Space Here

It's just after 5pm but 91° Fahrenheit outside. It was 104° earlier. I hope this isn't going to be like last year when summer didn't end until late December. At least the leaves are changing outside.

And at least the construction that was going on here has ended. Since there's good air conditioning in the house where I live, I feel I'm better off sleeping more during the day and maybe it won't be as hellish when I go outdoors. I wonder if global warming will create a large population of vampires.

Carl Sagan mentioned offhand the threat of climate change in the final episode of Cosmos but mostly he focused on the threat of nuclear war. It was kind of sad listening to how charmingly optimistic he was, hearing how he clearly felt he had a reasonable hope in looking forward to greatly advanced space exploration by this time. It was nice, too, listening to someone really excited about the prospect of meeting extraterrestrial intelligence who also didn't buy into any of the publicised supposed contacts with alien life.

Scepticism with hope. What a tragically abnormal combination in the human species.

Well, perhaps hope is in itself not all it's cracked up to be when one considers the pain of disappointment. Yet shutting off hope feels somehow fundamentally self-destructive. I mean, for more than just the obvious reason that it might prevent one from attempting progress. It seems somehow in itself to cause a psychological regression. I suppose I should say there's something fundamentally self-destructive about unreasonable despair.

Connections and Cosmos were two really lovely things to listen to. The Human Animal was good until I remembered how Desmond Morris for some reason asserted in the programme that no-one knows how fire walking is done. That kind of put me off though mainly it's an enjoyable series and he takes care to present unproven opinion, his particular view on humanity, as unproven opinion.

Listening to these shows made me wonder about the absence of science programmes like them on television now. I suppose this is due to the kinds of channels that would normally carry them being given over to reality shows. For this reason I look forward to Neil deGrasse Tyson's own upcoming Cosmos series, though I somehow don't think it'll be as good. Well, maybe I ought to be more optimistic.

Cosmos - Carl Sagan - A Personal Voyage... by Explore2