Neil deGrasse
Neil deGrasse
calling goes-on looks
To learn more about science, turn off your electronic device and go outside and look around a bit. Nature is calling you. Go on. The internet will still be here.
mean successful people
If you're really successful at bullshitting, it means you're not hanging around enough people smarter than you.
attitude kids vote
The StarTalks - while kids can watch them, they're actually targeted at adults. Because adults outnumber kids five to one, and adults vote, and adults wield resources, and adults are heads of agencies. So if we're going to affect policy, or affect attitudes, for me, the adults have always been the target population.
issues environmental today
Today, scientists sound the alarm on other environmental dangers. Vested interests still hire their own scientists to confuse the issue. But in the end, nature, will not be fooled.
friday communication bad-ass
On Friday the 13th, April 2029, an asteroid large enough to fill the Rose Bowl as though it were an egg cup will fly so close to Earth that it will dip below the altitude of our communication satellites. We did not name this asteroid Bambi. Instead, we named it Apophis, after the Egyptian god of darkness and death.
math bad-ass people
Somehow it's O.K. for people to chuckle about not being good at math. Yet if I said, 'I never learned to read,' they'd say I was an illiterate dolt.
program
The show [ StarTalk ] was born as a radio program out of a National Science Foundation grant.
If you're interested in something, that's all that matters. You'll spend more time doing it, that than anything else, and possibly more time doing it than anybody else.
bullshit empowering empower-yourself
To be scientifically literate is to empower yourself to know when someone else is full of bullshit.
profound cosmos purpose
To assert that the universe has a purpose implies the universe has intent. And intent implies a desired outcome. But who would do the desiring? And what would a desired outcome be? That carbon-based life is inevitable? Or that sentient primates are life's neurological pinnacle? Are answers to these questions even possible without expressing a profound bias of human sentiment? Of course humans were not around to ask these questions for 99.9999% of cosmic history. So if the purpose of the universe was to create humans then the cosmos was embarrassingly inefficient about it.
attitude policy
If we're going to affect policy, or affect attitudes, for me, the adults have always been the target population.
media elements body
But you will hardly ever read about them. Why? Because once again, the media has predetermined what is not worthy of coverage, even when the news item is something as uninteresting as the cosmic origin of every element in your body.
ocean whales water
Claiming there is no other life in the universe is like scooping up some water, looking at the cup and claiming there are no whales in the ocean.
two giving mind-blowing
Need a distraction today? Not only does 12 + 1 = 11 + 2, but the letters "twelve plus one" rearrange to give you "eleven plus two."