Joel's humanistic blog

Well, it's been a full week since I first announced that I would be repeating the Sagan blog-a-thon this year, and so far the word has been getting out pretty well. Last Wednesday, PZ Myers plugged the blog-a-thon in a Pharyngula post that led to a massive influx of visitors to this blog (according to Site Meter , there were 372 hits that day, compared to around 15 on a usual day). Also, kudos to toomanytribbles for being the first to spread the word, less than an hour after my announcement and before I had emailed anybody about it. On a somewhat related note, I haven't yet mentioned here my first Celebrating Sagan blog post , about a popular web video in which Sagan (and Contact 's Jodie Foster) appears.

It's that time of the year again. In just over a month, on December 20, 2007, we will reach the eleventh anniversary of Carl Sagan's passing — and the first anniversary of the wildly successful first-ever Carl Sagan Memorial Blog-a-Thon . Far exceeding my wildest expectations, this became a truly worldwide celebration, featuring more than 250 posts in 11 languages! Sagan fans are truly cohering into an online force to reckon with. For the second blog-a-thon, I'm keeping the format pretty much the same as last time: First, I start with a post (this one) to announce the blog-a-thon now. Then, I leave it open to participating bloggers to post something Sagan-related on their blogs sometime near December 20th (a bit late is OK); interested people without blogs or otherwise unable to post on a personal blog are encouraged to submit something to the Celebrating Sagan website (I am able to post material directly to the site, or one could contact the site's webmasters).

This has been covered before on this blog , but since Martian Child is finally opening in theaters, I want to point out that Equal Time for Freethought 's interview with author David Gerrold is available, including a discussion of the novel of the same name that formed the basis for the film (as well as Gerrold's real-life childraising experience that formed the source for both).