Close Menu
    Trending
    • ‘They Left Failed States, But Want To Reenact The Disaster They Fled From’ (VIDEO) * The Gateway Pundit * by Mike LaChance
    • Insider Claims Blake Lively ‘Knows Everything’ About Taylor Swift
    • ICC prosecutor Karim Khan removed over ‘serious misconduct’
    • ‘The show must go on’: Trump returns to rescheduled White House press gala | Donald Trump News
    • Layne Riggs dominates NASCAR Truck Series race at IRP
    • Why Wall Street Trusts Some CEOs and Doubts Others With the Same Balance Sheet
    • SpaceX launches Starship on successful test flight
    • Warning shot or publicity stunt – how worried should we be about the OpenAI hack?
    Benjamin Franklin Institute
    Saturday, July 25
    • Home
    • Politics
    • Business
    • Science
    • Technology
    • Arts & Entertainment
    • International
    Benjamin Franklin Institute
    Home»Opinions»Opinion | Did an Acid Trip Inspire the First Photo of Earth?
    Opinions

    Opinion | Did an Acid Trip Inspire the First Photo of Earth?

    Team_Benjamin Franklin InstituteBy Team_Benjamin Franklin InstituteApril 24, 2026No Comments3 Mins Read
    Share Facebook Twitter Pinterest Copy Link LinkedIn Tumblr Email VKontakte Telegram
    Share
    Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Copy Link


    I’ve always wondered if this story about you is true, that the reason we have NASA’s picture of the whole Earth came from you doing psychedelics on a roof one day. Yeah, I was in San Francisco and bored. And one of the things you did with boredom at that time was drop some acid and see what happens. It was kind of a minor dose. It was about 100 micrograms. And I went up on the roof of the $20-a-month place that I lived in North Beach. – Twenty dollars a month in North Beach? – Yeah. Wow. That’s already hard to believe. But it was true. Somehow it’s easier to believe that you got NASA to take a picture of the Earth than that anything in North Beach ever cost $20. Well, it turns out I didn’t really get NASA to do that. We’d been in space for 10 years at that point. We and the Soviet Union. And the cameras had always been looking outward or at pieces of Earth, but they could have been looking back to see the Earth as a whole. And I was pretty sure that would change everything. I wound up starting a campaign. There was a button that said, “Why haven’t we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?” And I know it got looked at by a lot of people in NASA and in Congress and so on. I got to know some of the astronauts, like Rusty Schweickart. So when they took photographs, it came just a year or two later, after my campaign. – Cause and effect. – Got it. So it was a little coincidental. You had the idea on the roof, but it didn’t —— The roof is not what led to the picture. I think that’s correct. But it led to understanding the picture, – I think, for a lot of people. – That metaphor of the camera pointing outward as opposed to inward at what we don’t yet have, as opposed to what we do have. That actually feels like a nice metaphor for “Maintenance.” And I hear this in the Whole Earth Catalog, too. That in a way, it feels like a lot of your career and thinking has been building up to it, building up to this topic, that the Whole Earth Catalog was also a manual for maintaining your life, for maintaining the things you had. Let’s begin with the most basic question: What is maintenance? It’s good to keep things going. I’m a biologist by training, and so you find that everything alive spends a lot of its time basically maintaining being alive. Even to the extent of reaching outside itself. So you’re not just eating; if you’re a beaver, you’re busy cutting down trees to maintain your dam, which is what protects your lodge. Most plants spend a lot of time basically helping the soil around them do things that work well for the plant, and the soil itself is alive. And so we’re always maintaining our bodies. We maintain our vehicles and our houses and homes and cities that we live in. And we’re catching on that civilization is something to maintain as a whole. And even the planet, we’ve now stepped up to terraforming. So we’ve been terraforming badly, and we need to terraform well. So the levels of maintenance are enormous, and the constancy of it is a given.



    Source link

    Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email Telegram Copy Link

    Related Posts

    Opinions

    Opinion | Trump, the Economy and Work: 10 Gen Z Trump Voters Discuss

    July 16, 2026
    Opinions

    Opinion | Who Will Win the Midterms? Nate Silver and 5 Other Experts Have Thoughts.

    July 13, 2026
    Opinions

    Opinion | Trump and the Democrats: 13 Black Democratic Voters Discuss

    July 8, 2026
    Opinions

    Opinion | 13 George Washington Interpreters on Embodying an Icon

    July 2, 2026
    Opinions

    Opinion | Why Democrats Need a Politics of Joy

    June 23, 2026
    Opinions

    Opinion | The Radical Act of Enjoying This Life

    June 22, 2026
    Editors Picks

    Browns’ Deshaun Watson makes major decision amid break from QB battle

    July 1, 2026

    Egypt coach denies Salah rift before World Cup match against New Zealand | World Cup 2026 News

    June 21, 2026

    Kelce-Swift wedding set to host staggering number of guests

    June 28, 2026

    Early Reviews Slam ‘Euphoria’ Season 3, Praise Zendaya

    April 8, 2026

    Donald Trump announces US travel ban on 12 countries, restrictions on seven | Donald Trump News

    June 5, 2025
    About Us
    About Us

    Welcome to Benjamin Franklin Institute, your premier destination for insightful, engaging, and diverse Political News and Opinions.

    The Benjamin Franklin Institute supports free speech, the U.S. Constitution and political candidates and organizations that promote and protect both of these important features of the American Experiment.

    We are passionate about delivering high-quality, accurate, and engaging content that resonates with our readers. Sign up for our text alerts and email newsletter to stay informed.

    Latest Posts

    ‘They Left Failed States, But Want To Reenact The Disaster They Fled From’ (VIDEO) * The Gateway Pundit * by Mike LaChance

    July 25, 2026

    Insider Claims Blake Lively ‘Knows Everything’ About Taylor Swift

    July 25, 2026

    ICC prosecutor Karim Khan removed over ‘serious misconduct’

    July 25, 2026

    Subscribe for Updates

    Stay informed by signing up for our free news alerts.

    Paid for by the Benjamin Franklin Institute. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.
    • Privacy Policy
    • About us
    • Contact us

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.