Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
The pale blue dot
No, this photo didn’t get much press twenty years ago. Back then I subscribed to Nature and Science, devoured science programs on TV, read the occasional Scientific American.
Oh, wait. Back then, I was drowning in the middle of internship, sleepwalking from one call night to the next. Maybe that’s how I missed it.
I would have gone through at least another 20 years without seeing this image, were it not for NPR’s story today. It was interesting to learn about the controversy over taking this photo. Nooooo! It’ll fry the camera! But I wonder whether the resistance had something to do with message control. Someone high up understood that images have power.
They needn’t have worried — not about the fried camera, not about message control. If people don’t become alarmed over shrinking ice caps and retreating glaciers, the fragmentation of ice shelves, or the opening of the Northwest Passage, one little blue dot is hardly enough to awaken their environmental consciousness.
D.
