Subject:
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Re: Carl Sagan's "Cosmos"
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 6 Apr 2001 05:16:45 GMT
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Viewed:
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584 times
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This is my final post regarding Carl Sagan and the "billions and billions"
stuff. By the way, in "Cosmos" Sagan does say "billions upon billions."
Anyway, this quote comes from Chapter 1 of Sagan's book "Billions and Billions":
I never said it. Honest. Oh, I said there are maybe 100 billion galaxies and
10 billion trillion stars. It's hard to talk about the Cosmos without using
big numbers. I said "billion" many times on the "Cosmos" television series,
which was seen by a great many people. But I never said "billions and
billions." For one thing, it's too imprecise. How many billions are
"billions and billions"? A few billion? Twenty billion? A hundred billion?
"Billions and billions" is pretty vague. When we reconfigured and updated
the series, I checked - and sure enough, I never said it.
But Johnny Carson - on whose "Tonight Show" I'd appeared almost thirty times
over the years - said it. He'd dress up in a corduroy jacket, a turtleneck
sweater, and something like a mop for a wig. He had created a rough
imitation of me, a kind of Doppelganger, that went around saying "billions
and billions" on late-night television. It used to bother me a little to
have some simulacrum of my persona wandering off on its own, saying things
that friends and collegues would report to me the next morning. (Despite the
disguise, Carson - a serious amateur astronomer - would often make my
imitation talk real science).
Astonishingly, "billions and billions" stuck. People liked the sound of it.
Even today, I'm stopped on the street or on an airplane or at a party and
asked, a little shyly, if I wouldn't- just for them - say "billions and
billions."
"You know, I didn't actually say it," I'd tell them.
"It's okay," they reply. "Say it anyway."
I'm told that Sherlock Holmes never said, "Elementary, my dear Watson" (at
least in the Arthur Conan Doyle books); Jimmy Cagney never said, "You dirty
rat"; and Humphrey Bogart never said, "Play it again, Sam." But they might
as well have, because these apocrypha have firmly insinuated themselves into
popular culture.
I'm still quoted as uttering this simple-minded phrase in computer magazines
("As Carl Sagan would say, it takes billions and billions of bytes"),
newspaper economics primers, discussions of players' salaries in
professional sports, and the like.
For a while, out of childish pique, I wouldn't utter or write the phrase,
even when asked to. But I've gotten over that. So, for the reconrd, here
goes: "Billions and billions."
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Sagan, C., Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of
the Millennium (New York: Ballantine Books, 1997)
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Carl Sagan's "Cosmos"
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| Well, my dear friend, all I can say is watch and enjoy the "Cosmos" series and tell me if he said "billions and billions." I can only repeat that Sagan said he was misquoted for using that phrase in the "Cosmos" series, that he wouldn't use such a (...) (23 years ago, 6-Apr-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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