 (Reply)
Yeah, you might want to correct that spelling of Aristophanes to Eratosthenes. Dontcha just loathe these damn liberal arts guys getting credit for the work of real scientists...
#8 KRW on 2009-09-03 22:36 (Reply)
KRW -

"Hmm...the Anthropic Principle, I presume?"

Mmm, not quite. The earth's position relative to the sun is just a tiny piece of the tapestry I'll be weaving. I'm going to buck the established view and it'll be interesting to see if the readers agree or disagree.

"you might want to correct that spelling of Aristophanes to Eratosthenes."

Well, uh, shit! I originally did a search for "aristophanes alexandria library" and came up with things like "He was a noted poet, critic and scholar..." so I figured that was the guy. I just now did a search for a line from the clip and came up with a script to the show and...damn! It turns out Ari was Era's successor.

"Dontcha just loathe these damn liberal arts guys getting credit for the work of real scientists..."

Exactly! Here I am on the search engines, doing all the scientific research, piecing together the clues, arriving at what was the most likely spelling -- and then YOU come along and ruin everything!

The post has been corrected.

And thanks. :)

Doc
#9 Dr. Mercury on 2009-09-04 06:28 (Reply)
np...F'n ancient greeks and their similar sounding names, what with the damn diphthongs and such. Probably just a plot to infiltrate the history books. Apparently their treachery isn't limited to "bearing gifts". Tossers.
#9.1 KRW on 2009-09-04 08:14 (Reply)

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