Ann Druyan on localism. Timeless 📚

This whole chapter is striking, particularly when you consider all that came after (the book was first published in March ‘97) 📚

A timeless couple of paragraphs 📚

After long last, an episode of Conversations with Tyler worth linking to: Lydia Davis on language, translations, short stories, thick books, and much more 📚

Sagan on sceptics. While true, the paragraph would have to be rewritten for the 2020s: being a sceptic has become ambiguous (enter vaccine and mask scepticism), in addition to superstition and pseudoscience there is just plain bad science (HCQ, surgisphere)… you get the idea 📚

Edward Teller is a prime example that you can be a world-class physicist and also as dumb as a rock. Sagan, on the other hand, was well aware of the turkey problem 📚

Sagan on the perceived benefits of not pursuing truth. He would’ve gotten into so much trouble two years ago 📚

Sagan on science and anti-science. This kind of language could get you into trouble nowadays. 📚

Sagan quoting Harvard’s then-Chief of Psyciatry, Dr. Frankel. Everything old is new again, and again, and again… 📚

Reading The Demon-Haunted World, trying to figure out if Carl Sagan would be disappointed in us or knew what was coming, realizing the two aren’t mutually exclusive 📚