'Who speaks for Earth?'

WHEN I was a kid, I always thought I would become a scientist when I grew up. That was actually my original dream, though my paternal grandfather Lolo Nardo and my Ninang Lulu (the elder sister of my dad) thought I’d become a lawyer. Mainly because Lolo Nardo was a lawyer (he went to the UP College of Law and joined Sigma Rho), and Ninang Lulu also became a lawyer. Heck, I almost enrolled after passing the UP Law Aptitude Examination, heh But science was my first love. I actually find it somewhat ironic that I became a journalist, because while I was always an avid reader, I didn’t start writing outside school work till third year high school — and that was mainly because I had a crush on our English teacher Miss Natalie Nebit haha. I loved the young scientist’s encyclopedia collection my parents bought me and the “scientific experiments” I conducted. And in 1980, I learned to love science even more when Carl Sagan’s Cosmos started airing on TV. If you can find a DVD, get it, and get a copy of the book that accompanied the TV series while you’re at it if you don’t have one. In 2005, The Science Channel aired “Cosmos” with updated computer graphics and footage for the 25th anniversary of the series. This was truly a groundbreaking documentary in 1980, and the special effects were simply amazing. Sagan was able to make people feel the same passion for science he had. I looked forward to every episode and watched all 13 of them when they were first shown. To me, the most memorable parts would be the Library of Alexandria and the tragic fate of Hypatia; Johannes Kepler and what to me as a kid was the jarring appearance of Tycho Brahe and his artificial nose made from an alloy of silver and gold; the Ionians and the speculation on whether they would have achieved space flight sooner; Tunguska; the Voyager flight and the golden record that contains the message of the human race to extraterrestrials; and Albert Einstein and that biker in an Italian town who travelled at near-light speed and returned minutes later (in his frame of reference), only to find his friends and most people in the town dead and his younger brother now an old man. And of course, who can forget Episode XIII, "Who Speaks for Earth?" from which the video clip above was taken. You could get a transcript of that whole message from Sagan here. Over two decades later, his message is more apt than ever. You have to remember that when "Cosmos" first came out, the Cold War was in full swing, and we were basically living with the specter of World War III and nuclear annihilation. We are now supposed to be living in more enlightened times, yet it seems we’re repeating the cycle, with a looming energy crisis and, maybe, another Vietnam in the form of Iraq. It’s strange how the more things change, the more they stay the same. This blog is a reflection of this love for science I share with the other members of the Inside Science team. We hope, in our own small way, to make more Filipinos learn to love science too.