Output Stream of Consciousness

Today is the 10th Anniversary of the death of Carl Sagan. Joel Schlosberg has organized a Carl Sagan Blog-A-Thon.

Nick Sagan has a very nice retrospective of his own, providing some interesting, and nice, views of Carl Sagan as a father. There is also a series of retrospectives here, on Celebrating Sagan.

Ah, Carl Sagan. He had a style and accessibility to him. Nobody since has captured the public's eye and drawn it to science the same way as Sagan, with his measured pauses, his incisive turns of phrase, as well as his obvious wonder and delight in the natural world.

We have been without a true science popularizer for a decade now.

Who now can act to reach out the hand of science to clasp peoples' hands, and help them up from where they lay?

Richard Dawkins could almost do it, though his mission is slightly different right now, and too urgent. He has the mannerisms and the ability to bring many a jargon-laden science phrase to light. A documentary version of The Ancestor's Tale could be a worthy successor to Cosmos.

Who else could it fall to? I wonder sometimes why Bill Nye was popular, yet he is not omnipresent.

We need someone who audiences can walk with to enjoy the wonder. That was the thing about his Cosmos series in particular. You did not feel pandered to - you felt as though he was taking you someplace he had been, and was in awe of, and that while he brought you there for you to contemplate the wonders as he had, that he was still awestruck. It felt like sharing, not teaching.

Sagan has left a deep impression on many. I wish he had left an heir to the throne.

I miss you, Sagan, and all that you did for us and shared with us.