:120306: My captors are still keeping me confined to a small space, but space is all I need...

Plugging his new book, Space Chronicles, Neil DeGrasse Tyson appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and nearly made Jon want to become an astrophysicist himself (watch the clip, you'll want to become one, too!).

Tyson is doing pretty well bringing the wonder back to science and making it friggin' awesome—just like the great Carl Sagan. Known as a popularizer of science, Sagan helped people want to learn about the Universe with the same passion as Sagan himself. In Carl Sagan's words:

Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We've longed to return, and we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We're made of starstuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself. The journey for each of us begins here.

As it turns out, the very thing that Carl loved most about the Universe, is also what Neil loves most, and both of them just make you want to pack a bag and head for the stars (well, them and Doctor Who), because really, you're just going home.

The transcript of the video:

Thanks, Neil. Carl would be proud.

:060119: My captors keep me confined to a small space, but space is all I need...

The following quotations are from the introduction to the first episode of Carl Sagan's legendary television series, "Cosmos."

"The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our contemplations of the cosmos stir us; there's a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation as if a distant memory of falling from a great height. We know we are approaching the grandest of mysteries."

Have I mentioned I enjoy contemplating the universe? There it is, a poetic description of my mental thrill ride. The thrill never goes away. It is one thing the gaze up at the stars at night and be awestruck by their pure aesthetic beauty, but then to go deeper into space, and think about its edge. Yes, the edge, except there isn't one. Or even as you gaze "up" at the stars, to imagine yourself instead gazing "down" at them. Dimensions, light, gravity, time, energy, matter, distance, cycles; there"s no end to the mind-blowing topics. I am so far from understanding all the complexities of the universe, but I feel a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a sensation of falling, and just a little bit of rapture each time I get a little bit closer to Knowing some of what there is to Know.

"The cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths, of exquisite interrelationships, of the awesome machinery of nature."

I believe that all there is to Know that is worth Knowing is an elegant truth, an exquisite interrelationship, or awesome natural machinery. I do not find comfort in impossibilities and faith and miracles. I find comfort in discovering the way the universe works, how each puzzle piece fits together to create the whole with such a complex natural order, one can only understand a fraction of the rules themselves, but one can believe that every aspect is governed by a rule.

"Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We've longed to return, and we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We're made of starstuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself. The journey for each of us begins here."

That rules govern everything does not diminish the romanticism or the wonder of life. After all, I used to be a star, a heavenly entity. Everything and everyone is a part of everything and everyone. If you wait long enough, a molecule of air that I exhaled while typing just now, you (or someone with significant quantities of your genetic code) will inhale someday. Everything exists in relation to everything else. If you glance to the right instead of to the left as you walk down the street on an ordinary day, and in doing so, you make eye contact with a stranger, that stranger's day will be just a little bit different than if the stranger had not seen you at all.

Go outside. Look up (or, if you are standing, look as far away from your feet as you can). Choose a star. No, not that one, that one's mine. So is that one. Ok, you can have that little one on the left. Name your star after your least favorite person. Now... allow it to bring you joy.

:060114: I have something, and my captors do not know it. It is a treasure. It is a library book, small and unassuming. A thick hardcover, but small nonetheless. There are no words on the front cover, not even any designs on the back cover. A sticker on the spine reads "shelved in closed stacks." Your ordinary library patron browsing through the books will never find it. They will also never find it because I have it. I intend to continue renewing it until they won't let me anymore (or at least until I've finished it, which seems to be taking me a while).

It is old. Very old. 109 in fact. Copywright 1897. It has that old-fashioned date-stamp sheet glued to the first page. The first stamp is September 27, 1977. It was only checked out 5 more times with stamps. The last one was July 8, 1991. When did the library switch over to computers? Maybe then, or maybe it's been shelved in closed stacks the whole time, and I am only the 7th person to ever check out this book. Three pages later, there is another date stamp, September 2, 1965. Is that when the library acquired the book? Perhaps. But for now it it mine. The pages are yellowed and they smell like dust. This book has spent some time in some sort of puddle because the first 147 pages have the same identical water mark.

This is no ordinary old book. Its age makes it fascinating alone, but how many books that old are actually interesting to read, as well? This one has a gem on almost every page.

"This ground beneath me is old as the Milky Way. Call it what you please, —clay, soil, dust: its names are but symbols of human sensations having nothing in common with it. Really it is nameless and unnamable, being a mass of energies, tendencies, infinite possibilities; for it was made by the beating of that shoreless Sea of Birth and Death whose surges billow unseen out of eternal Night to burst in foam of stars. Lifeless it is not: it feeds upon life, and visible life grows out of it."

Nice, eh? I shall keep it and keep it hidden until my captors figure it out.