For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by space. I never wanted to be an astronaut; I wanted to live in space. In high Earth orbit. On another planet. Or maybe among the stars.

All my life, I’ve loved science fiction: Star Trek and Star Wars; Asimov, Blish, Clarke, Heinlein, LeGuin; Kim Stanley Robinson’s near-future Mars trilogy. I’ve lived vicariously through the imagination of others.

Through it all, one man has been my guide. From Cosmos to Contact to Pale Blue Dot to The Demon-Haunted World, astronomer Carl Sagan has been there to patiently point to possible futures. Sagan’s relentless optimism inspired many geeks my age. When I feel depressed about the future of our species, I remember Sagan’s conviction that despite our flaws, humans are capable of great things. For me, Carl Sagan’s fundamental message was this: We, the human species, are awesome people.

I also remember Sagan’s sense of wonder. It infected me.

Apparently, his sense of wonder also infected Reid Gower (@reidgower on Twitter). Gower has taken it upon himself to make space exploration cool again. Last December, he produced this mind-blowing mock NASA TV commercial. He followed that in January with his first installment in The Sagan Series, an attempt to create the PR campaign that NASA should have made for itself.

Gower has taken Sagan monologues, combined them with contemplative music, and layered the audio over stunning video from a variety of sources. The results are inspirational, a sort of paean to space exploration. The first installment in The Sagan Series has been viewed more than 1.2 million times; the sixth part deserves at least that many hits.

Here’s the entire series.

The most recent installment in The Sagan Series is perhaps the best of all. To commemorate the final Space Shuttle mission, Gower created “End of an Era”.

These videos make me want a Carl Sagan fix. Maybe I’ll go home tonight and watch Cosmos again. Or read Contact. Or maybe I’ll simply go outside and look at the stars. (Speaking of which, I just posted six stunning videos of the night-time sky at my personal blog.)

Earlier this week at the New York Times Opinionator blog, David Bornstein wrote about new initiatives to match some autistic adults to jobs that suit them. The autistic’s mental quirks make it tough to find suitable jobs, and her difficulty with social situations can create conflicts in the workplace. As a result, adults with autism have trouble finding work, and when they do get jobs, they often have trouble keeping them.

Bornstein’s article highlights the work of Danish entrepreneur Thorkil Sonne. When his youngest child was diagnosed with autism in 2000, Sonne and his wife were worried about his future in society. They wanted him to grow into a happy adult. Rather than leave things to chance, Sonne created a company that could help his son and others like him.

In 2004, Sonne started Specialisterne in Copenhagen. Specialisterne isn’t a charity; it’s a for-profit business designed to draw upon the strengths of its autistic employees instead of dwelling upon their weaknesses. Because folks with autism tend to be methodical, detail-oriented, and have excellent memories — and because they often prefer to work on their own — they make good software testers. Specialisterne employees help large corporations (like Microsoft, Oracle, and Nokia) hone their products.

Here’s how Sonne explained his philosophy to the Harvard Business Review in 2008:

You have to get the most from employees, especially when labor is scarce. Our sector is crying out for manpower, but Specialisterne has many job seekers knocking on the door. The key is to find situations that fit employees†personalities and ambitions, not force everybody into one mold. That just causes stress, and workplaces already produce too much of that.

Specialisterne had $3 million in revenues in 2010 (and earned a small profit), but Sonne isn’t content employing autistic workers in his native Denmark. He wants to take the business global, to Iceland and Poland and Brazil and the United States.

Best of all, Specialisterne is giving purpose and employment to those who’ve been unable to find it in the workplace. The New York Times article highlights one 50-year-old man with Asperger’s syndrome who struggled for more than a decade to find a job. He could never find a place where he fit in. Now, though, he finally feels like he belongs.

Read more about Thorkil Sonne and his company in profiles from Wired and The Atlantic. Chicago-based Aspiritech does similar work in the U.S.

[The New York Times Opinionator blog: For some with autism, jobs to match their talents]

In a January article at the Newsweek magazine website, Seth Fiegerman named Grand Rapids, Michigan one of America’s “dying cities”. The folks in Grand Rapids weren’t amused. On May 22nd, 5000 awesome people in that town came together to film a monster lipdub set to Don Maclean‘s “American Pie”. This amazing video — which Robert Ebert declared “the greatest music video ever made” — features marching bands, fire trucks, motorcades, weddings, helicopter flights, and a bridge on fire.

This people of Grand Rapids are awesome:

Rob Bliss, who acted as director and executive producer, explained the impetus for the project:

This video was created as an official response to the Newsweek article calling Grand Rapids a “dying city.” We disagreed strongly, and wanted to create a video that encompasses the passion and energy we all feel is growing exponentially, in this great city. We felt Don McLean’s “American Pie,” a song about death, was in the end, triumphant and filled to the brim with life and hope.

This isn’t the first lipdub video to go viral on the internet; it’s just the one with the largest scope. Here are some other lipdub videos from years gone by:

• The “Flagpole Sitta” lipdub video in the offices of Vimeo and College Humor. (This is the first lipdub I remember seeing.)
• The “I Gotta Feeling” lipdub video from students at the University of Quebec in Montreal.
• A similar production from the students at the University of Vic: the “Hey Soul Sister” lipdub video.
• The Hall and Oates lipdub video from students at Shorewood High School in Washington state. (The trick here? They filmed it in reverse! Watch it if you don’t know what I mean.)

As you can imagine, a stunt with the size and scope of the Grand Rapids lipdub video doesn’t just happen. It takes planning, hard work, and practice. Though the final video is one continuous shot, it took several attempts to get that one shot. Things went wrong in each take. The final video is the best of of the bunch.

If you’d like to learn more about the Grand Rapids lipdub video, here’s a four-minute behind the scenes clip that shows how it was made.

A decade ago, I bought a CD by the The Langley Schools Music Project. That album, Innocence and Despair, collected 21 songs recorded in 1976 and 1977 by students from the Langley School District in British Columbia. (The songs were recorded in a gymnasium!)

According to music teacher Hans Fenger, who organized this project:

I knew virtually nothing about conventional music education, and didn’t know how to teach singing. Above all, I knew nothing of what children’s music was supposed to be. But the kids had a grasp of what they liked: emotion, drama, and making music as a group. Whether the results were good, bad, in tune or out was no big deal — they had élan. This was not the way music was traditionally taught. But then I never liked conventional children’s music, which is condescending and ignores the reality of children’s lives, which can be dark and scary. These children hated cute. They cherished songs that evoked loneliness and sadness

Now, more than thirty years later, arts and music programs are being slashed from schools across the United States (and probably Canada too, I imagine). Sure, there are magnet schools for kids who really want to sing, but chances to do so in a conventional school environment are dwindling.

It’s a pleasure then to see the success that Gregg Breinberg has had with the kids of the PS 22 Chorus from Public School 22 in Graniteville, Staten Island, New York. For ten years now, Breinberg has been teaching fifth graders to tap their inner passion for song.

Here’s what Breinberg has to say about the chorus:

The PS22 Chorus was formed in the year 2000. We are an ever-changing group of 5th graders from a public elementary school in Staten Island, New York. We are NOT a school for the arts or a magnet program.

The chorus has become a bonafide internet sensation over the last few years, singing choral renditions of classic & alternative pop songs. The kids have sung with Tori Amos, Passion Pit, Crowded House, Queen Latifah, Common, Celtic Woman, Matisyahu, The Bangles, Freelance Whales, Little Dragon, KT Tunstall, Greyson Chance, Judy Torres & Kylie Minogue! They have also performed for President Obama and the first family, Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Stevie Nicks, Rihanna, Kanye West and so many more! Celebrity fans include Perez Hilton, Ashton Kutcher, and the list goes on!

The PS22 Chorus has been seen on Nightline, MTV, Good Morning America, Ace of Cakes, VH1 Divas 2009 Special, and other national broadcasts. The group was featured on National Public Radio, the BBC, and even Howard Stern.

At some point, Breinberg started posting videos of PS 22 Chorus performances and rehearsals on his YouTube channel, A Gregg of Society. What started as a simple way to share with family and friends has exploded into a genuine internet phenomenon with tens of thousands of subscribers and tens of millions of views.

This is so many kinds of awesome it’s hard to know even where to begin. Most of all it’s awesome because here’s an adult, a teacher, treating these kids like superstars. He’s showing them that they can shine. And he’s showing them that music doesn’t have to be a dull, staid thing; music can be filled with passion, and it can be about real life — even if you’re in grade school.

If you dig deep enough, you can even find clips of the PS 22 Chorus from before they made it big. Here, for instance, is what Breinberg describes as “the original PS 22 Chorus of 2001” singing Destiny’s Child’s “Survivor” (which, coincidentally, is one of my favorite workout songs):

Over the years, the PS 22 Chorus has sung all sorts of music, including traditional show tunes, classic rock, folk, lots of “alternative” stuff, and, yes, even heavy metal. Here’s the PS 22 Chorus covering “Iron Man” by Black Sabbath:

Breinberg’s success with the PS 22 Chorus has made quite a splash. The kids have appeared on a variety of television programs, including this year’s Academy Awards broadcast. The kids have also begun to sing with some of the actual performers they’ve covered, including Tori Amos, Kylie Minogue, and The Bangles.

Last year, Greyson Chance (a sixth grader from Oklahoma) made a huge splash covering Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi”. (His YouTube clip now has nearly 40,000,000 views, and led to an appearance on “Ellen” and a call with Lady Gaga herself.) You’ve probably seen this already:

Seems perfectly natural then that he’d show up to sing with the kids at PS 22:

This post could go on forever. Instead, visit Breinberg’s YouTube channel yourself for dozens of other songs.

For a partial list of songs from the PS 22 Chorus, check out the footer on their blog, where you can find many of the songs they’ve performed listed in chronological order. Now if only they’d cover “Dog Days Are Over” by Florence + the Machine, my life would be complete.

In 1963, when he was 21, Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease). At the time, he’d just begun studying theoretical astronomy and cosmology at Cambridge.

Though ALS usually kills its victims within just a few years (you may recall that Lou Gehrig himself only lived two years after being diagnosed), Hawking has lived to the ripe old age of 69. Over the past 48 years, he’s contributed important work to the study of the universe — and he’s served as an inspiration to other people suffering from debilitating diseases.

Earlier today, The New York Times published a rare interview with Stephen Hawking. Here’s an excerpt:

Q. I donâ€t mean to ask this disrespectfully, but there are some experts on A.L.S. who insist that you canâ€t possibly suffer from the condition. They say youâ€ve done far too well, in their opinion. How do you respond to this kind of speculation?

A. Maybe I donâ€t have the most common kind of motor neuron disease, which usually kills in two or three years. It has certainly helped that I have had a job and that I have been looked after so well.

I donâ€t have much positive to say about motor neuron disease. But it taught me not to pity myself, because others were worse off and to get on with what I still could do. Iâ€m happier now than before I developed the condition. I am lucky to be working in theoretical physics, one of the few areas in which disability is not a serious handicap.

Q. Given all youâ€ve experienced, what words would you offer someone who has been diagnosed with a serious illness, perhaps A.L.S.?

A. My advice to other disabled people would be, concentrate on things your disability doesnâ€t prevent you doing well, and donâ€t regret the things it interferes with. Donâ€t be disabled in spirit, as well as physically.

At the New York Times site, you can read the entire interview, play audio recordings of Hawking’s responses, and read reader comments.

What did you do when you were sixteen? I read a lot of comic books, watched too many music videos, and sulked because my parents wouldn’t buy me stuff. You know — standard teenaged angst.

When she was sixteen, Australian Jessica Watson did something awesome: She sailed around the world. Alone. Non-stop and unassisted. Watson left Sydney on 18 October 2009, sailed east through the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Indian Oceans, and returned to Sydney on 15 May 2010 — three days before her seventeenth birthday.

This being the Internet Age, Watson documented the journey on a blog and on YouTube. In one blog post, Watson explained why she chose to sail around the world:

When I first dreamt of sailing around the world, the first thing that caught my attention, was curiosity about whether or not it was even something that was achievable. It wasn’t so much the action and adrenaline parts that appealed to me, but thinking about all the details and finding ways to minimize the risks. I wanted to challenge myself and achieve something to be proud of. And yes, I wanted to inspire people. I hate that so many dreams never actually become anything more than that, a dream. I’m not saying that everyone should buy a boat and take off around the world, but I hope that by achieving my own dream, I’m showing people that it is possible to reach their own goals, whatever they might be and however big or small.

Now that I’m out here, I’m also finding that a big part of it is just about having fun and making the most of every day. And the other amazing thing is that it’s no longer just my dream or voyage. Every milestone out here isn’t just my achievement, but an achievement for everyone who has put so much time and effort into helping getting me here.

Also, I’d like to say that I’m not doing this to prove a point, but that wouldn’t be completely true. For almost 6 years my family lived on our motor boat travelling and based at different marinas on the east coast of Australia. When you live on the water, it’s sort of like an unwritten law that when another boat is pulling in, you stop to give a hand and take their lines. But being a ‘little girl’ meant that more often than not, my offer of help would be completely ignored, while the line was passed to the fully grown man next to me. I found this incredibly frustrating as I knew that I was just as capable of handling the lines as anyone else. I hated being judged by my appearance and other people’s expectations of what a ‘little girl’ was capable of.

So yes, I hope that part of what I’m doing out here is proving that we shouldn’t judge by appearance and our own expectations. I want the world to know exactly what ‘little girls’ and young people are actually capable of!

Watson’s YouTube channel includes a couple dozen videos chronicling her journey. Here, before she sets out, she gives us a tour of her 34-foot boat, Ella’s Pink Lady.

Along the way, Watson kept a video diary. Here’s an entry from late October 2009:

Nearly three months later, Watson shares her enthusiasm as she passes South America’s Cape Horn on 13 January 2010:

At this point, it’d been three months since she’d seen another person, two months since she’d seen land, and a month since she’d seen another vessel. “I don’t know how a scraggly little rock can look so beautiful,” she says, “but I’m telling you, it’s beautiful.”

Mid-way between South America and Africa, Jessica was delighted to be surrounded by hundreds of dolphins:

On 22 February 2010 (as I was lounging in a hammock in Belize), Watson was passing Africa’s Cape of Good Hope:

A month later, on 20 March 2010, Watson shared a greeting from halfway across the Indian Ocean:

And on 15 May 2010, Watson sailed home to Sydney harbor. If you only watch one of these videos, watch this one.

I love seeing all of the boats that accompany Watson and Ella’s Pink Lady back to dry land. And I love seeing all of the Australians who came out to cheer her home.

“I don’t consider myself a hero,” Watson says. “I’m an ordinary girl who believed in a dream.”

Photo by Duane Burdick

To some people, a shrub is just a shrub; to Pearl Fryar, a shrub is a canvas. Fryar is an artist with plants. But he didn’t start out that way.

When he bought his home in 1981, Fryar didn’t know anything about gardening. Still, he wanted to win Yard of the Month from the local garden club. At a local nursery, he spied a potted topiary plant and asked to buy it. But the nursery owner wouldn’t sell it to him, especially after learning that Fryar didn’t know how to garden. Instead, the owner gave him a crash course in pruning.

Fryar went home and set to work. He taught himself topiary. Using cast-off plants from nearby nurseries, he began to spend long hours in his yard. He’d work twelve-hour shifts at his job, then come home and sculpt his plants until the wee hours of the morning. This pattern continues today. “I’m only at one of two places,” Fryar says. “At work or in my garden.”

After five years of planning and pruning, Fryar’s garden finally won Yard of the Month. Over the past 25 years, it’s grown into something more. It’s actually become a tourist destination, and has served as a launching pad for a scholarship fund.

The 2008 film A Man Named Pearl delves more into Fryar’s background. Here’s a trailer:

Jackie Robinson was Fryar’s role model. He saw what Robinson was able to accomplish by using his talent, and so looked for something he could do well too. That “something” happened to be sculpting plants. But Fryar recognizes that for other people, that “something” could be completely different. One of his goals is to help others discover what they’re good at.

Here’s a four-minute documentary about Fryar made by students from UCLA in the spring of 2010:

This video highlights The Pearl Fryar Scholarship Fund, a foundation Fryar started to help average students have a chance at success.

Fryar wasn’t a stellar student. He didn’t achieve academically. Yet, he managed to find a path to success anyhow. Now that he’s received some attention, Fryar has made it his goal to help others with a background similar to his. There are many scholarships out there for top students, but he wants to help those who are average.

When he was stationed in Korea, Fryar saw a quotation that inspired him: “He or she who does no more than the average will never rise above the average.” Now his goal is to help those who are average to rise above, to work at the fullest of their potential.

“Success is about work,” Fryar says. “You show me anyone who works at anything with a passion, and I’ll show you somebody who’s going to succeed. But what determines that success from what you are given is the environment. If you vary the environment, you can vary the thinking of that kid.”

From Fryar’s website, here’s more about the scholarship fund:

Pearl Fryar believes strongly in the role higher education can play in breaking the cycle of poverty in rural communities. He tells visitors to the garden that he believes a studentâ€s academic performance does not always reflect potential for success. To realize Pearlâ€s objective of helping the average student to succeed, the Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden, Inc. contributes to scholarship funds at Central Carolina Technical College in Bishopville, South Carolina and at Clinton Junior College in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Scholarships are awarded to students who might not have done well in high school but who nevertheless show “potential.”

Photo by Abbey Hambright

To learn more about Pearl Fryar and his work:

• Los Angeles Times: Pearl Fryar, topiary hero
• Human Flower Project: Evergreen surrealist, Pearl Fryar
• HGTV’s “A Gardener’s Diary” program did a tour of Fryar’s garden in which he explains which plants he uses and how he sculpts them.
• Here’s a four-minute clip from Ovation TV about Fryar’s work with art students from a local college.
• Here’s an eleven-minute video of Fryar demonstrating his topiary techniques.
• About fifty seconds into this video, there are five minutes of questions and answers with Fryar.
• Finally, I really like this six-minute video featuring a group New York musicians who stop to see Fryar’s garden on their way to Atlanta.

Fryar’s story is a great reminder that sometimes the most awesome people are those who live next door.

[This story idea submitted by Ray from Tip Hero.]

The Eiger is a wall of ice and stone in the Swiss Alps. It rises 3970 meters (13,025 feet) above Gindelwald. The north face of Eiger is also called Mordwand, or “the wall of death”. In the past century, at least sixty-four climbers have died trying to scale this treacherous slope.

The western flank of Eiger isn’t nearly as dangerous. On 11 August 1858, Charles Barrington and his guides were the first to climb it. It took them about nine hours to ascend and four hours to return.

On 24 July 1938, a team of four climbers (including Heinrich Harrer, perhaps best known for writing Seven Years in Tibet) reached Eiger’s peak after a cold, strenuous three-day climb of the north face. Since this first success, many other daring climbers have managed to reach the summit. (And many others have died trying.)

Over the past few decades, a handful of brave souls have competed to see who can climb Eiger’s north face the fastest:

• In 1974, Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler climbed the north face in ten hours.
• In 1982, Franc Knez climbed it in six hours.
• On 24 March 2003, Christoph Hainz made the ascent in four hours and forty minutes.
• And so on…

And on 13 February 2008, 31-year-old Swiss climber Ueli Steck set the speed record by climbing Eiger’s north face in 2 hours, 47 minutes, and 33 seconds. Steck’s climb was recorded by Sender Films. Here’s a clip of highlights:

Steck looks like a spider crawling across the icy slope. It’s amazing. I can’t decide whether this is insane or awesome. For now, I’m going with awesome.

[via Devour]

Michael Moschen is one of the world’s most accomplished jugglers. Moschen is especially adept at contact juggling, a method in which the juggler doesn’t toss props into the air, but keeps them close to the body.

When he was twelve, Moschen and his brother (and next-door neighbor Penn Jillette) learned to juggle from a library book. Jillette later turned his attention to magic (and became half of the famous duo Penn & Teller), but Moschen stuck with juggling. Over time, he polished his skills. A lot.

You may never heard of Moschen, but most folks my age have seen his work. Remember the 1986 film Labyrinth? Remember how David Bowie got all fancy juggling a crystal ball?

Well, that’s not David Bowie doing the juggling. That’s Michael Moschen.

How good has Moschen’s juggling become? So good that in 1990 he won a $230,000 MacArthur “genius” grant to perfect his performance even further. Now he’s able to astound audiences with routines like “The Triangle“:

But Moschen doesn’t just juggle. He digs the math behind the art. According to his website:

Mr. Moschen is deeply involved in understanding and sharing the physical and mathematical principles that underlie his work, and is a sought-after public speaker. He presented the Keynote Address for the National Conference of Teachers of Mathematics in 1996, and in 1998 for the Association of New York Teachers of Mathematics. He has lectured on innovation and creativity at such prestigious institutions as Carnegie Mellon, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Lincoln Center Education Program.

Want to learn more about the awesome Michael Moschen? You can read more about him at his website, and YouTube has dozens of videos highlighting his skill.

Ben Underwood was your average teenager. He liked to goof around with his friends, skate in the street, and waste time playing videogames. The only difference? Underwood was blind.

In July 2006, People magazine published a profile of Underwood, the boy who saw with sound. The opening paragraph is awesome:

There was the time a fifth grader thought it would be funny to punch the blind kid and run. So he snuck up on Ben Underwood and hit him in the face. That’s when Ben started his clicking thing. “I chased him, clicking until I got to him, then I socked him a good one,” says Ben, a skinny 14-year-old. “He didn’t reckon on me going after him. But I can hear walls, parked cars, you name it. I’m a master at this game.”

Ben couldn’t see with his eyes, but he could see with his ears. He used a technique called echolocation, which allowed him to detect objects around him by the echoes they made. Some animals do this, of course — notably bats and dolphins — but it’s rare that a human can.

How did Underwood master this skill? As a young boy, he lost his sight to cancer. Nobody’s sure exactly how he learned to see with sound, but it happened fairly quickly. He discovered that when he clicked his tongue, he could tell the shape of and distance to various objects by the echoes they made. He could even detect movement.

At Underwood’s site, his mother writes:

I believe Ben started clicking probably right away. He was playing video games, riding bikes, skating, climbing trees, and doing everything he always did as if he never lost his sight. I treated him as though he could see and spoke visual. I don’t know if I was in denial, but I made sure he saw everything.

I’d put his hand on the road and say, “Look at this, the road is more rough and the side walk is smooth.” You name it, I’ve probably put his had on it.

Ben says he practiced to see how far his echo would go so he’d echo down the middle of the street. I’d say, well how far did it go. He’d say “I don’t know it just went away.” He practiced on hearing his environment without echoing, so he could hear a trash can on the floor, almost anything around that’s stationary.

I say whatever works for him, do it. I’m not in a blind person’s shoes, so I’m not going to judge.

Underwood could run, play basketball, rollerblade, play foosball, and skateboard. The comic-book geeks out there might recognize him as a real-life Daredevil (but without the red tights).

After the People magazine story was published, Underwood was visited by John Blackstone from CBS News. Blackstone filed this report:

“His mom ought to be teaching a course on raising a kid that can’t see well,” says ophthalmologist James Ruben in this video clip. “I think the real story here is not his talents, but his attitude. Attitude is really what it’s about.”

This awesome boy was raised by an awesome mother.

On 19 January 2009, the same cancer that had taken his sight took Ben Underwood’s life. He died seven days shy of his seventeenth birthday.