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White to move and mate in two #587 - Happy Birthday Carl Sagan [1]

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Date: 2024-11-12  

Belated birthday wishes to Carl Sagan (Nov 9, 1934 – Dec 20, 1996), one of the most loved science communicators of our times.

Much has been written about his books, essays and TV series on astronomy and interplanetary research. In this diary, let’s take a look at some of his wisdom and insights about humanity. These timeless quotes are as relevant today as they were many decades ago.

Sagan on the dumbing down of America -

I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness… The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995)

Sagan on today’s MAGA republicans -

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. ― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Sagan on science and literacy -

All over the world there are enormous numbers of smart, even gifted, people who harbor a passion for science. But that passion is unrequited. Surveys suggest that some 95 percent of Americans are “scientifically illiterate.” That’s just the same fraction as those African Americans, almost all of them slaves, who were illiterate just before the Civil War—when severe penalties were in force for anyone who taught a slave to read. Of course there’s a degree of arbitrariness about any determination of illiteracy, whether it applies to language or to science. But anything like 95 percent illiteracy is extremely serious. ― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Our job is to change that. Otherwise, the wolves that rule our world will keep succeeding in their effort to keep the population illiterate, misinformed and incapable of critical thinking.

Now let’s use our wit and wisdom to solve today’s puzzle composed in 1884 by British Chess composer Dr. Charles Planck (1856-1935). Planck was a mathematician, medical doctor and pathologist at the East Sussex County Asylum.

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