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feel the learn
07/03/2007 = 09:34 AM

"Nothing you ever learn is wasted."
—The Mom

I am preoccupied with Carl Sagan, who can't help teaching me even though he's been dead for ten years.

If you don't understand anything and feel like, duh, most of the time (which is how I usually am) but you want to feel a little smarter, pick up a book by Carl Sagan.

He uses a lot of big words, but then he immediately follows them up with explanations that help you relate them to things you understand, like dripping faucets or cocktail sauce. (I'm not making that up about the cocktail sauce, by the way.)

It's even easier when he does it on DVD.

I can't walk away from Carl Sagan without feeling significantly smarter than I felt when I started.

Which inspired me to take some of his lessons and make a poem.

Dr. Sagan Meets Matris Anseranas Chen (Mother Goose)

by

Dr. Carl Sagan (with some help by Golf Widow)

Roses are red because they contain anthocyanin and are slightly acidic, causing them to absorb blue and green light and reflect red light back to the eyes, where it is interpreted by the optic nerves and teansmitted to the brain as redness.

Violets are blue because they contain anthocyanin and are slightly alkaline, causing them to absorb predominantly red and green light and reflect blue light back to the eyes, where it is interpreted by the optic nerves and teansmitted to the brain as blueness. However, they also reflect back a smaller but significantly detectable ratio of red light to make one realize that violets are truly blue only in doggerel, because of nothing rhyming with purple (with apologies to the late Roger Miller, who rhymed "purple" with "maple surple" in his song Dang Me).

Sugar is sweet, because it's detected by a variety of G protein-coupled receptors found on the taste buds.

And so are you, 'cos you buy me stuff.

(I wrote the last line by myself; can you tell?)

Anyway, either you already knew that, or you learned a little something despite yourself, which is what's usually the case with me, when I'm dealing with Sagan.

That's pretty awesome.

Tags: Carl Sagan

drinking: iced coffee
watching: the US presidents series on history network
sad about: beverly sills