A quick scan of Joel Schlosberg’s Carl Sagan meta-post would suggest that the Memorial Blog-a-Thon was a success — by my count, Joel links to roughly 125 blog entries and online essays, many of them in languages other than English (I’m honored to be among them, not too far from Scalzi’s listing), and I imagine there are others around the ‘net that did not get listed by Joel for one reason or another. I’ve read a number of them, and they’re all moving tributes. But the best thing I’ve read in conjunction with all of this is, not surprisingly, the remarks made by Carl’s own son, Nick Sagan. He remembers Carl not as some inspiring idol-figure or media personality, but simply as Dad, a human being with hobbies and quirks, just like the rest of us. I was amused to learn, for instance, that the great astronomer and science advocate Carl Sagan liked to play pinball, that he loved basketball and grew to appreciate The Simpsons after a bad first impression, but never enjoyed Beavis and Butthead or Aliens, and that he “talked” with dolphins in their “native tongue.” And then there was this touching father-son moment:
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