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Seth MacFarlane Helps LOC Acquire Carl Sagan Papers
dsinc writes with news of a but of altruism on the part Family Guy's creator. From the article: "Seth MacFarlane once included a gag on his animated TV comedy 'Family Guy' about an 'edited for rednecks' version of Carl Sagan's 'Cosmos,' featuring an animated Sagan dubbed over to say that the earth is 'hundreds and hundreds' of years old. Jokes aside, his admiration for Sagan runs deep. The Library of Congress announced Wednesday that, thanks to MacFarlane's generosity, it has acquired the personal papers of the late scientist and astronomer, who spoke to mass audiences about the mysteries of the universe and the origins of life. While MacFarlane never owned Sagan's papers, he covered the undisclosed costs of donating them to the library."
sssshhht Ow. sssssssshhht Ow.
& Bravo!
No matter what you think of Seth MacFarlane's body of work (early Family Guy is good, the rest is meh at best) he should be commended.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
I personally think Family Guy is completely inane. The writing has done nothing but devolve since the first season, especially after the hiatus following season 2 (I think). At least something good came out of its mass appeal.
50,000 characters used to live here.
Twinkle Twinkle ----whoops- Twankler Twunkler - oochs When he has told to write out mozert 500 times as a child
Is anyone else kinda ticked-off that this was even necessary?
Why weren't they just donated by the estate to the LOC? Is there something else at play here, or just a greedy estate?
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Yes, the "Cosmos for rednecks" gag was good, but isn't it also worth mentioning he's currently producing the next Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson and Ann Druyan?
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
Mountain Dew is the best soda ever made!!!
Sagan was awesome. He knew everything about the cosmos except how to pronounce it.
The Demon Haunted World should be required reading in all schools. If you aren't scared by it, you're the reason why it's scary.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
From Hollywood Reporter:
Quite a serious side to the man. Clearly, menstruation and holocaust jokes are just his day job.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
With Seth McFarlane voicing the quick witted effeminate alcoholic globular cluster.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Yes, the "Cosmos for rednecks" gag was good, but isn't it also worth mentioning he's currently producing the next Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson and Ann Druyan?
This could be so good.
MacFarlane said he watched "Cosmos" as a child and devoured all of Sagan'sbooks.
Coming from the creator of Peter Griffin, this could very well mean that he literally ingested the physical books, Cookie Monster-style, rendering them unavailable to the rest of the world for decades. "He covered the undisclosed costs of donating them to the library," may simply mean he paid to have the books surgically removed from his stomach, paid for a forensic team to piece them back together and will spend a few weeks in a hospital bed in pain, paying for his transgression.
I've never been a big fan of MacFarlane, both the man and his work, but I have to say that I'm both impressed and grateful for his generosity in making the work of one of the most important figures in popular science publically available.
It's truly commendable and shows great character. Not to mention he's producing the sequel to Cosmos... I'll have to reevaluate my stance on MacFarlane.
I think that Seth McFarlane is fascinating person. I'm still surprised when I listen to his album of standards that he'd even stop to take the time to do something like that. I think this is really excellent that he did this. I look forward to the new Cosmos project he's working on.
Meh.
"The collection comprises approximately 800 boxes of materials that document Sagan’s life and work and includes his extensive correspondence with scientific colleagues and other important figures of the 20th century. It also includes book drafts, publications files, "idea files" on various subjects, records of various symposia, NASA files and academic files covering the years he taught at Cornell University. Among the personal files are his birth announcement, handwritten notebooks of his earliest thoughts and grammar-school report cards. In addition to manuscript materials, the collection includes photographs, audiotapes and videocassettes. Researchers and scholars will be able to use the collection once it has been fully processed by the Library’s archivists."
Cool, so the next Cosmos will be informative, but have a splash/references to Star Wars, Back to the Future, Indiana Jones, and Conway Twitty.
I'm for it.
...a but of altruism...
Slashdot editors, brain-dead, epsilon minus, etc.
I don't mind toilet humor, my problem is the pure meanness of much of his writing without even bothering with a punch line. I recall a gag about Penelope Cruz's nose (only an idiot would consider her anything less that beautiful) and a crack about Kristen Stewart being the ugly girl vampire and werewolf fought over. Family Guy at least, smacked of a show written by ridiculed drama club kids looking to lash out at their abusers once given a pulpit.
He taints the Sagan's legacy as far as I'm concerned.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
...that is, that's where those good old family values on which we might rely are, at least one place.
Lucky there's a rationalist/secularist guy.
Power Macintosh 7100 with the code name BHA. (funny story, look it up)
Well, when you are on fox, you play to the execs who are in charge.
I'm shocked that I haven't seen a Library of Congress as unit of measurement joke yet. It is unfortunate that the cost of donating the materials to the Library of Congress was undisclosed because then we could have a conversion factor for money to LoCs.
"but of altruism"
^^^ LOL'ed
Of papers. If the sheer volume of papers were written in a microscopically tiny font and shrunk into the size of a typical supermarket tacky romance novel, the entire content of war and peace in an equivalent density and font would no bigger than a fortune cookie paper.
I am either using something like Netflix, or watching media I have in-house. I keep my in-house media on a NetStora server which is basically a hard drive in a standalone box which can be controlled via web or through a share. I have a wireless google tv sony blue ray player that runs an app that can read windows shares (and other types) and play the media. it can also play the subtitle file I can download (since I'm deaf). Except for this one subtitle feature, I don't necessarily recommend Google TV. Very stagnant and boring, not a fast changing environment that I thought it would be. One thing I do like is I can control the Google TV box with my android phone using a Sony app. I get my in-house content through bittorrent and use a VPN to keep out of trouble. It's not perfect but minimizes risk. Surprisingly I find myself watching netflix most of the time anyways.. :)
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
I mean the first Cosmos did have some new age stuff in it. (You know, where Sagan plays a little drum. I forget why he was doing that though.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
From Hollywood Reporter:
Quite a serious side to the man. Clearly, menstruation and holocaust jokes are just his day job.
Clearly McFarlane is just a bizarro human, opposite to all normal guys, who work really boring jobs in science, engineering etc, and are only free to make menstruation and holocaust jokes in their spare time.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.