Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot, Animated

What the speed of light has to do with the reinvention of agriculture and our fear of tininess.

This week, we’re busy covering TEDGlobal 2010 for GOOD — which you can follow via our live Twitter stream — so we’re keeping it short and sweet here at Brain Pickings. And, at barely nine minutes, it doesn’t get any sweeter than this brilliant excerpt from Carl Sagan’s 1997 gem, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space.

Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome universe that utterly dwarfs — in time, in space and in potential — the tidy, anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors.”

The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life’s meaning.”

For a full immersion into Sagan’s compelling exploration of the science-philosophy continuum, do grab the book itself. Meanwhile, follow along with our weeklong immersion in another end of said science-philosophy spectrum.

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The War Prayer: Mark Twain on War and Morality, Animated

“None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth.”

On March 22, 1905, a famous author received a rejection letter from one of the most powerful publishers of the era, calling his latest piece “not quite suited to a woman’s magazine.” The publisher was Harper’s Bazaar, the author Samuel Langhorne Clemens — better known as Mark Twain — and the piece The War Prayer, a short story written in the heat of the Philippine-American war of 1899-1902 offering a poignant reflection on the double-edged moral sword implicit to war.

Because Twain had an exclusive contract with Harper & Brothers, the rejection letter was a death sentence for the piece, prohibiting him from publishing it elsewhere. In fact, eight days after he received the letter, Twain wrote to his friend Dan Beard:

I don’t think the prayer will be published in my time. None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth.

And right he was. It wasn’t until 1923, some thirteen years after the iconic satirist’s death, that The War Prayer finally saw light of day as Twain’s literary agent collected it in the anthology Europe and Elsewhere. But what makes the short story timeless and particularly appropriate today is the relevance of its central argument — that while “the weapons of slaughter” are ever-changing, the immorality of war is universal — in the face of the ongoing wars in Middle East and elsewhere.

More than a century later, here comes a moving animated adaptation of The War Prayer produced and directed by Markos Kounalakis, with wonderful illustration by Greek artist Akis Dimitrakopoulos.

Grab a copy of The War Prayer for some of the most wrily intelligent critique of humanity’s greatest transgression as Mark Twain pokes at it with tenfold the eloquence and wit of today’s political satirists.

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Blu is Back: The Story of Evolution, Told in Graffiti

Lo-fi Darwinism, or why art and algorithm don’t hold hands on Buenos Aires sidewalks.

Nearly two years ago, Italian street artist Blu made waves with MUTO — arguably the most creative graffiti-driven animation of all time. Today, Blu is back with BIG BAG BIG BOOM, the latest gem in his treasure chest of stop-motion urban storytelling — an abstract exploration of the beginning and evolution of life.

What makes this so remarkable is that all of the animation effects were achieved in-camera, “animated” simply by filming the progression of painting on buildings, sidewalks and objects, with no post-production composting whatsoever. This analog, organic, lo-fi visual storytelling offers a complete paradigm shift, challenging us to think differently about a medium that is, at least today, inherently digital and software-assisted.

At least for today — Art: 1, Algorithm: 0.

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Music Philosophy: Famous Lyrics as Typographic Art

Love is all you need, worry vs. laughter, and why Plato’s got nothing on Jay Z.

Music is the quintessential vehicle for modern philosophy, a poetic gateway into our most deepest existential truths and sincerest beliefs. Add to it the visual treat of superb art direction, and you’ve got a powerhouse of cerebral-creative indulgence. That’s exactly what UK-based designer Mico Toledo does in his wonderful Music Philosophy project, bringing together three of our favorite things — music, philosophy and typography — in weekly typographic renditions of famously profound song quotes.

From Judy Garland to Jay Z, by way of Lennon and Dylan, the project captures in the minimalism of lyrical candor what ancient philosophers did in voluminous tomes — the timeless human quests for love, happiness and the meaning of life. And, okay, rock’n’roll.

The posters look fantastic as iPhone wallpaper — you can grab them for free right from the site. And for the t-shirt aficionados among us, some of the quotes are available on screen-printed tees.

See more of Toledo’s work on his Flickr stream. And if there’s a song lyric you’d like immortalized, you can submit it for consideration.

via Coudal

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