Carl Sagan: a Biography Pdf, Epub, Ebook
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Copyright by Paul Harold Rubinson 2008
Copyright by Paul Harold Rubinson 2008 The Dissertation Committee for Paul Harold Rubinson certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Containing Science: The U.S. National Security State and Scientists’ Challenge to Nuclear Weapons during the Cold War Committee: —————————————————— Mark A. Lawrence, Supervisor —————————————————— Francis J. Gavin —————————————————— Bruce J. Hunt —————————————————— David M. Oshinsky —————————————————— Michael B. Stoff Containing Science: The U.S. National Security State and Scientists’ Challenge to Nuclear Weapons during the Cold War by Paul Harold Rubinson, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2008 Acknowledgements Thanks first and foremost to Mark Lawrence for his guidance, support, and enthusiasm throughout this project. It would be impossible to overstate how essential his insight and mentoring have been to this dissertation and my career in general. Just as important has been his camaraderie, which made the researching and writing of this dissertation infinitely more rewarding. Thanks as well to Bruce Hunt for his support. Especially helpful was his incisive feedback, which both encouraged me to think through my ideas more thoroughly, and reined me in when my writing overshot my argument. I offer my sincerest gratitude to the Smith Richardson Foundation and Yale University International Security Studies for the Predoctoral Fellowship that allowed me to do the bulk of the writing of this dissertation. Thanks also to the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy at Yale University, and John Gaddis and the incomparable Ann Carter-Drier at ISS. -
7Th June 2020 Matthew 28: 16 – 20; Psalm 8; 2 Cor 13: 5 - 14
St. Ninian’s Parish Church Sunday 7th June 2020 Matthew 28: 16 – 20; Psalm 8; 2 Cor 13: 5 - 14 In 1990 the astronomer Carl Sagan suggested that the Voyager space probe, which had been launched in 1977, should capture an image of Earth as the probe reached the outer reaches of our solar system. It did so, and in the grainy image, which it sent back to us, Earth shows up as a pale blue dot. Carl Sagan published a book in 1994 called Pale Blue Dot. He wrote, ‘Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us.... The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.... To my mind, 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 and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.’1 Carl Sagan wasn’t the first to imagine earth as a dot in the universe. In 1919, the philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote of our world, On this dot, tiny lumps of impure carbon and water, of complicated structure, with somewhat unusual physical and chemical properties, crawl about for a few years, until they are dissolved again into the elements of which they are compounded... No one is liberated from fear who dares not see his place in the world as it is; no one can achieve the greatness of which he is capable until he has allowed himself to see his own littleness.2 Neither Carl Sagan, nor Bertrand Russell before him were the first to consider the smallness of our world and the fragility of those who live on it. -
IAFS 4500/The Post-Cold War World: Global Security: Weapons of Mass Destruction Spring 2020 Instructor: Dr
“Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” - J. Robert Oppenheimer quoting from the Bhagavad-Gita at the 1st detonation of the atomic bomb “A world without nuclear weapons would be less stable and more dangerous for all of us.” - British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher” IAFS 4500/The Post-Cold War World: Global Security: Weapons of Mass Destruction Spring 2020 Instructor: Dr. Gregory D. Young Office: Ketchum Hall, Room 212 E-mail: [email protected] Lecture Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 11:00am – 12:15pm in HUMN 245 Syllabus: http://spot.colorado.edu/~gyoung/home/4500/4500_syl.htm Office Hours: Tuesdays & Thursdays 2:00- 3:00pm or Wednesdays by appt. COURSE LINKS • Cold War Timeline • Schedule for Current Event Presentations • Schedule and Links to Course Reading Summaries • Research Paper Sign Up • Research Proposal Grade Sheet • In Class Debate Teams • In Class Debate Rules • In Class Debate Results • Link to Potential Midterm Questions • Midterm Grading Statistical Summary • Research Presentation Schedule • Oral Presentation Grade Sheet • Library Research Page • WMD Links • PowerPoint Links COURSE OBJECTIVES AND DESCRIPTION Twenty-six years have passed since the end of the Cold War, but we are still struggling to understand the nature of the world that has emerged in its wake. What are now the main sources of conflict in the “new world order”, now that the fifty-year bipolar standoff between the U.S. and the USSR has dissolved? Is terrorism of the kind exhibited on 9/11 the biggest threat to global security or is there a new, more sinister threat from weapons of mass destruction? This course is going to focus on the weapons of mass destruction that defined the “balance of terror during the Cold War. -
The God Hypothesis
CHAPTER 2 The God Hypothesis The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next. RALPH WALDO EMERSON THE GOD HYPOTHESIS 31 The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, fili- cidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. Those of us schooled from infancy in his ways can become desensitized to their horror. A naif blessed with the perspective of innocence has a clearer perception. Winston Churchill's son Randolph somehow contrived to remain ignorant of scripture until Evelyn Waugh and a brother officer, in a vain attempt to keep Churchill quiet when they were posted together during the war, bet him he couldn't read the entire Bible in a fort- night: 'Unhappily it has not had the result we hoped. He has never read any of it before and is hideously excited; keeps reading quotations aloud "I say I bet you didn't know this came in the Bible ..." or merely slapping his side & chortling "God, isn't God a shit!"'16 Thomas Jefferson - better read - was of a similar opinion: 'The Christian God is a being of terrific character - cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.' It is unfair to attack such an easy target. The God Hypothesis should not stand or fall with its most unlovely instantiation, Yahweh, nor his insipidly opposite Christian face, 'Gentle Jesus meek and mild'. (To be fair, this milksop persona owes more to his Victorian followers than to Jesus himself. -
Cosmos: a Spacetime Odyssey (2014) Episode Scripts Based On
Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey (2014) Episode Scripts Based on Cosmos: A Personal Voyage by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan & Steven Soter Directed by Brannon Braga, Bill Pope & Ann Druyan Presented by Neil deGrasse Tyson Composer(s) Alan Silvestri Country of origin United States Original language(s) English No. of episodes 13 (List of episodes) 1 - Standing Up in the Milky Way 2 - Some of the Things That Molecules Do 3 - When Knowledge Conquered Fear 4 - A Sky Full of Ghosts 5 - Hiding In The Light 6 - Deeper, Deeper, Deeper Still 7 - The Clean Room 8 - Sisters of the Sun 9 - The Lost Worlds of Planet Earth 10 - The Electric Boy 11 - The Immortals 12 - The World Set Free 13 - Unafraid Of The Dark 1 - Standing Up in the Milky Way The cosmos is all there is, or ever was, or ever will be. Come with me. A generation ago, the astronomer Carl Sagan stood here and launched hundreds of millions of us on a great adventure: the exploration of the universe revealed by science. It's time to get going again. We're about to begin a journey that will take us from the infinitesimal to the infinite, from the dawn of time to the distant future. We'll explore galaxies and suns and worlds, surf the gravity waves of space-time, encounter beings that live in fire and ice, explore the planets of stars that never die, discover atoms as massive as suns and universes smaller than atoms. Cosmos is also a story about us. It's the saga of how wandering bands of hunters and gatherers found their way to the stars, one adventure with many heroes. -
Guide to the Barrick Lecture Series Records
Guide to the Barrick Lecture Series Records This finding aid was created by Mary Anilao and Joseph Puentes. This copy was published on February 11, 2020. Persistent URL for this finding aid: http://n2t.net/ark:/62930/f1ft0d © 2020 The Regents of the University of Nevada. All rights reserved. University of Nevada, Las Vegas. University Libraries. Special Collections and Archives. Box 457010 4505 S. Maryland Parkway Las Vegas, Nevada 89154-7010 [email protected] Guide to the Barrick Lecture Series Records Table of Contents Summary Information ..................................................................................................................................... 3 Historical Note ................................................................................................................................................. 3 Scope and Contents Note ................................................................................................................................ 4 Arrangement .................................................................................................................................................... 4 Administrative Information ............................................................................................................................. 4 Names and Subjects ........................................................................................................................................ 5 Collection Inventory ....................................................................................................................................... -
Carl Sagan: the People’S Astronomer by David Morrison, NASA, Ames Research Center
Carl Sagan: The People’s Astronomer by David Morrison, NASA, Ames Research Center Introduction Carl Sagan was the world’s best known scientist in the late 20th century, serving as our guide to the planets during the golden age of solar system exploration. He was both a visionary and a committed defender of rational scientific thinking. For a time, he transcended the usual categories of academics to become a true celebrity. His life illustrates both the advantages (wealth, fame, access to the seats of power) and burdens (loss of privacy, stress, criticism from academic colleagues) this status implies. Sagan was propelled on his academic and public careers by a wealth of talent, a large share of good luck, and an intensely focused drive to succeed. His lifelong quest was to understand the universe, especially our planetary system, and to communicate the thrill of scientific discovery to others. A natural teacher, he loved to explain things and never made a questioner feel stupid for asking. Although Sagan had broad intellectual interests, his pursuit of his career left little time for other activities: he did not play golf or follow sports, take up painting or cooking or photography, sing or play a musical instrument, join a church or synagogue, or watch much television or movies. His first two wives complained that he devoted insufficient time to his marriage or his children (1). It is perhaps a matter of personal taste whether we attribute this drive to personal ego or a genuine commitment to educate and inspire people about science. Undoubtedly there were elements of both motivations present. -
Michael Krasny Has Interviewed a Wide Range of Major Political and Cultural Figures Including Edward Albee, Madeleine Albright
Michael Krasny has interviewed a wide range of major political and cultural figures including Edward Albee, Madeleine Albright, Sherman Alexei, Robert Altman, Maya Angelou, Margaret Atwood, Ken Auletta, Paul Auster, Richard Avedon, Joan Baez, Alec Baldwin, Dave Barry, Harry Belafonte, Annette Bening, Wendell Berry, Claire Bloom, Andy Borowitz, T.S. Boyle, Ray Bradbury, Ben Bradlee, Bill Bradley, Stephen Breyer, Tom Brokaw, David Brooks, Patrick Buchanan, William F. Buckley Jr, Jimmy Carter, James Carville, Michael Chabon, Noam Chomsky, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Cesar Chavez, Bill Cosby, Sandra Cisneros, Billy Collins, Pat Conroy, Francis Ford Coppola, Jacques Cousteau, Michael Crichton, Francis Crick, Mario Cuomo, Tony Curtis, Marc Danner, Ted Danson, Don DeLillo, Gerard Depardieu, Junot Diaz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Joan Didion, Maureen Dowd. Jennifer Egan, Daniel Ellsberg, Rahm Emanuel, Nora Ephron, Susan Faludi, Diane Feinstein, Jane Fonda, Barney Frank, Jonathan Franzen, Lady Antonia Fraser, Thomas Friedman, Carlos Fuentes, John Kenneth Galbraith, Andy Garcia, Jerry Garcia, Robert Gates, Newt Gingrich, Allen Ginsberg, Malcolm Gladwell, Danny Glover, Jane Goodall, Stephen Greenblatt, Matt Groening, Sammy Hagar, Woody Harrelson, Robert Hass, Werner Herzog, Christopher Hitchens, Nick Hornby, Khaled Hosseini, Patricia Ireland, Kazuo Ishiguro, Molly Ivins, Jesse Jackson, PD James, Bill T. Jones, James Earl Jones, Ashley Judd, Pauline Kael, John Kerry, Tracy Kidder, Barbara Kingsolver, Alonzo King, Galway Kinnell, Ertha Kitt, Paul Krugman, Ray -
Carl Sagan 1934–1996
Carl Sagan 1934–1996 A Biographical Memoir by David Morrison ©2014 National Academy of Sciences. Any opinions expressed in this memoir are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Academy of Sciences. CARL SAGAN November 9, 1934–December 20, 1996 Awarded 1994 NAS Pubic Welfare Medal Carl Edward Sagan was a founder of the modern disci- plines of planetary science and exobiology (which studies the potential habitability of extraterrestrial environments for living things), and he was a brilliant educator who was able to inspire public interest in science. A visionary and a committed defender of rational scientific thinking, he transcended the usual categories of academia to become one of the world’s best-known scientists and a true celebrity. NASA Photo Courtesy of Sagan was propelled in his careers by a wealth of talent, By David Morrison a large share of good luck, and an intensely focused drive to succeed. His lifelong quests were to understand our plane- tary system, to search for life beyond Earth, and to communicate the thrill of scientific discovery to others. As an advisor to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and a member of the science teams for the Mariner, Viking, Voyager, and Galileo missions, he was a major player in the scientific exploration of the solar system. He was also a highly popular teacher, but his influence reached far beyond the classroom through his vivid popular writing and his mastery of the medium of television. The early years Born in 1934, Sagan grew up in a workingclass Jewish neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, and attended public schools there and in Rahway, New Jersey. -
Carl Sagan (1934-1996)
Reflections on a Mote of Dust -- Carl Sagan (1934-1996) We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and suferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every 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 in 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 the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. 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. -
Brent Silby-The Atheist and the Agnostic (A Socratic Dialogue)
THE ATHEIST AND THE AGNOSTIC A Socratic Dialogue By BRENT SILBY Background Walking through a small green space near the center of Western Heights Town, Socrates comes across Paul, who is taking his lunch break in the sun, reading an article by the atheist writer Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens strongly argues that religion is the root cause of many of the world's problems. In his writings and live debates, Hitchens argues that belief in God is irrational. Paul agrees with Hitchens and tries to convince Socrates that because God doesn't exist, believing in him is crazy. Socrates questions Paul, asking how he knows God doesn't exist. Through the dialogue, Paul finds that agnosticism is a more rational position than hard atheism. Persons of the dialogue Paul Socrates SOCRATES: Hello Paul, it is nice to see you outside today. Have you escaped the shackles of slavery for the day? PAUL: I'm not a slave. I happen to like my job. SOCRATES: You may like your job, but are you not bound to it, like a slave? PAUL: I'm not bound to it. SOCRATES: So you're free to come and go as you please? PAUL: Don't pull me into this, Socrates. I'm on my lunch break and I don't want to waste it with pointless conversation. SOCRATES: Do you think examining your life is pointless? Oh dear. What does that say about how you view your life? Perhaps you are trapped like a slave, after-all. Well, we can talk about that another time. -
Billions & Billions Free Ebook
FREEBILLIONS & BILLIONS EBOOK Carl Sagan | 320 pages | 01 Jun 1998 | Random House USA Inc | 9780345379184 | English | New York, United States Billions: Seasons, Episodes, Cast, Characters - Official Series Site | SHOWTIME Science and technology have saved billions of lives, improved the well A respected planetary scientist best known outside the field for his popularizations of astronomy, Carl Sagan was born in New York City on November 9, He attended the University of Chicago, where he received a B. He has several early scholarly achievements including the experimental demonstration of the synthesis of the Billions & Billions molecule ATP adenosine triphosphate in primitive-earth experiments. Another was the proposal that the greenhouse effect explained the high temperature of the surface of Venus. He was also one of the driving forces behind the mission of the U. He was Billions & Billions of a team that investigated the effects of nuclear war on the earth's climate - the "nuclear winter" scenario. Sagan's role in developing Billions & Billions "Cosmos" series, one of the most successful series of any kind to be broadcast on the Public Broadcasting System, and Billions & Billions book The Dragons of Eden won the Pulitzer Prize in He also wrote the novel Contact, which was made into a movie starring Jodie Foster. He died from pneumonia on Billions & Billions 20, Carl Sagan. In the final book of his astonishing career, Carl Sagan brilliantly examines the burning questions of our lives, Billions & Billions world, and the universe around us. These luminous, entertaining essays travel both the vastness of the cosmos and the intimacy of the human mind, posing such fascinating questions as how did the universe originate and how will it end, and how can we meld science and compassion to meet the challenges of the coming century? Here, too, is a rare, private glimpse of Sagan's thoughts about love, death, and God as he struggled with fatal disease.