Watch Bill Gates Lose a Chess Match in 79 Seconds to the New World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen

in Games, Sports | January 28th, 2014

Last Novem­ber Mag­nus Carlsen, then only 22 years old, became the Chess World Cham­pi­on when he sound­ly defeat­ed Viswanathan Anand in a best-of-12 series match held in Chen­nai, India. Carlsen won three games, tied ten, and lost none. Only the sec­ond chess cham­pi­on from the West since World War II (and the first since the “eccen­tric genius” Bob­by Fis­ch­er), Carlsen sud­den­ly found him­self a celebri­ty of sorts, get­ting air­time on TV shows. Appear­ing on the Scan­di­na­vian talk show, Skavlan, a few days ago, Carlsen delight­ed view­ers when he played a game of speed chess against Bill Gates, the wun­derkind of a pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion, who co-found­ed Microsoft when he was only 20 years old. So how did Gates hold up? Well, let’s just say that, true to its name, it was a game of speed chess. Gates lost speed­i­ly — in 79 sec­onds and just nine moves.

Not that he needs it, Bill got a lit­tle con­so­la­tion yes­ter­day when it was announced that he and Melin­da will be the com­mence­ment speak­ers at Stan­ford’s grad­u­a­tion this com­ing June.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Famous Chess Match from 1910 Reen­act­ed with Clay­ma­tion

Chess Rivals Bob­by Fis­ch­er and Boris Spassky Meet in the ‘Match of the Cen­tu­ry’

Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi Square Off in a Mon­strous Game of Chess (1934)

Watch the Complete, Crowdsourced Concert Film of Neil Young’s Great Carnegie Hall Show (1/7/14)

in Music | January 27th, 2014

On Jan­u­ary 7th, Neil Young played an acoustic solo con­cert at Carnegie Hall and treat­ed the audi­ence to what Rolling Stone calls, “an absolute­ly jaw-drop­ping two hour and 20-minute show that focused large­ly on his gold­en peri­od of 1966 to 1978.” “It was, with­out a doubt, one of the great­est Neil Young shows of the past decade, at least when he was­n’t play­ing with Crazy Horse.” Above, we have a crowd­sourced con­cert film of that entire glo­ri­ous show. It was stitched togeth­er and uploaded to Youtube by Reel­ife Doc­u­men­tary Pro­duc­tions. Find the 23-song setlist here.

via @SteveSilberman

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See Neil Young Per­form Clas­sic Songs in 1971 BBC Con­cert: “Old Man,” “Heart of Gold” & More

Great Sto­ry: How Neil Young Intro­duced His Clas­sic 1972 Album Har­vest to Gra­ham Nash

‘The Nee­dle and the Dam­age Done’: Neil Young Plays Two Songs on The John­ny Cash Show, 1971

Neil Young Busk­ing in Glas­gow, 1976: The Sto­ry Behind the Footage

Lewis Carroll’s 8 Still-Relevant Rules For Letter-Writing

in Letters, Literature | January 27th, 2014

My grad­u­ate school super­vi­sor taught me all I know about pro­fes­sion­al email eti­quette. Vague lan­guage? Poor form. Typos? Noth­ing worse. Run-on para­graphs? A big no-no. Spelling your recipient’s name wrong? No com­ing back from that one. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, hasti­ly com­posed emails and ambigu­ous phras­ing are all too com­mon, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the high vol­ume of emails many peo­ple send dai­ly. Skimp­ing on the cour­tesy and the proof­read­ing, how­ev­er, is like­ly to cost you points with your recip­i­ent. Thank­ful­ly, we’ve pro­vid­ed a list of cor­re­spon­dence best prac­tices, com­piled by an author­i­ty on let­ters: Lewis Car­roll (who, inci­den­tal­ly, would have cel­e­brat­ed his 182nd birth­day today). In 1890, Car­roll began to sell a Won­der­land Stamp Case, which helped its users to orga­nize their var­i­ous postage stamps. Paired with the case was a short essay, enti­tled “Eight Or Nine Wise Words About Let­ter-Writ­ing.”

The ini­tial guide, of course, refers to pen and paper cor­re­spon­dence. In fact, Carroll’s fore­most pre­cept, which instructs one to write leg­i­bly, is no longer a con­cern in the dig­i­tal age. Nev­er­the­less, the remain­ing eight rules pro­vide a clear and sim­ple crib sheet for let­ter-writ­ing that has stood the test of time remark­ably well:

1) Start by address­ing any ques­tions the receiv­er pre­vi­ous­ly had - “Don’t fill more than a page and a half with apolo­gies for not hav­ing writ­ten soon­er!

The best sub­ject, to begin with, is your friend’s last let­ter. Write with the let­ter open before you. Answer his ques­tions, and make any remarks his let­ter sug­gests. Then go on to what you want to say your­self. This arrange­ment is more cour­te­ous, and pleas­an­ter for the read­er, than to fill the let­ter with your own invalu­able remarks, and then hasti­ly answer your friend’s ques­tions in a post­script. Your friend is much more like­ly to enjoy your wit, after his own anx­i­ety for infor­ma­tion has been sat­is­fied.”

2) Don’t repeat your­self - “When once you have said your say, ful­ly and clear­ly, on a cer­tain point, and have failed to con­vince your friend, drop that sub­ject: to repeat your argu­ments, all over again, will sim­ply lead to his doing the same…”

3) Write with a lev­el head — “When you have writ­ten a let­ter that you feel may pos­si­bly irri­tate your friend, how­ev­er nec­es­sary you may have felt it to so express your­self, put it aside till the next day. Then read it over again, and fan­cy it addressed to your­self. This will often lead to your writ­ing it all over again, tak­ing out a lot of the vine­gar and pep­per, and putting in hon­ey instead, and thus mak­ing a much more palat­able dish of it!”

4) When in doubt, err on the side of cour­tesy - “If your friend makes a severe remark, either leave it unno­ticed, or make your reply dis­tinct­ly less severe: and if he makes a friend­ly remark, tend­ing towards ‘mak­ing up’ the lit­tle dif­fer­ence that has arisen between you, let your reply be dis­tinct­ly more friend­ly. If, in pick­ing a quar­rel, each par­ty declined to go more than three-eighths of the way, and if, in mak­ing friends, each was ready to go five-eighths of the way—why, there would be more rec­on­cil­i­a­tions than quar­rels! Which is like the Irishman’s remon­strance to his gad-about daughter—‘Shure, you’re always goin’ out! You go out three times, for wanst that you come in!’ ”

5) Don’t try to have the last word — “How many a con­tro­ver­sy would be nipped in the bud, if each was anx­ious to let the oth­er have the last word! Nev­er mind how telling a rejoin­der you leave unut­tered: nev­er mind your friend’s sup­pos­ing that you are silent from lack of any­thing to say: let the thing drop, as soon as it is pos­si­ble with­out dis­cour­tesy: remem­ber ‘speech is sil­vern, but silence is gold­en’! (N.B.—If you are a gen­tle­man, and your friend a lady, this Rule is super­flu­ous: you won’t get the last word!)”

6) Humor is hard to trans­late to writ­ing. Be obvi­ous. - “If it should ever occur to you to write, jest­ing­ly, in dis­praise of your friend, be sure you exag­ger­ate enough to make the jest­ing obvi­ous: a word spo­ken in jest, but tak­en as earnest, may lead to very seri­ous con­se­quences. I have known it to lead to the break­ing-off of a friend­ship. Sup­pose, for instance, you wish to remind your friend of a sov­er­eign you have lent him, which he has for­got­ten to repay—you might quite mean the words “I men­tion it, as you seem to have a con­ve­nient­ly bad mem­o­ry for debts”, in jest: yet there would be noth­ing to won­der at if he took offence at that way of putting it. But, sup­pose you wrote “Long obser­va­tion of your career, as a pick­pock­et and a bur­glar, has con­vinced me that my one lin­ger­ing hope, for recov­er­ing that sov­er­eign I lent you, is to say ‘Pay up, or I’ll sum­mons yer!’” he would indeed be a mat­ter-of-fact friend if he took that as seri­ous­ly meant!”

7) Don’t for­get that attach­ment! — “When you say, in your let­ter, “I enclose cheque for £5”, or “I enclose John’s let­ter for you to see”, leave off writ­ing for a moment—go and get the doc­u­ment referred to—and put it into the enve­lope. Oth­er­wise, you are pret­ty cer­tain to find it lying about, after the Post has gone!”

8) Using a post­script? Make it short — “A Post­script is a very use­ful inven­tion: but it is not meant (as so many ladies sup­pose) to con­tain the real gist of the let­ter: it serves rather to throw into the shade any lit­tle mat­ter we do not wish to make a fuss about.”

Casu­al Vic­to­ri­an-era “sil­ly women!” sex­ism aside, Car­rol­l’s tips are sur­pris­ing­ly fresh and applic­a­ble. If you’re plan­ning on engag­ing in some seri­ous snail-mail cor­re­spon­dence, we sug­gest you check out Car­rol­l’s com­plete essay over at Project Guten­berg.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See Sal­vador Dali’s Illus­tra­tions for the 1969 Edi­tion of Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land

See The Orig­i­nal Alice In Won­der­land Man­u­script, Hand­writ­ten & Illus­trat­ed By Lewis Car­roll (1864)

The Real Alice in Won­der­land Cir­ca 1862

“Exceptional, Spooky and Beautiful” Moments With Birds: Dennis Hlynsky’s Creepy Nature Videos

in Biology, Film | January 27th, 2014

If, by some stretch of the imag­i­na­tion, the end timers have it right, I hope artist Den­nis Hlyn­sky will con­sid­er set­ting up his tri­pod as demons spew forth from the earth­’s crust.

His small brains en masse project has me con­vinced that he is the per­fect per­son to cap­ture such an event. Have a look at how he doc­u­ments the com­ings and goings of birds.

I’ve nev­er expe­ri­enced a star­ling mur­mu­ra­tion myself, out­side of the famous, shot-on-the-fly footage (right above) of Sophie Wind­sor Clive and Lib­er­ty Smith, indie film­mak­ers who chanced to find them­selves in the right canoe at the right time, ornitho­log­i­cal­ly speak­ing. I admire these young wom­en’s sang-froid. I would’ve been cow­er­ing and slash­ing at the air with my pad­dles. That fun­nel cloud of black wings is unnerv­ing even from the safe remove of my liv­ing room, but a groovy sound­track by Nomad Soul Col­lec­tive encour­ages even the most bird-pho­bic amongst us (me) to see it as some­thing gor­geous and awe-inspir­ing, too.

Hlyn­sky does­n’t attempt to lead the wit­ness with reas­sur­ing sound cues. Instead, he amps up the creepy via “extrud­ed time,” lay­er­ing sequences of frames atop one anoth­er until the dark­est pix­els become trac­ers empha­siz­ing flight paths. The com­bi­na­tion of every­day sound and visu­al por­tent makes it dread­ful­ly easy to imag­ine one’s truck break­ing down at an inter­sec­tion right around the 7 minute mark.

Per­haps I’ve seen too many zom­bie movies.

Or have I?

Hlyn­sky is obvi­ous­ly fas­ci­nat­ed by nature, but he also states that “to some degree these videos are stud­ies of mob behav­ior. Are these deci­sions instinc­tu­al or small thought­ful con­sid­er­a­tions? Does one leader guide the group or is there a com­mon brain? Is a virus a sin­gle crea­ture or a dif­fused body that we inhab­it?”

Put anoth­er way, per­haps there’s a rea­son it’s called a mur­der of crows, as opposed to a brunch, hug or sweat­shirt of crows. Hlyn­sky, who’s the type of guy to seek their com­pa­ny out, describes his time spent film­ing them to be among the most “excep­tion­al, spooky and beau­ti­ful” moments of his life.

As for these New Jer­sey seag­ulls, “throw a french fry in the air and with­in 30 sec­onds the entire screech of birds will come.” Yikes. Here, extrud­ed time con­spires with the ambi­ent sounds of a board­walk amuse­ment park, in a tour-de-force of avian-inspired psy­chic unrest.

Pag­ing Tip­pi  Hedren… I’m out of here!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Fal­con and the Mur­mu­ra­tion: Nature’s Aer­i­al Bat­tle Above Rome

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

Para­Hawk­ing in Nepal: What It’s Real­ly Like to Fly with Birds

Ayun Hal­l­i­day wish­es she had a cat instead of a mean, orange-striped owl. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Where to Find Free Art Images & Books from Great Museums, and Free Books from University Presses

in Art, e-books | January 26th, 2014

In recent years, many great art muse­ums have decid­ed to open up their col­lec­tions, putting online huge troves of images that show­case the mas­ter­pieces hang­ing on their walls. They’ve also made avail­able free art cat­a­logues and books, let­ting you learn all about impor­tant artists and styles of paint­ing. Now, uni­ver­si­ty press­es and libraries are start­ing to fol­low suit, giv­ing read­ers free access to books from their archives. We’ve tried to keep you post­ed on these cul­tur­al devel­op­ments here on Open Cul­ture. But you’ve like­ly missed a great resource or two. To make sure you stay up to speed, we offer a roundup below:

Art Books

• Down­load 395 Art Cat­a­logs from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art
• Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 99 Mod­ern Art Books Online
• Down­load Over 250 Free Art Books From the Get­ty Muse­um

Art Images

• The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix
• 40,000 Art­works from 250 Muse­ums, Now View­able for Free at Google Art Project
• The Rijksmu­se­um Puts 125,000 Dutch Mas­ter­pieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art
• The Nation­al Gallery Makes 25,000 Images of Art­work Freely Avail­able Online
• LA Coun­ty Muse­um Makes 20,000 Artis­tic Images Avail­able for Free Down­load
• The Get­ty Puts 4600 Art Images Into the Pub­lic Domain
• New Robert Rauschen­berg Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tion Lets You Down­load Free High-Res Images of the Artist’s Work
• Down­load 100,000+ Images From The His­to­ry of Med­i­cine, All Free Cour­tesy of The Well­come Library

Uni­ver­si­ty Press­es

• Read 700 Free eBooks Made Avail­able by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia Press
• A New Free eBook Every Month from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press

If we’re miss­ing any great col­lec­tion, please let us know in the com­ments sec­tion below. We’re always love to dis­cov­er a new store­house of free knowl­edge. And we’ll make sure that read­ers learn about them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

825 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

500 Free eBooks: Down­load to Kin­dle, iPad/iPhone & Nook

550 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Learn 46 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More

625 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

A New Free eBook Every Month from the University of Chicago Press

in e-books | January 26th, 2014

Here’s a lit­tle tip. Every month the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press lets you down­load a free ebook. If you go to this page, you can put your name on an email list and they’ll let you know when a new book is avail­able. The cur­rent free book (for Jan­u­ary 2014) is Mur­der in Ancient Chi­na by Robert Van Gulik. Accord­ing to the press, the book is “avail­able on our web­site DRM-free in your choice of an EPUB file (for most e‑reading devices, phones, and com­put­ers), as well as in a PRC file (for the Kin­dle). Or, you can get Mur­der in Ancient Chi­na free though­out Jan­u­ary at lead­ing e‑book retail­ers, includ­ing in the Ama­zon Kin­dle store, at Apple iBooks, and at Google­Play.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 700 Free eBooks Made Avail­able by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia Press

500 Free eBooks: Down­load to Kin­dle, iPad/iPhone & Nook

Build a DIY Rubberband Guitar and Celebrate New York’s Styrofoam Ban

in K-12, Music | January 26th, 2014

In one of its final acts of 2013, the New York City Coun­cil got with the times, pass­ing a ban on poly­styrene foam food con­tain­ers and non-biodegrad­able pack­ing peanuts.

The wide­ly hailed reform isn’t slat­ed to go into effect for anoth­er year, osten­si­bly to give the con­tain­er indus­try  a chance to squeeze into its envi­ron­men­tal­ist suit. (Good luck with that.)

The delay also affords those of us who live here ample time to stock­pile the offend­ing sub­stance for future home­made musi­cal instru­ments.

If you’re fret­ting over a rel­a­tive lack of instru­ment build­ing expe­ri­ence, relax.Three min­utes is more than enough time for John Bertles, com­pos­er, arts edu­ca­tor and founder of Bash the Trash, to show you how you can make beau­ti­ful music from (most­ly) scav­enged mate­ri­als. (Entire­ly scav­enged, should you luck into a sup­ply of giant rub­ber bands. I pre­sume you have access to the more advanced ver­sion’s paper clips and left­over chop­sticks. That alone jus­ti­fies your soon-to-be Sty­ro-free Pan­da Express deliv­ery habit.)

If you’ve been build­ing rub­ber band gui­tars since nurs­ery school, Bertles’ video les­son still mer­its a lis­ten, to hear how the sort of sounds prac­ticed fin­gers are able to coax from these hum­ble mate­ri­als.

PS: Lest we get hung up on tech­ni­cal­i­ties: Sty­ro­foam is a trade­marked poly­styrene prod­uct of Dow Chem­i­cal. To quote Bertles, who has gen­uine claims on giv­ing it a mean­ing­ful sec­ond life, “great mate­r­i­al for build­ing musi­cal instruments…terrible for the earth.”

Note: If the video above intrigues you, we’d hearti­ly rec­om­mend that you vis­it our pre­vi­ous posts — The Recy­cled Orches­tra: Paraguayan Youth Play Mozart with Instru­ments Clev­er­ly Made Out of Trash and A Young Frank Zap­pa Turns the Bicy­cle into a Musi­cal Instru­ment on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

Above you can watch John mak­ing a card­board tube gui­tar.

Ayun Hal­l­i­day pledges to rock one of these in the 2014 Coney Island Mer­maid Parade. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

John Lennon Plays Basketball with Miles Davis and Hangs Out with Allen Ginsberg & Friends

in Music | January 25th, 2014

I’ve always had the impres­sion of John Lennon as an aloof fig­ure, and I’ve some­times had dif­fi­cul­ty rec­on­cil­ing the give peace a chance per­sona with the angry young man and his acid tongue. Motorhead’s Lem­my once called him “the ass­hole of the band,” say­ing, “if you read his books, he’s not the peace-lov­ing nice guy that you heard about.” That may be part­ly true (his first wife Cyn­thia might agree), but it needn’t negate his ideals nor his activism and char­i­ty. Lennon was com­pli­cat­ed, and prob­a­bly not an easy per­son to get close to. On the oth­er hand, he may be the most self-reveal­ing of all the Bea­t­les (lit­er­al­ly). Perhaps—as Lennon says in voice-over nar­ra­tion above—his life, like his exper­i­men­tal 8mm films, was “self-edit­ed.”

Though not shot by Lennon him­self (and not tech­ni­cal­ly “home movies” as the YouTube uploader describes them), the can­did films above and below show a relaxed and play­ful Lennon at his 31st birth­day par­ty on Octo­ber 9, 1971, goof­ing off with Yoko and sev­er­al oth­er well-known fig­ures (the same day, an exhi­bi­tion of Lennon and Ono’s art opened in Syra­cuse). Allen Gins­berg, Ringo Starr, and Phil Spec­tor bob in and out of the shaky frame below.

Above, Miles Davis hangs out with the cou­ple and plays bas­ket­ball with Lennon. Keen­er eyes than mine may spot oth­er leg­endary celebri­ties. Avant-garde film­mak­er and one­time Warhol cam­era­man Jonas Mekas shot the footage, call­ing it “Hap­py Birth­day to John.”  Mekas describes the audio track as “a series of impro­vised songs, sung by John, Ringo, Yoko Ono, and their friends—not a clean stu­dio record­ing, but as a birth­day singing, free and hap­py.”  In a 2002 inter­view, he con­veyed his impres­sions of Lennon:

John was very open and curi­ous, a very quick sort of per­son, who caught on imme­di­ate­ly. He did a lot of 8mm film­ing him­self. At the begin­ning of Hap­py Birth­day John, you will hear him talk­ing about what he was try­ing to do.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Two Appear­ances on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971 and 72

Bed Peace Revis­its John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Famous Anti-Viet­nam Protests

How I Won the War: John Lennon’s Absur­dist (Non-Musi­cal) Film Appear­ance, 1967

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

George Orwell Got a B- at Harvard, When Michael Crichton Submitted an Orwell Essay as His Own

in Literature | January 24th, 2014

Images via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In his 2002 mem­oir, Trav­els, Michael Crich­ton took his read­ers back sev­er­al decades, to the ear­ly 1960s when, as a Har­vard stu­dent, he tried an inter­est­ing lit­tle exper­i­ment in his Eng­lish class. He recalled:

I had gone to col­lege plan­ning to become a writer, but ear­ly on a sci­en­tif­ic ten­den­cy appeared. In the Eng­lish depart­ment at Har­vard, my writ­ing style was severe­ly crit­i­cized and I was receiv­ing grades of C or C+ on my papers. At eigh­teen, I was vain about my writ­ing and felt it was Har­vard, and not I, that was in error, so I decid­ed to make an exper­i­ment. The next assign­ment was a paper on Gul­liv­er’s Trav­els, and I remem­bered an essay by George Orwell that might fit. With some hes­i­ta­tion, I retyped Orwell’s essay and sub­mit­ted it as my own. I hes­i­tat­ed because if I were caught for pla­gia­rism I would be expelled; but I was pret­ty sure that my instruc­tor was not only wrong about writ­ing styles, but poor­ly read as well. In any case, George Orwell got a B- at Har­vard, which con­vinced me that the Eng­lish depart­ment was too dif­fi­cult for me.

I decid­ed to study anthro­pol­o­gy instead. But I doubt­ed my desire to con­tin­ue as a grad­u­ate stu­dent in anthro­pol­o­gy, so I began tak­ing premed cours­es, just in case.

Most like­ly Crich­ton sub­mit­ted Orwell’s essay 1946 essay, “Pol­i­tics vs. Lit­er­a­ture: An Exam­i­na­tion of Gul­liv­er’s Trav­els.”  He even­tu­al­ly went to Har­vard Med­ical School but kept writ­ing on the side. Per­haps get­ting a grade just a shade below Orwell’s B- gave Crich­ton some bizarre con­fir­ma­tion that he could one day make it as a writer.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read audio books from Audible.com, includ­ing works by Crich­ton and Orwell? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

via Red­dit

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Orwell’s Five Great­est Essays (as Select­ed by Pulitzer-Prize Win­ning Colum­nist Michael Hiltzik)

T.S. Eliot, as Faber & Faber Edi­tor, Rejects George Orwell’s “Trot­skyite” Nov­el Ani­mal Farm (1944)

George Orwell Explains in a Reveal­ing 1944 Let­ter Why He’d Write 1984

George Orwell’s Har­row­ing Race to Fin­ish 1984 Before His Death

See Carl Sagan’s Childhood Sketches of The Future of Space Travel

in Art, Astronomy, History | January 24th, 2014

Carl Sagan had his first reli­gious expe­ri­ence at the age of five. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, it was root­ed in sci­ence. Sagan, then liv­ing in Brook­lyn, had start­ed pes­ter­ing every­one around him about what stars were, and had grown frus­trat­ed by his inabil­i­ty to get a straight answer. Like the resource­ful five-year-old that he was, the young Sagan took mat­ters into his own hands and pro­ceed­ed to the library:

“I went to the librar­i­an and asked for a book about stars … And the answer was stun­ning. It was that the Sun was a star but real­ly close. The stars were suns, but so far away they were just lit­tle points of light … The scale of the uni­verse sud­den­ly opened up to me. It was a kind of reli­gious expe­ri­ence. There was a mag­nif­i­cence to it, a grandeur, a scale which has nev­er left me. Nev­er ever left me.”

This sense of uni­ver­sal won­der would even­tu­al­ly lead Sagan to become a well-known astronomer and cos­mol­o­gist, as well as one of the 20^th cen­tu­ry’s most beloved sci­ence edu­ca­tors. Although he passed away in 1996, aged 62, Sagan’s lega­cy remains alive and well. This March, a reboot of his famed 1980 PBS show, Comos: A Per­son­al Voy­age, will appear on Fox, with the equal­ly great sci­ence pop­u­lar­iz­er Neil DeGrasse Tyson tak­ing Sagan’s role as host. Mean­while, last Novem­ber saw the open­ing of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive at the Library of Con­gress.

Among the papers in the archive was this sketch, titled “The Evo­lu­tion of Inter­stel­lar Flight,” which Sagan drew between the ages of 10 and 13. In the cen­ter of the draw­ing Sagan pen­cilled the  logo of Inter­stel­lar Space­lines, which, Sagan imag­ined, was “Estab­lished [in] 1967 for the advance­ment of transpa­cial and intrau­ni­ver­sal sci­ence.” Its mot­to? “Dis­cov­ery –Explo­ration – Col­o­niza­tion.” Sur­round­ing the logo, Sagan drew assort­ed news­pa­per clip­pings that he imag­ined could her­ald the key tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments in the space race. Impres­sive­ly drawn astro­nauts in the cor­ner aside, I most enjoyed the faux-clip­ping that read “LIFE FOUND ON VENUS: Pre­his­toric-like rep­tiles are…” Good luck con­tain­ing your sense of won­der on see­ing that.

via F, Yeah Man­u­scripts!

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan’s Under­grad Read­ing List: 40 Essen­tial Texts for a Well-Round­ed Thinker

Carl Sagan Presents Six Lec­tures on Earth, Mars & Our Solar Sys­tem … For Kids (1977)

Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawk­ing & Arthur C. Clarke Dis­cuss God, the Uni­verse, and Every­thing Else