New year's resolution - in high resolution

Today’s ‘Positive and Optimistic Sunday’. On this second day of 2011, many of us will have made, will be making, or at least will be thinking about, new year’s resolutions. Doing so forces us to consider our values and priorities, i.e. our perspective. Speaking of perspective, rather than focussing in on the micro view, very often it’s important, if not critical, to take a step backward to see the wide view. Carl Sagan (1934-96) [1] was an American astonomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist and author. He wrote, co-wrote or edited over 20 books. One of his most famous books is Pale Blue Dot [2] – a 1994 non-fiction vision of the human future in space. It was inspired by a photograph with the same name, taken by Voyager in 1990. Here’s a link to a sober and inspirational 6-minute movie clip accompanied by the reading of an extract from Pale Blue Dot [3]. The blurb says ‘If every person on our blue Earth watched this video, the world would be a much better place’. I couldn’t agree more. For those of you who’d like a closer up perspective of our home planet, here’s a link to two of the most accurate, highest resolution earth views to date [4]. Click on either of the images to fill your screen with breathtaking splendour. How positive and optimistic is that.