A healthy dose of inspiring reality, courtesy of Science: The nearest star to the Moon (other than the Sun), Proxima Centauri, is 4.3 light years away from us. It marks the beginning of what astronomers would call the “stars” beyond our solar system. Miss the Moon, you will be relegated to floating around in the infinite blackness until you quickly succumb to the vacuum and frigidity of space and die. Consider yourself inspired! Have a great day! (via Science-Based Life)
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A healthy dose of inspiring reality, courtesy of Science:

The nearest star to the Moon (other than the Sun), Proxima Centauri, is 4.3 light years away from us. It marks the beginning of what astronomers would call the “stars” beyond our solar system. Miss the Moon, you will be relegated to floating around in the infinite blackness until you quickly succumb to the vacuum and frigidity of space and die. Consider yourself inspired!

Have a great day!

(via Science-Based Life)

Source: sciencebasedlife.wordpress.com

Indifference to source allows us to assimilate what we read, what we are told, what others say and think and write and paint, as intensely and richly as if they were primary experiences. It allows us to see and hear with other eyes and ears, to enter into other minds, to assimilate the art and science and religion of the whole culture, to enter into and contribute to the common mind, the general commonwealth of knowledge. This sort of sharing and participation, this communion, would not be possible if all our knowledge, our memories, were tagged and identified, seen as private, exclusively ours. Memory is dialogic and arises not only from direct experience but from the intercourse of many minds.

- Oliver Sacks on the fallibility of memory and its implications for inspiration and creativity.

Our brains would be overwhelmed within minutes were we to keep track of information sources as if we housed a neural Library of Congress. The imperfect nature of our minds also allows them great flexibility when it comes to creating new experiences. Those, too, will surely be later assimilated by recipients into their own works.

This is not to say that stealing someone’s creation is right, because it is not. But it reminds us that combinatorial creativity is written in the very nature of our biological memory, and we are subject to a very subjective truth.

Check out the complete, amazing article: Speak, Memory in The New York Review of Books

I can’t help but be reminded of Kirby Ferguson’s Everything is a Remix series when I read this. If you haven’t seen it, check it out.

Source: nybooks.com

Many adults are put off when youngsters pose scientific questions. Children ask why the sun is yellow, or what a dream is, or how deep you can dig a hole, or when is the world’s birthday, or why we have toes. Too many teachers and parents answer with irritation or ridicule, or quickly move on to something else. Why adults should pretend to omniscience before a five-year-old, I can’t for the life of me understand. What’s wrong with admitting that you don’t know? Children soon recognize that somehow this kind of question annoys many adults. A few more experiences like this, and another child has been lost to science.

There are many better responses. If we have an idea of the answer, we could try to explain. If we don’t, we could go to the encyclopedia or the library. Or we might say to the child: “I don’t know the answer. Maybe no one knows. Maybe when you grow up, you’ll be the first to find out.”

Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as the Candle in The Dark 

Not being afraid of not knowing is the first step on the road to true discovery. 

(via skaterboytae)

The Sky is NOT the Limit  

X Prize Foundation founder Peter Diamandis drops some inspiring words on ya about how space inspired him to create inspiration in others.

“I want my kids to grow up in a world of hope where they know they can go out there and solve the world’s grand challenges.”

Yep. Like he said … you win.

(via Doobybrain)

Source: doobybrain.com

Nothing is withheld from us what we have conceived to do.

The guy who invented the first internally programmable computer

Of course, he has a name. He’s Russell Kirsch. If you read one thing today, read Joel Runyon’s story of serendipity below. You never know when a true genius will sit next to you at a coffee shop and teach you some of the most important lessons in life.

Enjoy: An Unexpected Ass Kicking

Source: joelrunyon.com

I was gonna let this slide …

… but I just can’t.

If you aren’t in punching vicinity of a kitten or baby, read this CNN LightYears blog entry/article on the Curiosity landing. Except that it isn’t really about the landing. It’s about inventing dangerous drama instead of embracing inspiration. And I’m not gonna let that happen on my watch.

(click through for full rant, so as to not fill your whole dashboard)

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A Vision For Tomorrow - To Boldly Go What if we could build a ship that could take hundreds of people to the moon in just three days? How about Mars in 90 days? What if we had a telescope more powerful than the Hubble, that could be moved wherever we wanted? How about being able to deliver probes, science equipment and landers to the entire near solar system within a few years? This guy thinks it can be done. More specifically, not only can it be done, it should be done. BuildTheEnterprise.org (an extremely deeply detailed website, btw) is a 20 year plan to build a $1 trillion space cruiser. It could have ion drives, a rotating gravity disk, crew quarters for hundreds of scientists and tourists. It would probably have one of those machines where you could call order any food you wanted and it would materialize in front of you. And it would look exactly like the Enterprise from Star Trek. Of course, it doesn’t have to look like the ship from the sci-fi series. Why not make it look like something else? Maybe something more … traditional? Think about this: if that world and those adventures have been able to capture the imaginations of the world, young and old, for decades … what better inspiration could we ask for? The schematics and build schedules call for $50 billion a year over 20 years, which is a drop in the bucket of our national budget. It would transform economies and unite the world’s innovators to create this ship - the pinnacle of human achievement. But most of all, it would serve as a bridge between our dreams and reality, and a seed for the scientific dreamers of tomorrow. It’s part thought experiment, part pipe dream, part social statement and part why don’t we just give this a shot already??? The project has a funding plan, complete conceptual designs, and ship specs. More than you can say for a lot of Kickstarter projects. It’s nice to dream a dream like this, based in a vision of the future that’s not as far off as your first glance makes it seem. Bonus: The time that they almost built a life-sizeEnterprise in Las Vegas. Morons. YOU SHOULD HAVE. (via BuildTheEnterprise; This artwork was done by me, and is proof that I shouldn’t be given access to Illustrator and booze after dark)
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A Vision For Tomorrow - To Boldly Go

What if we could build a ship that could take hundreds of people to the moon in just three days? How about Mars in 90 days? What if we had a telescope more powerful than the Hubble, that could be moved wherever we wanted? How about being able to deliver probes, science equipment and landers to the entire near solar system within a few years?

This guy thinks it can be done. More specifically, not only can it be done, it should be done. BuildTheEnterprise.org (an extremely deeply detailed website, btw) is a 20 year plan to build a $1 trillion space cruiser. It could have ion drives, a rotating gravity disk, crew quarters for hundreds of scientists and tourists. It would probably have one of those machines where you could call order any food you wanted and it would materialize in front of you. And it would look exactly like the Enterprise from Star Trek.

Of course, it doesn’t have to look like the ship from the sci-fi series. Why not make it look like something else? Maybe something more … traditional? Think about this: if that world and those adventures have been able to capture the imaginations of the world, young and old, for decades … what better inspiration could we ask for? The schematics and build schedules call for $50 billion a year over 20 years, which is a drop in the bucket of our national budget. It would transform economies and unite the world’s innovators to create this ship - the pinnacle of human achievement.

But most of all, it would serve as a bridge between our dreams and reality, and a seed for the scientific dreamers of tomorrow.

It’s part thought experiment, part pipe dream, part social statement and part why don’t we just give this a shot already??? The project has a funding plan, complete conceptual designs, and ship specs. More than you can say for a lot of Kickstarter projects.

It’s nice to dream a dream like this, based in a vision of the future that’s not as far off as your first glance makes it seem.

Bonus: The time that they almost built a life-sizeEnterprise in Las Vegas. Morons. YOU SHOULD HAVE.

(via BuildTheEnterprise; This artwork was done by me, and is proof that I shouldn’t be given access to Illustrator and booze after dark)

Source: buildtheenterprise.org

The Sky Is Calling Us: A Cinematic Love Letter to Space Exploration

“We will not choose to sit quietly while the cosmos move on.”

Heed this gorgeous call to arms. The question of whether our scientific high water mark is behind us or ahead of us is ours to answer. If you’d like to have your voice heard, go to theskyiscalling.us and sign up to tell Congress you want more of our money dedicated to space exploration and the innovation that comes with it.

(ᔥ Brain Pickings)

Source: brainpickings.org