Honestly, I don’t know.
Well, I didn’t know when I decided to start this blog. What follows is a rough summary of my thinking:
I love science, especially anything in the field of space/astronomy/the universe in general, and I think space exploration is the bee’s knees. That plus I wanted to give a serious hat-tip to Carl Sagan, my most favorite person of all time. “Cosmos” was a natural place to start.
As I put the new davemosher.com together, “cosmos” led to…
“Cosmonaut” — we all know what this means. I hope. If you don’t, I may cry.
“Cosmopolitan” — one of those pesky words I always forget the meaning of. Enter Mr. Merriam-Webster:
Main Entry: 2cosmopolitan
Function: adjective
Date: 1798
1 : having worldwide rather than limited or provincial scope or bearing
2 : having wide international sophistication : worldly
3 : composed of persons, constituents, or elements from all or many parts of the world
4 : found in most parts of the world and under varied ecological conditions <a cosmopolitan herb>
Definitions 1 and 3 looked good, particularly since I’m not the most sophisticated person on this planet (personal references available).
When we smack “cosmopolitan” together with “cosmonaut,” conveniently leave out the Russian connotation, knead for 10 minutes, let rise for 1 hour, form into loaf and bake for 35 minutes at 350 degrees F:
Cosmopolitanaut – A space explorer of unlimited scope that may be composed of many different persons, constituents or elements.
Sounds pretty good to me, especially because “many different persons” allows me to have some guest blogger buddies when I’m lazy. But I want to point out that your average space explorers — as serious as they may be about their jobs — don’t simply bang out experiments and build stuff in the cold vacuum beyond Earth.
They take pictures. They watch movies. They do somersaults in mid-air. They play with their food. They even play golf.
So I hereby decree that the Cosmopolitanaut blog will be a place to explore the universe with a healthy serving of fun. You’ll get science, skepticism, self-mockery and the occasional photo, video and personal story which (at least on the surface) are completely unrelated to science.
Sound good? If so, here’s the RSS feed.