Required Reading in Pluckyland

Everyone in the whole wide world should read this book. Especially "post 9/11". The incomparable Carl Sagan's cool reason was very refreshing after months of hearing about Ann Coulter's harpy-like ranting. The "baloney-detection kit" Sagan provides would be an easy tool with which to discredit Coulter's many logical fallacies.

The final two chapters, "Science and Witchcraft" (where he chastizes witchhunts, not really witchcraft, calm down my Pagan friends...) and "Real Patriots ask Questions" (when's the last time you heard something like that) are the most pertinent now. Sagan mentions that it's a little scary how control over news stories and other media can affect popular understanding of history. He then goes on to say

We saw a pale echo of what is now possible in 1990-1991, when Saddam Hussein, the autocrat of Iraq, made a sudden transition in the American consciousness from an obscure near-ally--granted commodities, high technology, weaponry, and even satellite intellegence datato a slavering monster menacing the world. I am not myself an admirer of Mr. Hussien, but it was striking how quickly from someone no American had heard of into the incarnation of evil.

Ha! Stick that in your memory-hole and burn it!

I don't always agree with Sagan, for example I think he's a little too hard on Star Trek and the X-Files, but his brand of reason, his use of an actual thought process, is so wonderful it nearly made me weep.