Archive for September, 2007

On non-bushy thinking

Saturday, September 29th, 2007

Sagan and the solar system

I’m often asked the question, “Do you think there is extraterrestrial intelligence?” I give the standard arguments — there are a lot of places out there, and use the word billions, and so on. And then I say it would be astonishing to me if there weren’t extraterrestrial intelligence, but of course there is as yet no compelling evidence for it. And then I’m asked, “Yeah, but what do you really think?” I say, “I just told you what I really think.” “Yeah, but what’s your gut feeling?” But I try not to think with my gut. Really, it’s okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in.

— Carl Sagan, The Burden of Skepticism, in The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12, Fall 1987

When in ROM …

Monday, September 10th, 2007

Sales blurb for the HTC P3600 mobile phone:

„Process applications faster and store more data with 256MB internal ROM …“