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YouTube video: This is Neil deGrasse Tyson:
YouTube video: This is Neil deGrasse Tyson, slowed down.
Cosmos for stoners!
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(YouTube video: ComiCon trailer for "COSMOS: A Spacetime Odyssey," a
13-part docu-series debuting in 2014 on FOX.)
The original 13-part Cosmos: A Personal Voyage first aired in 1980 on the Public Broadcasting System, and was hosted by Carl Sagan. The show has been considered highly significant since its broadcast; Dave Itzkoff of The New York Times described it as "a watershed moment for science-themed television programming". The show has been watched by at least 400 million people across 60 different countries.
Following Sagan's death in 1996, his widow Ann Druyan, the co-creator of the original Cosmos series along with Steven Soter, a producer from the series, and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, sought to create a new version of the series, aimed to appeal to as wide an audience as possible and not just to those interested in the sciences. They had struggled for years with reluctant television networks that failed to see the broad appeal of the show.
Seth MacFarlane had met Druyan through Tyson at the 2008 kickoff event for the Science and Entertainment Exchange, a new LA office of the National Academy of Sciences, designed to connect Hollywood writers and directors with scientists. A year later, at a 2009 lunch in NYC with Tyson, MacFarlane learned of their interest to recreate Cosmos. He was influenced by Cosmos as a child, believing that Cosmos served to "[bridge] the gap between the academic community and the general public". MacFarlane had considered that the reduction of effort for space travel in recent decades to be part of "our culture of lethargy". MacFarlane, who has several animated shows on the Fox Network, was able to bring Druyan to meet the heads of Fox programming, Peter Rice and Kevin Reilly, and helped to get the greenlighting of the show. MacFarlane admits that he is "the least essential person in this equation" and the effort is a departure from work he's done before, but considers this to be "very comfortable territory for [himself] personally". He and Druyan have become close friends, and Druyan stated that she believed that Sagan and MacFarlane would have been "kindred spirits" with their respective "protean talents".
Categories: Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan, Cosmos, Fox TV, National Geographic, Neil deGrasse Tyson, PBS, Science, Seth McFarlane, Steven Soter, TV, Video, YouTube
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Neil deGrasse Tyson has found Superman's homeworld, Krypton.
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Categories: Neil deGrasse Tyson, Observations
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Quotes of the day- Neil deGrasse Tyson:
Dr. Neil deGrasse
Tyson (b. October 5, 1958) is the Frederick P. Rose Director of the
Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History and
Visiting Research Scientist and Lecturer at Princeton University. Click
for full bio.
(YouTube video: Neil deGrasse Tyson debunks the 2012 Mayan calendar apocalypse.)
As your area of knowledge increases, so does your perimeter of ignorance.
Curious that we spend more time congratulating people who have succeeded than encouraging people who have not.
Dinosaurs are extinct today because they lacked opposable thumbs and the brainpower to build a space program.
I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And along the way, lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.
I simply go with what works. And what works is the healthy skepticism embodied in the scientific method. Believe me, if the Bible had ever been shown to be a rich source of scientific answers and enlightenment, we would be mining it daily for cosmic discovery.
I would request that my body in death be buried not cremated, so that the energy content contained within it gets returned to the earth, so that flora and fauna can dine upon it, just as I have dined upon flora and fauna during my lifetime.
If aliens did visit us, I'd be embarrassed to tell them we still dig fossil fuels from the ground as a source of energy.
If all that you see, do, measure and discover is the will of a deity, then ideas can never be proven wrong, you have no predictive power, and you are at a loss to understand the principles behind most of the fundamental interconnections of nature.
If pizza sizes were given in area not diameter, you'd see instantly that a seven inch is less than half the size of a ten inch pie
If scientists invented the legal system, eyewitness testimony would be inadmissible evidence.
In modern times, if the sole measure of what's out there flows from your five senses then a precarious life awaits you.
My view is that if your philosophy is not unsettled daily then you are blind to all the universe has to offer.
Not only are we in the universe, the universe is in us. I don't know of any deeper spiritual feeling than what that brings upon me.
Not only do we live among the stars, the stars live within us.
People cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah's ark carried dinosaurs. This case is not about the need to separate church and state; it's about the need to separate ignorant, scientifically illiterate people from the ranks of teachers.
Science is a philosophy of discovery. Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance.
Scientific inquiry shouldn't stop just because a reasonable explanation has apparently been found.
Seventy percent of Earth's surface is water and over 99 percent is uninhabited, so you would expect nearly all impactors to hit either the ocean or desolate regions on Earth's surface. So why do movie meteors have such good aim?
So what is true for life itself is no less true for the universe: knowing where you came from is no less important than knowing where you are going.
The atoms of our bodies are traceable to stars that manufactured them in their cores and exploded these enriched ingredients across our galaxy, billions of years ago. For this reason, we are biologically connected to every other living thing in the world. We are chemically connected to all molecules on Earth. And we are atomically connected to all atoms in the universe. We are not figuratively, but literally stardust.
The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.
The more I learn about the universe, the less convinced I am that there's any sort of benevolent force that has anything to do with it, at all.
The remarkable feature of physical laws is that they apply everywhere, whether or not you choose to believe in them. After the laws of physics, everything else is opinion.
There is no shame in not knowing. The problem arises when irrational thought and attendant behavior fill the vacuum left by ignorance.
We fail in even the simplest of all scientific observations- nobody looks up anymore.
We spend the first year of children's lives teaching them how to walk and talk, and the rest of their lives telling them to shut up and sit down.
When scientifically investigating the natural world, the only thing worse than a blind believer is a seeing denier.
Whenever people have used religious documents to make accurate predictions about our base knowledge of the physical world, they have been famously wrong.
Within one linear centimeter of your lower colon there lives and works more bacteria (about 100 billion) than all humans who have ever been born. Yet many people continue to assert that it is we who are in charge of the world.
You don't take a dead cat to the vet. I mean you might, but why?
Categories: Neil deGrasse Tyson, Observations, Philosophy, Quotes of the day, Religion, Science, Video, YouTube
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From Twitter:
"Sandusky Still Says He's Not Guilty." If this was the church he'd be
coaching at another school.
-Elayne Boosler
Arizona could solve its immigration problem if they posted pictures of
Jan Brewer at the border.
-Andy Borowitz
I'm thinking of becoming a corporation so that the Supreme Court will
consider me a person.
-Andy Borowitz
Remember, no matter what the Supreme Court justices decide about
government healthcare, they'll still have it.
-Andy Borowitz
At the end of every ad, candidates should be required to say what they
promised the crazy billionaire who paid for it.
-Andy Borowitz
The Supreme Court Justices who made Bush president can't possibly be
concerned about the nation's health.
-Andy Borowitz
I love the smell of the universe in the morning.
-Neil deGrasse
Tyson
Personally, I'm waiting for Dwight Eisenhower vs. The Predator.
-Kevin
G. Barkes
Categories: Andy Borowitz, Elayne Boosler, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Observations, Quotes of the day, Twitter
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?The impending "Supermoon" is to an average full Moon what a 16" pizza is to a 15" pizza.
So chillax.
-Neil deGrasse Tyson
Categories: Neil deGrasse Tyson, Quotes of the day
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(YouTube video: Astophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson on the mistaken belief that Earth is a nice place to live.)
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(Neil deGrasse Tyson on NASA and what kids want to be when they grow up.)
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(Warning: contains some disturbing photos of birth defects.)
Neil deGrasse Tyson explains that the universe is out to kill us. Really.
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