The Blue Dot

Forty-eight hours after that meteor hit in Russia and the asteroid that was the biggest object of its kind to be seen coming this close to Earth, I'm reading me some Carl Sagan. His show Cosmos still holds the record for the most watched science-related ever to be broadcast.

You look back at him with that 70s hair and sure it's easy to make fun. Mention his name at a party and at least three people will make a somber face and go "Billions!"Ah, but he died too young.Here's something he wrote about our little blue pearl of a planet, and under that a short clip of him speaking, in words as reverent as any prayer. The two bring tears to my eyes this day.

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECuarAmpK00]