The spacecraft was a long way from home.

I thought it would be a good idea, just after Saturn, to have them take one last glance homeward. From Saturn, the Earth would appear too small for Voyager to make out any detail. Our planet would be just a point [...]]]>
Video: Pale Blue Films; Music: Mogwai

The spacecraft was a long way from home.

I thought it would be a good idea, just after Saturn, to have them take one last glance homeward. From Saturn, the Earth would appear too small for Voyager to make out any detail. Our planet would be just a point of light, a lonely pixel hardly distinguishable from the other points of light Voyager would see: nearby planets, far off suns. But precisely because of the obscurity of our world thus revealed, such a picture might be worth having.

It had been well understood by the scientists and philosophers of classical antiquity that the Earth was a mere point in a vast, encompassing cosmos—but no one had ever seen it as such. Here was our first chance, and perhaps also our last for decades to come.

So, here they are: a mosaic of squares laid down on top of the planets in a background smattering of more distant stars. Because of the reflection of sunlight off the spacecraft, the Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light, as if there were some special significance to this small world; but it’s just an accident of geometry and optics. There is no sign of humans in this picture: not our reworking of the Earth’s surface; not our machines; not ourselves. From this vantage point, our obsession with nationalisms is nowhere in evidence. We are too small. On the scale of worlds, humans are inconsequential: a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal.

Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you’ve ever heard of, every human being who ever was lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings; thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines; every hunter and forager; every hero and coward; every creator and destroyer of civilizations; 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 supreme leader; every superstar; every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.

Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings; how eager they are to kill one another; how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity—in all this vastness—there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. It underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the only home we’ve ever known.

The pale blue dot.

Carl Sagan, 11 May 1996

And scariest of all…

Video: Sarah Silverman, “Sell the Vatican, Feed the World”

I don’t think I’ve got a good body. And that’s not cause I want you to say I have. I don’t look in the mirror and go: ‘Fucking hell Benny, good body.’ I look at it and [...]]]> Rugby star — and TTNO fan-fave — Ben Cohen strips for Attitude mag and says this about his physique:

I don’t think I’ve got a good body. And that’s not cause I want you to say I have. I don’t look in the mirror and go: ‘Fucking hell Benny, good body.’ I look at it and go, actually, I need to lose some more weight, I need to do some more work and I’ll go into the gym and I’ll try, I don’t really think I have a good body. If people do than fair enough. I think it’s my genetic make-up. I don’t really have much of a say in it.”

I’m sorry, Mr. Cohen, but they simply do not make ‘em much hotter. Predictably, more after the jump (underwear shots, possibly NSFW)…

Courtesy Towleroad.

Important Reminder: The “Green on Thursday” series always reveals very much more about your host at This.That.No Other. than it does about any of the featured personalities.

Aptly-Named Beach, Vancouver, 21 September 2009

Video: The Whip, “Trash”

Thanx to MikeP…

(Courtesy Glark – thanks, Dave!)

By that I mean that we humans have a peculiar physiology and psychology which can lend itself to certain perceptions which we casually describe as “religious” and, because these perceptions and experiences have yet to be scientifically studied in any significant fashion, we’re [...]]]> Though I think religion is total horseshit, I deeply respect the religious experience.

By that I mean that we humans have a peculiar physiology and psychology which can lend itself to certain perceptions which we casually describe as “religious” and, because these perceptions and experiences have yet to be scientifically studied in any significant fashion, we’re left with wholly-inadequate — if not wholly-inaccurate — explanations from the faithful or, more benignly, philosophers and artists.

Sam Harris is one scientist who’s been lobbying strenuously for research into the religious experience, to help explain, scientifically, what’s actually going on when we see an angel or travel down a corridor of light or feel a an irregularly huge rush of empathy and belonging. In The Four Horsemen, a deeply-engaging conversation between Harris, Chris Hitchens, Rich Dawkins and Dan Dennett, he makes his case:

I think there is a range of experience that is rare, and that is only talked about without obvious qualms in religious discourse. And because it’s only talked about in religious discourse, it is just riddled with superstition. And it’s used to cash out various metaphysical schemes which it can’t reasonably do. But clearly people have extraordinary experiences. Whether they have them on LSD, or they have them because they were alone in a cave for a year, or they have them because just happen to have the neurology that is particularly labile that allows for it, but people have self-transcending experiences. And people have the best day of their life where everything seemed, you know, they seemed at one with nature. And for that, because religion seems to be the only game in town in talking about those experiences and dignifying them, that’s one reason why I think it seems to be taboo to criticise it, because you are talking about the most important moments in people’s lives and trashing them, at least from their view.

And, you know, he’s right. Trashing such experiences accomplishes little, but illuminating them… that’s how we can dispell the superstitions and discover some seriously exciting potentials for our evolved minds and brains.

Video: Animated representation of Brion Gysin’s Dream Machine

And speaking of illuminating, I’m currently enjoying, very much, Toronto filmmaker Nik Sheehan’s documentary FLicKeR, about one such way to trigger the ecstatic experience, Brion Gysin’s Dream Machine.

A host of ultracool artists appear in Sheehan’s documentary, too, but I’ll let you visit the official site for that. Certainly, some of the most influential artists of the past 50 years — William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Kenneth Anger, Kurt Cobain and Genesis P-Orridge — are connected with the device. I’ve certainly been fascinated by the idea for over thirty years. Here Marianne Faithfull describes the experience and Gen P-Orridge describes its, um, genesis:

Video: Excerpt from the movie FLicKeR

Instructions for creating a Dream Machine can be found at the movie’s official site (link above). Thirty years of fascination alone is more than enough. Looks like someone’s going to be visiting second-hand audio equipment shops in the next week or so.

Wire is coming back again Elastica got sued by them When [...]]]> It’s no secret I’m a huge fan of The Dandy Warhols but it may not be widely known that The Beatles’ “Blackbird” is one of my very favourite songs. As it turns out, in the title track to The Dandys’ Welcome to the Monkey House, they sing

Wire is coming back again
Elastica got sued by them
When Michael Jackson dies
We’re covering “Blackbird”
And won’t it be absurd then
When no one knows what song they just heard
Unless someone on the radio tells them first
So come on come on come on
Come
Come on come on come on
Come on
Come on come on come on
You monkeys

Well, they promised, and they delivered:

Video: The Dandy Warhols “Blackbird”

Zia! Amazing. And so not a tribute, as many have mistaken.

Video: The Arcade Fire “No Cars Go”

Video: B-52′s “Legal [...]]]> Next to “Roam”, this is probably my fave B-52′s song*. Don’t think the grocers’ apostrophe doesn’t drive me nuts — they fixed it last year, with the release of Funplex — but self-identification is to be respected. The literal representation of the instruments cracks me up and, Cindy, you ARE my goddess!

Video: B-52′s “Legal Tender”

*No, wait, it’s “52 Girls”. No, it’s “Deadbeat Club”. Wevs.

I like them. A lot. They’re fun, they’re fresh, they have [...]]]> You either dig Toronto’s Hidden Cameras or you do not dig them. You either find them hopelessly mannered and naïve or you do not. You either find their music refreshing in a DIY/low-art-gay-churchy kinda way or you find it predictable in a samey-same kinda way.

I like them. A lot. They’re fun, they’re fresh, they have an expansive theatricality and they inevitably find their way onto my iPod within days of release of new material. Like their latest song, “In the Na,” released a couple of weeks ago as a tease for the upcoming Origin:Orphan album release next month.

I won’t deny I have a thing for head Camera Joel Gibb and that was cemented when I met him when he was wearing naught but a wrestling singlet and I was in boxers, dress socks and black wingtips at a friend’s party. He wouldn’t remember that, I’m sure. But, anyway, that’s none of your beeswax.

Hidden Cameras’ live shows are ridiculously fun. They don’t make it to Vancouver nearly as often as they should, though. Like, the last time was 2006? And on my very street? Dear Joel: change that, okay?

Video: Hidden Cameras “In the Na”