The Pale Blue Dot.
We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. 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.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. 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. 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.
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.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. 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. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.
-Carl Sagan
Evil fucking scientists!!!
Jesus loves the little zygotes
all the zygotes of the world.
Jesus loves them until they’re born
then abandons them forlorn.
Jesus loves the little zygotes ’til they’re born.
Jesus loves the little children
all the children of the world.
Jesus gives them heart defects
measles, mumps, and ringwormed necks.
Jesus loves the little children of the world.
Jesus lets their parents beat them,
bruise their bodies black and blue.
Jesus gives them birth defects,
scurvy, ticks, and palette clefts.
Jesus loves the little children of the world.
Jesus gives the children cancer.
Earaches, lice, and scabies too.
Bowel obstructions, altered lips,
blighted brains and twisted hips.
Extra chromosomes to help them when they pray.
Hallelujah.
Jesus gives the children acne.
AIDS and leprosy galore.
Germs and worms of every kind.
Things to make the children blind.
But he cannot give them smallpox anymore.
Scientists and unbelievers
wiped the pox right off the earth.
Jesus still gives gifts to kids,
broken nose and burnt eyelids.
But he cannot give them smallpox anymore.
About Me
Having grown up in the sweltering Florida heat, George enjoys staying indoors, and air conditioning. A Level 7 Elvish Photoshop Mage with +10 Dropshadow Power, George specializes in visual design & interaction design — two fancy terms he uses to make himself sound important and to explain that he cares about both how things look and how things work.