A fine pagina c'è un articolo sul CICAP-"Comitato italiano per il controllo delle affermazioni sul paranormale" e normativa sull'abuso della credulità popolare, truffa, ecc.. |
Carl
Sagan (1934-1996) |
Carl Edward Sagan è stato uno dei maggiori astrofisici degli ultimi decenni, docente di astronomia alla Cornell University, grande divulgatore scientifico, fondatore della Planetary Society, consulente della NASA per le missioni Mariner, Voyager e Viking, ideatore del progetto S.E.T.I. (Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence), nonché autore di oltre trenta libri tra cui "Contact" dal quale è stato realizzato l'omonimo e noto film di fantascienza (attrice protagonista Jodie Foster) diretto da R.Zemeckis.
Un bellissimo libro di Carl Sagan è "COSMO",
1981, edito da Mondadori, attualmente fuori commercio. [nella prima
edizione statunitense (Random House, New York, 1980) il titolo è invece
COSMOS]. |
"In una società impregnata di tecnologia come la nostra, ma sempre più assediata da nuovi profeti, impeti di irrazionalità e falsa ricerca del meraviglioso, allontanarsi dalla scienza o permettere che venga demonizzata, significa in realtà consegnarci ai veri demoni: l'irrazionalità, la superstizione, il pregiudizio, ed entrare in un'epoca di nuovo oscurantismo" (Carl Sagan) |
Il Cofanetto Dvd
“The Cosmos” Set DVD: “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage“ Episode Titles: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos:_A_Personal_Voyage] 1- The Shores Of the
Cosmos
Number of
episodes: 13 - of 60 minutes
Episode 1: "The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean" 1. Ann Druyan Intro 2. Opening 3. The Cosmos Introduction. Dr. Sagan launches a Spaceship of the Imagination 4. Spaceship Universe ...to hundred billion galaxies... Where we are located (the Local Group), light-years 5 Spaceship Galaxy ...to billion trillion stars, M31... 6 Spaceship Stars
..to the Milky
Way, globular clusters, pulsars ... 7 Spaceship Solar System To a yellow star, nine planets, dozens of moons, thousands of asteroids and billions of comets and flying through Valles Marineris 8 Planet Earth Eratosthenes and the circumference of Earth 9 Alexandrian Library The modern-day city of Alexandria in Egypt. The ancient Library of Alexandria 10. Ages of Science 11. Cosmic Calendar The Cosmic Calendar: from the beginning of the universe to the arrival of humans
Episode 2: "One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue" 1. Opening 2. Spaceship Cosmic Matter 3. Heike Crab The story of the Heike crab and artificial selection of crabs resembling samurai warriors 4. Artificial Selection 5. Natural Selection Evolution through natural selection 6. Watchmaker Intelligent Design 7. Cosmic Calendar The development of life on the Cosmic Calendar, and the Cambrian explosion DNA and its functions in growth, replication and repair; mutations 8. Evolution Animated evolution, from microbes to man 9. Kew Gardens-DNA Journey into the cell nucleus 10. Miller-Urey Experiment Common biochemistry of terrestrial organisms Creation of the molecules of life in the laboratory; the Miller-Urey experiment 11. Alien Life Speculation about life in Jupiter's clouds 12. Cosmos Update 10 years later RNA can control chemical reactions as well as reproduce itself. Comets have a lot of organic molecules in them.
Episode 3: "The Harmony of the Worlds" 1. Opening 2. Astronomers vs. Astrologers Astronomy vs. astrology 3. Astrology Careful observations, fuzzy thinking and pious fraud. 4. Laws of Nature 5. Constellations Constellations and ancient astronomy 6. Astronomers Anasazian ceremonial calendar 7. Ptolemy/Copernicus Ptolemy and the geocentric world view 8. Kepler Johannes Kepler … 9. Kepler and Tycho Brahe …and Tycho Brahe 10. Kepler’s Laws Kepler's laws 11. The Somnium The first Science Fiction book: The Dream 12. End Credits
Episode 4: "Heaven and Hell" 1. Opening 2. Heaven and Hell 3. Tunguska Event The Tunguska event 4. Comets The composition and origin of comets 5. Collisions with Earth Asteroids and impact craters. Lunar impact seen by Canterbury monks in 1178. 6. Planetary Evolution 7. Venus The controversial theories of Immanuel Velikovsky. The planet Venus in fiction and fact 8. Descent to Venus Venera landers 9. Change Human impact on the global environment 10. Deaths of Worlds Venus as an example of the greenhouse effect 11. Conclusion 12. Cosmos Update 10 years later The hellish conditions of Venus are a reminder of increasing greenhouse effect.
Episode 5: "Blues for a Red Planet" 1. Opening 2. Martians H. G. Wells and The War of the Worlds 3. Lowell Percival Lowell's false vision of canals on Mars 4. Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom (The Martians' name of Mars in Edgar Rice Burroughs' science fiction books) 5. Goddard Robert Goddard and early rocket-building 6. Inhabited Planets Remote Sensing 7. Mars Mars probes 8. Viking Landers The Viking probes and their search for life on Mars 9. Life on Mars? The work of Sagan's friend, Wolf V. Vishniac 10. Mars Rover Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's suggestion 11. Terraforming Mars The possibility of terraforming and colonizing Mars 12. Cosmos Update 10 years later Mars is relevant to the global environment of the Earth. Humans on Mars.
Episode 6: "Travellers' Tales" 1. Opening 2. Voyager, JPL The Voyager probes 3. Traveller's Routes Centuries of sailing ships explorers. 4. Dutch Renaissance The Netherlands in the 17th century The persecution of Galileo Galilei and his compeers by the Roman Catholic Church. 5. Huygens The life and work of father Constantijn and particularly son Christiaan Huygens. 6. Huygens - conclusion Christiaan Huygens' discoveries. 7. Traveller's Tales Exaggerations in the past. 8. Jovian System The Voyager probes (first images of Jupiter... 9. Europa and Io ....and its moons) 10. Voyager Ships' Log 11. Saturn and Titan Saturn and its system of moons, including Titan 12. Cosmos Update 10 years later Image processing reconstructs Voyager’s worlds.
Episode 7: "The Backbone of Night" 1. Opening 2. What are the Stars? Sagan's childhood in Brooklyn, New York 3. Brooklyn Schoolroom Teaching children about the cosmos (1) 4. Mythology of Stars The realization that stars are suns; the Milky Way mythology of the !Kung bushmen and ancient Greeks. 5. Ancient Greek Scientists The history of ancient Ionia, Thales The tyrant Polycrates 6. Science Blossoms Anaximander's use of a stick to tell time and season, Empedocles and the water thief 7. Democritus The Ionian philosophers: Democritus... 8. Pythagoras ...Pythagoras, Theodorus, Anaxagoras 9. Plato and the Others Plato, Aristotle, Aristarchus and The Pythagoreans. 10. Distance to Stars Christiaan Huygens 11. Evidence of Other Planets Teaching children about the cosmos (2)
Episode 8: "Journeys in Space and Time" 1. Opening 2. Constellations Constellations and how they change over time 3. Time and Space 4. Relativity The speed of light and Albert Einstein's theory of relativity Time dilation, redshift, blue shift 5. Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo da Vinci's designs 6. Interstellar Travel designs for spaceships that could travel near light speed 7. Time Travel Time travel and its hypothetical effects on human history 8. Solar Systems The origins of the solar system. Possible other worlds 9. Cosmic Time Frame The history of life 10. Dinosaurs 11. Immensity of Space 12. Cosmos Update 10 years later Sagan’s novel Contact regarding supraluminal travelling. Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology and wormholes.
Episode 9: "The Lives of the Stars" 1. Opening 2. Apple Pie Atoms (electrons and nucleus) 3. The Very Large Powers of ten, the googol and the googolplex, infinity 4. Atoms 5. Chemical Elements The periodic table of elements 6. Nuclear Forces Protons and neutrons 7. The Stars and Our Sun The lifecycle of stars; white dwarfs, neutron stars, black holes 8. Death of Stars The end of the Sun and of Earth, supernovae, red giants, pulsars 9. Star Stuff The creation of different atomic nuclei in stars. Radioactivity and cosmic rays 10. Gravity in Wonderland Gravity and its effects; gravity as the curvature of spacetime, the wormhole hypothesis 11. Children of the Stars 12. Cosmos Update 10 years later Supernova SN 1987A. Neutrino astronomy.
Episode 10: "The Edge of Forever" 1. Opening 2. Big Bang The origins of the universe, the Big Bang theory 3. Galaxies Types of galaxies 4. Astronomical Anomalies Galactic collisions, quasars 5. Doppler Effect The Doppler effect 6. Humason Life and work of Milton L. Humason 7. Dimensions The four-dimensional and closed universe 8. The Universe An infinite universe vs. a god 9. India Myths of creation, esp. Hindu cosmology 10. Oscillating Universe Contracting and re-expanding vs. ever-expanding universe 11. VLA The Very Large Array in New Mexico, dark matter, the multiverse hypothesis 12. Cosmos Update 10 years later Milky Way is perhaps a barred spiral galaxy.
Episode 11: "The Persistence of Memory" 1. Opening Bits, the basic units of information 2. Intelligence The diversity of life in the oceans 3. Whales Whales and their songs. Whale hunting 4. Genes and DNA DNA and the brain as libraries 5. The Brain The structure of the human brain. Neurons and connections between them. 6. The City The evolution of cities and … 7. Libraries …the history of libraries, …. 8. Books …books and writing 9. Computers The development of computers and satellites, the potential for global collective intelligence 10. Other Brains Intelligence on other worlds 11. Voyager The Voyager Golden Record
Episode 12: "Encyclopaedia Galactica" 1. Opening 2. Close Encounters Betty and Barney Hill abduction and UFOs 3. Refutations 4. UFO’s 5. Champollion’s Egypt Jean-François Champollion's translation of Egyptian hieroglyphs 6. Hieroglyphics 7. Rosetta Stone 8. SETI Our way of communicating with extraterrestrials (SETI) 9. Arecibo Arecibo Radiotelescope 10. Drake Equation and Contact The chance of technical civilizations existing elsewhere in the Milky Way galaxy; the Drake equation 11. Encyclopedia Galactica A look at a hypothetical encyclopedia consisting of other worlds in the galaxy 12. Cosmos Update 10 years later Fewer sightings of UFOs, more stories of abductions. META scanning the skies for signals.
Episode 13: "Who Speaks for Earth?" 1. Opening 2. Tlingit and Aztec Indians The Tlingit and the voyage and encounters of the explorer La Pérouse The Aztecs and the destruction brought by the Spanish conquistadores 3. Who Speaks for Earth? Sagan's vision (told as a dream) of traveling to a far distant world, only to return to find that the human race had long since been destroyed by nuclear warfare 4. Nuclear War and Balance of Terror The balance of terror on the Earth today 5. Alexandrian Library The destruction of the Library of Alexandria ... 6. Hypatia ...and the murder of Hypatia 7. Big Bang and the Stuff of Life The beginning of the universe and good endeavors of our civilization 8. Evolution of Life 9. Star Stuff 10. What Humans Have Done 11. We Speak for Earth Sagan's plea to cherish life and continue our journey to the cosmos 12. Cosmos Update 10 years later Completed the preliminary reconnaissance of planets with spacecraft. Reducing the obscene number of nuclear weapons.
Music of “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage“
Heaven & Hell,
part 1 — Vangelis — 1975 |
Un
libro importante !
"Il
Mondo infestato dai demoni" di Carl Sagan L'opera
ultima di Carl Sagan, il suo testamento spirituale contro l'oscurantismo
scientifico, contro tutte quelle cose che portano l'uomo lontano dalla
ricerca della verità e soprattutto contro l'irrazionalità, la
superstizione ed il pregiudizio che non possono certo essere le solide
basi su cui appoggiare il XXI° Secolo. 535 pagine che ho divorato in
meno di una settimana e che anche ad uno scettico come me che si sempre
ritenuto di grande apertura mentale, ha saputo ampliare gli orizzonti
oltre i 360°! Hanno scritto di questo libro: |
CICAP
Il CICAP o
"Comitato Italiano per il controllo delle affermazioni sul
paranormale", promuove un'indagine scientifica e critica nei
confronti del paranormale. Giornali
settimanali, radio e televisioni dedicano ampio spazio a presunti
fenomeni paranormali, a guaritori, ad astrologi, a pratiche mediche
cosiddette alternative, trattando tutto ciò in modo acritico, senza
alcun criterio di controllo; anzi cercando, il più delle volte,
l'avvenimento sensazionale che permetta di alzare l'indice di vendita o
di ascolto. |
Norme a
tutela dei cittadini contro la disonestà di: maghi, fattucchiere,
astrologi, guaritori, santoni, ecc.
(2002) - (altresì a cura di:
www.simone.it)
Abuso della credulità
popolare: art. 661 c.p.
Abusivo esercizio di una
professione: art. 348 c.p.
Truffa: art. 640 c.p. Il reato di truffa (che spesso
ricorre) è più difficile da dimostrare ed è procedibile solo a
querela di parte (art. 640 cod. pen. - reclusione da sei mesi a tre anni
e multa da lire centomila - competenza del Pretore). |