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Carl Sagan, as "Mr. X," Extolled Benefits of Marijuana
New submitter Colin Castro writes with an exceprt from the San Francisco Chronicle that reveals a different side of Carl Sagan: MarijuanaMajority.com founder Tom Angell spent a few days this summer in the Library of Congress researching the iconic American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist and author and has come away with a bounty. Angell says he found some never-before-released writings on marijuana policy from the author of classics such as 'Contact' and the TV show 'Cosmos', which is the most widely watched series in the history of American public television. ... I am convinced that there are genuine and valid levels of perception available with cannabis (and probably with other drugs) which are, through the defects of our society and our educational system, unavailable to us without such drugs,' Sagan wrote in 1971, under the name Mr. X.
They want their Carl Sagan news back.
Sure, if you smoke pot, you might end up like Carl Sagan, but you could also end up like Obama, Bush, or Clinton.
Do you want your teen to grow up and have 27% approval ratings? I thought not.
Well, it's more valid than the status quo that imprisons millions of people for dumb-as-hell reasons derived from 1960s moral panics and 1920s racism.
I am convinced that there are genuine and valid levels of perception available with cannabis (and probably with other drugs) which are, through the defects of our society and our educational system, unavailable to us without such drugs
So wait, Carl Sagan is saying our school systems and our culture are so fucked up that we need drugs to understand what the fuck we should actually be thinking?
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Nobody thinks of the economic impact of freeing millions and millions of American citizens from indentured servitude.
How will the prison industrial complex get cheap labor if we legalize MJ, which is used to imprison non-whites and seize all their assets without warrants?
If the South has to give that up, it could be the end of the plantations!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I'm in a group that takes his philosophy of science...and marijauana...and spreads it via some pretty spaced out electronic music.
/shameless plug
We're called the Sagan Youth Boys. Check us out on Soundcloud for a taste. https://soundcloud.com/sagan-y...
Our 2nd album is coming out in a few months that'll be a hard sci-fi concept album based on a manned mission to Enceladus.
He seems to have gone into it with an open mind, made observations, and drawn conclusions...if you study the process by which cannabis became contraband, "no more valid than anybody else's" starts to look a little silly.
A male dolphin.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
A frustrated romance of Sagan's played a small role in Lilly's most famous dolphin study. One night in St. Thomas, Sagan dined at a remote mountaintop restaurant. The hostess caught his eye. She was an attractive young woman with dark hair and a healthy, tomboyish quality. Her name was Margaret Howe. She told Sagan that she was bored. Her job as a hostess was evenings only. She wanted something else to occupy her on the island.
Sagan tried to get Howe into bed. Howe rebuffed him, but the meeting had one result: Sagan introduced Howe to anthropologist Gregory Bateson, who was then running the St. Thomas facility. This led to a job and plunged Howe into one of the most unusual experiments of the 1960s.
In the summer of 1965, Howe lived in the company of "Peter," a male dolphin, 24 hours a day, six days a week in a simplified flooded house. There are surreal photographs of Howe working efficiently at a desk or chatting on the telephone, eyed curiously by a dolphin as her whole environment is sopping in 24 inches of water.
"A dolphin is more like a shadow than a roommate," Howe said. The thing would stay by her all day and never leave. She could talk on the phone for hours. The dolphin wouldn't get bored. It wouldn't leave. As weeks passed, Howe was subject to depression and crying jags. "I have found that during the day I will find any excuse to get out of the flooded room," she wrote in her diary. (Lilly meanwhile was contemplating a flooded car for the future bi-species society.)
Peter began exhibiting courting behavior. He lightly nibbled Howe's legs, getting erections, and rubbing against her ardently. As a matter of expediency, Howe took to giving the dolphin hand jobs. Peter would "reach some sort of orgasm, mouth open, eyes closed, body shaking, then his penis would relax and withdraw." Dolphin libidos being what they are, this had to be repeated two or three times; then, finally, the dolphin could concentrate on its lessons.
That made for a pretty good conversation stopper. Otherwise the experiment's results were debatable. It seemed that Peter learned to say "hello" and "ball" and parrot consonant sounds. When Howe asked Peter to get the ball, he would often get the cloth.
* * *
After this experiment, Sagan visited St. Thomas and played a game of catch with Peter. Sagan threw the ball to Peter, and Peter dove under it and batted it back with his snout. His aim was as accurate as a human's. Then, after a few volleys, the dolphin began returning the ball far to the side of Sagan. Peter was toying with Carl, performing an "experiment" of his own. Figuring that two can play that game, Sagan retrieved the ball one last time and held it, treading water.
For about a minute, both mammals stood their ground. Peter gave in. He swam into Sagan's side of the tank, circling him, repeatedly brushing past him. This puzzled Sagan. It didn't seem like the dolphin's tail flukes had brushed him. Then he realized the dolphin had a hard-on.
The frustrated triangle of Sagan, Howe, and Peter was worthy of Sartre. There was a further twist. Peter was one of Lilly's ex-actor dolphins. Sagan had been propositioned by Flipper.
But my number was from the national institute of rectal studies.
The fact that you call this "prattle" illustrates Sagan's point - because of his altered perception, he was able to grasp the magnitude of what he was working with. Smaller minds more easily dismiss it as foolish and inconsequential because their brains just can't handle the idea of "billions upon billions".
I mean this in the nicest possible way - go smoke some weed and stare up into the stars. It helps put things into perspective.
Also see for less 'metaphysical' achievements: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
You must be high.
Carl Sagan has 168 scientific publications, 10 of which have been cited more than 100 times. Many of them are in exceptionally high impact journals (e.g., Nature, Science).
Actually, your comment shows you narrow-mindedness.
Sure, people who are under the influence of perception-altering drugs seem annoying to listen to or be around. But being "unable to think straight" means they're thinking in very non-standard/non-traditional ways. I think attributes such as one's creativeness, imagination or even intelligence level, aren't subject to change just by taking drugs. But the creative mind, under those conditions, might well come up with some very interesting things that it wasn't likely to come up with while the brain was functioning normally.
Driving is a task that requires a particular set of skills and behaviors; none of which would be enhanced (or even remain unaffected) by getting drunk. That's pretty irrelevant to asking if, say, the artist under the influence of LSD might create more interesting music or artwork than he/she did without it.
> Adverse effects of acute cannabis use
- Cannabis does not produce fatal overdoses.
Indeed! There is no LD50 for Cannabis that I'm aware of ...
It is hypocritical that some far worse drugs have social acceptance such as caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol, while safer drugs are socially ostracized.
LD50 of Tetrahydrocannabinol (active ingredient found in Cannabis): 3000 mg/kg in dogs and monkeys.
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wi...
Same page says Oral LD50 of Table Salt: 3000 mg/kg in rats. So, marijuana is roughly on par with potato chips.
Anyone under the influence of illegal drugs think they're sooo intelligent and creative and imaginative and infinitely smarter. In reality, they can't even think straight.
And yet, the structure of DNA was figured out by a man who was on drugs (LSD) at the time.
The number from your rectal studies institute is probably more correct. The total number of people that have been imprisoned is likely much less than the number currently in prison.
He once inserted random mutations into his code, just so he could have the experience of debugging.
http://science.slashdot.org/st...
Silence is a state of mime.
Hmmmm...I'm a scientist. Your comments trouble me.
Perhaps you haven't noticed, there's a strong anti-intellectual and anti-science force in America. It frequently obscures the fruits of our scientific labor, it weakens our laws and culture, and it endangers people's lives through ignorance.
Sagan, et. al., are useful to society because they bring scientific ideas and theories to the mainstream. They explain it to the layperson. You know, the lay person, who in a democratic society...has the power to vote. If the masses don't understand science, they will vote against it.
So thank you Sagan, thank you for giving science the "marketing" it needs in order to help make the world better.
Good point. Another thing that muddies the stats is that many of the people who actually do time for MJ are people who had previously served time for some other offense, and the MJ offense winds them up in jail as a probation/parole/3 strikes violation, which depending on the jurisdiction may or may not get counted as "being imprisoned for marijuana".
For some numbers not pulled rectally, according to an ACLU analysis: "Of the 8.2 million marijuana arrests between 2001 and 2010, 88% were for simply having marijuana." Remember that arrest means you were charged and it goes on your record. That alone should be enough misery to end this stupidity.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
Yeah, but I'd contest that that claim is spurious
Even more important, his Erdos Bacon number is 7
More music, fewer hits
Even more important, his Erdos Bacon number is 7
Six, actually. More important than that: His Erdos Bacon Sabbath number is 10.
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Pointing out that Carl Sagan (or Nobel prize winners, etc) liked to smoke marijuana is a valid retort to the popular misconception that "marijuana users are lazy, stupid, stoners" (an ad hominem frequently used by supporters of prohibition).
Knowing that some of the greatest minds of our era are marijuana smokers disproves that misconception.
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I smoke pot often with multiple millionaire clients that I have. Each owns the company that I do work for. Each built that company from the ground up. As the article points out (that Carl said) smoking marijuana (and doing other drugs) can open our minds to things that ordinarily wouldn't be accessible.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
You seem to be acting on the assumption that the only benefit of popularizing science is to attract future scientists into the field - and in that context I would agree, good K-12 science teachers would be better. But then again, how many of those do we actually have, especially in backwater places where they may be under undue pressure to skip ? And really, we've got plenty of scientists, more than the available funding can support.
What I see as one of the great benefits of popularizing science is that it helps make the general population less ignorant and more willing to listen to (and fund) scientists. Sure, you're not going to convert a lot of Creationists with Sagan's brief summary of evolution, but you'll increase the number of people who understand the science well enough to not be suckered in to that fantasy land. So long as churches and snake-oil salesman of all types are allowed to spread their foolishness we need a cultural counterweight to spread the voice of reason among the populace.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
That's kind of the whole point of smoking pot
That's just your reason.
Supporters of prohibition frequently believe that the "lazy, stupid, stoner" effects of marijuana persist after the intoxication has passed (and that eventually they become "burnouts" in the style of Cheech & Chong)
"Stoner" is the marijuana stereotype equivalent of "the town drunkard" (and thus counts as an ad hominem).
We all know that the "drunkard/alcoholic" stereotype does not apply to the vast majority of alcohol consumers. The next step is to get the public to understand that "the stoner" stereotype does not apply to the vast majority of marijuana consumers.
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The main purpose of smoking pot is to chill out, to be mellow. If you smoke a bunch of pot and you feel wound up, driven, ambitious and motivated you might want a refund.
Different strains of pot have different effects. Sativa blends are usually more of an intellectual high, indica blends tend to give the mellow "do nothing" couchlock high. In my experience smoking a sativa blend will make mundane tasks more tolerable (one can actually be more productive whilst stoned) and occasionally provides problem solving inspiration for more complicated tasks.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Allow me, please. :)
The industrialization of America after the turn of the century began to bring sizable numbers of US Southern blacks into the ghettos of our northern cities. They replaced the Italians, the last white group out of the ghetto, who themselves followed Irish and Jews, among many others. This is around 1920, and there's still plenty of racism, everywhere; even in New York City. But from the very beginning of New York City, there was a small contingent of black people. Not descendants of US slaves, but Caribbean immigrants, mostly.
These Caribbean immigrants were themselves descendants of slaves from sugar plantations and such, mostly run by the British, but also some French and Spanish. Slaves in the US were stripped of all their African culture; not a shred of original names or language or customs or anything survived. Not so much with the British, and especially the French and Spanish. They let them keep a lot of their culture; voodoo flourishes to this day in Haiti. Many were not even slaves per se; more like indentured servants or serfs. But even British slaves had it better than US slaves.
One of the things Caribbean blacks held onto, was the recreational use of marijuana. Marijuana has been known to the white man forever, and was not a big deal for about 1900 of the last 2000 years. It was commonly prescribed by doctors in the 1800s certainly, and before. But the white man, pretty much, never smoked marijuana as a common recreational thing. The white man's drug is beer. Well, and scotch. I don't know that they get complete credit for wine, but I think they get most of it. The white man loves his alcohol. He's been working on it for about 2000 years, at least.
Now, you need that liver enzyme to be able to enjoy your alcohol; some of us have it; really, most of us don't. Well, most of us didn't. And those of us white people that didn't, well, there's a good chance we died in the gutter as alcoholics and didn't have babies. Fast forward 2000 years, and most of us alive today can handle our liquor. Still not 100%, as we are all well aware. Asians and American Indians; severely lacking the alcohol friendly liver. If you haven't seen a full blooded Asian chick drink a whole glass of champagne, well; she's falling down drunk for an hour and a half. In the white man's world of super cheap beer and liquor, that lack of ability to casually drink alcohol plagues our Native American population to this day.
The black man in America is generally somewhere in between those two extremes. Beer was not completely unknown in ancient Africa, but was not a common thing in the deep jungles where slaves came from. But, he has been pressed into our white man's society for more or less, the last 400 years, so the law of liver selection has done it's work there, somewhat. Certainly, Caribbean blacks know what rum is for a long time now. And weed. Actually, there is a slightly Christian mysterious religion with roots in Africa, that uses pot as a meditation tool. Surely everyone knows who I am talking about.
So, back to our story of US Southern blacks migrating into our northern ghettos, at first filling out, and mixing with, the existing Caribbean immigrants, who have been filtering in for hundreds of years at that point. It's their turn; Black People; the Italians just did it, the Irish did it, hell, even the English WASPs did it when they carved it out of the woods, when bears and Indians and brigands could kill you at your front door. Pretty ghetto. The ghetto is the gateway to American society. Beginning in the 20s, the ghetto started becoming black, and the racists began to panic. One of the first things they did was to make pot illegal. White people didn't even know what it was, until Reefer Madness and all the hype; completely made up political BS. A tool, to keep the black man in the ghetto, and prevent him from integrating as he would otherwise.
And that racist BS persists to this day, although very few realize just how racist the anti-marijuana laws are
So eat your weed then.