Cosmos 2014 ... let's talk.

Teaching is in my blood, my parents are both accomplished, expert educators. My father specializes in drawing&painting, additive/subtractive sculpture, photography and Art History - from the jr. HS to the university level. My mother is unparalleled in child development education (pre-K to 6th). I have zero education or certification to teach, but if I know how to do something? I can teach it to you. I can make you better than me at it if u want.

My most influential teacher...I never met. But I've read every book he ever wrote, his biography and I can quote from his epic PBS mini-series ad nauseum....
"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch....
You must first - invent the universe
Space is infinite, with a network of wormholes, you might emerge somewhere else in space, or some, when-else in time
The sky calls to us, if we do not destroy ourselves
We will one day, venture to the stars
A still more glorious dawn awaits, not a sunrise, but a galaxyrise
A morning filled w/ 400 billion suns, the rising of the Milky Way
The cosmos is filled beyond measure - elegant truths about the awesome, machinery of nature...
The brain does more than just recollect, it intercompares, it synthesizes, it analyzes, it generates abstractions
The simplest thought like the concept of the number one, is an eleborate logical underpinning
The brain has its own language for testing the structure and consistency of the world." (and so on)

Being teachers, I must thank the 'rents for encouraging my interest in science and math. But Carl's words (I read Cosmos before ever seeing or hearing him) turned interest into passion, fascination to obsession. Carl intended Cosmos to make cutting edge cosmology, astronomy, planetary science, relativity, even theoretical physics...accessible to everyone. Even the illiterate audience can watch the series, connect and understand. I read it cover to cover, in one sitting, as a 3rd grader. Since ive read Cosmos 100s of times.

Using his example, I can prove, to ANYONE that as you travel faster, time slows down. The best speech I ever gave was an upper-division world history lecture I gave regarding the power of logic, reason, and rational thought to protect, advance and proliferate the human race. My audience was other upper-div Cal Poly students, the majority of them pre-med, architecture, engineering and liberal arts. I culled his story about how an Egyptian named Eratosthanes used nothing more than basic algebraic and geometric axioms to measure the circumference of the earth... well over 2000 years ago, when a "round earth" was still absurd to the general public. I went to work on the black board, a big round earth, a lil stick figure Eratosthanes..., his sticks, his shadows, his observations, his measurements arrows to show the sunlight striking all these things. Every audience member was gripped. They could follow my diagrams and math perfectly. They know that if we assume the measurements are close (they were almost exact), That the earth is round (...), and that rays of sunlight strike the earth in parallel (they do) then the circumference of the entire planet is apparent...obvious...plain as day.*

I waited for someone to call me out on it... "you read that in Cosmos, right?" No one did. But the excitement I had to convey a historical annecdote in a lecture, with the passion and conviction of Carl in his element; lecturing undergraduates in a way that made science and math, fascinating, fun, to be able to fill jaded, over worked, over tired, undergrads with childlike wonder...to get the Ag major in blue jeans and a cowboy hat excited...about GEOMETRY! That's a wonderful feeling.

Of course, I'm lecturing to a captive audience, all highly educated and likely to find theorums, axioms, and inductive reasoning, well...interesting. I said I can explain general and special relativity to anyone, but I cant make them give a shit. Carl also had a special form of synergy when Cosmos came out...we had an active space program. 'murica was #1 in space, #1 in technology, Astronauts were hereoes, celebrities, household names. Apollo missions were followed minute by minute. Associated research brought about revolutionary technology; materials engineering, electrical engineering, computer science, computer engineering...the vast majority of the technology we take for granted are simply one-offs from all the research and ingenuity it took to put Neil and Bud's boots on that dead rock.

Carl had the perfect storm of culture, society and politics to make science fun. Kids wanted to be astronauts! It was cool to be educated. Acing a test didnt make u a cheat, a nerd or teacher's pet...it meant respect. Knowledge was an asset...sadly it is drifting back to the liability category. Science and math threatens those deeply grounded in fundamentalist religion. It always has and always will threaten those lacking in avg intelligence (that's half of us btw....4 billion give or take).

Just a few hundred years ago, saying the earth revolved around the sun could get you killed, ask Galileo. The Great Library at Alexandria, the crossroads of culture, language, engineering, the arts, trade and above all, innovation, ideas and theories...was burned to the ground by zealots in fear the knowledge contained therein would destroy their way of life. Hand written books on medicine, hydraulics, biology, cartography, linguistics were found...we can only speculate what burned.**

2011. Not a good year. My fiance had a cancer relapse early on, she would only make it a few days into 2012. Economic downturn led to another round of lay offs at work...my seniority had shielded me in 08, 09, 10 ...but few got past that one. I watched the Colombia land for the last time that year. The administration placed our space pgm on hold indefinately, citing budget shortfalls.

Seemed natural...I'm broke, so is the government...if I cant fill my gas tank, how can NASA fill the escape-velocity stage rocket fuel tanks? I thought of Carl as I watched the Colombia slip into the shadows of its hangar, perhaps for the last time. It bothered me. I pictured Carl watching w/ me...he was tearing up....THAT made me cry. It would break his heart to know that we have to thumb a ride w/ France, Japan or Canada, to even leave low earth orbit. Exploring the solar system is on standby. I'm not sure I can express how tragic that is for this country, and for the human race. To explore is to be human...that's what we do! If we stop? Idk...we NEVER stopped, till now.

The synergy Carl had in the 70s can't be recreated, but the people he inspired (top of the list today is Theoretical Physicist Neil Degrasse Tyson and Writer/Animator/Comedian Seth MacFarlane) Tyson tonite will attempt to capture that feeling and childlike wonder so crucial to our very survival. Watching a brief interview w/ Seth made it clear that Carl had the same effect on him as me, the difference is that he has the $ and the pull to get this 2014 Cosmos series not only DONE - but set to air on FOX - in primetime. I'm not expecting social or political change to result, but it's heartwarming that people still care.

As far as the space program is concerned it's not about lack of $...its about how that $ is allocated. It was Tyson himself who once said on Real Time w/ Bill Maher that if you took all the $ we spent in afghanistan, if you had a stack of $100 bills equal to the price tag thus far. you could stack those bills from the ground to VENUS.***

RIP Carl, Cosmos is untouchable, whatever Seth and Neil and Ann came up with, it cant be your words so it cant be Cosmos. Still this writer is grateful for the effort.

Further reading:
*Search Eratosthanes, circumference of the earth, etc. to find an amazing eloquent example of basic reason used to solve a problem that should've been unsolvable based on the knowledge and tools available to him. If you took pre-algebra and basic geometry, you will find it easy to follow.
**Check into the destruction of the library at Alexandria. This mostly unknown tragedy likely destroyed 10,000 years of collected information. Rumors exists that designs for combustion engines, aerodynamics and batteries were not only documented, but prototypes may have been in progress. Carl is certain if that library had not been torched, the first spaceship to Proxima Centauri would be RETURNING by now. (!)
***I'm going to re-check those Afghanistan budget allotments, and how much (how minuscule) a percentage of those funds it would take to design, build and deploy a brand new fleet of next-gen spacecraft. It's also applicable to my idea for repairing American economy, society, intellect, confidence and spirit, w/o bombing poor, strving, toothless ranchers with flourescent red hair, hopefully an American revitalization sans bloodshed entirely. It's bold, its insane, it might be frivolous....worst case? The Fed will have to loan us a TON of money...but as we've established...they love that. More debt = more gooder. Right? (leave it to me to end an attempt at intelligent prose w/ a lowest common denminator cliche like "more gooder"...I'm overdue for a beating, flogging, tasering, maybe a good shot from the ole 'lectric dart gun)