Reply #1: Does anybody else miss the days of...

[phantom power]

Carl Sagan? I remember a few years on PBS when it was like a Golden Age of Reason. Cosmos, Attenborough's Life on Earth series, Connections.

I always thought Sagan's "cosmic calendar" episode conveyed the time-scale of various events, from cosmic to recorded history, about as effectively as humanly possible.

That moment when he shows the teeny, little red square, the last 10 seconds of the Cosmic Year, and says "Every human we know anything about, all of recorded history, is in this one red square."

Damn. To think Sagan is dead, and dark-age cretins like Tim Lahaye still walk the earth, and our "president" advocates the teaching of intelligent design.