Thursday, April 17, 2014

Neil DeGrasse Tyson at Tulane

We arrived early for Neil DeGrasse Tyson at Tulane, but barely made the overflow room.
Nola.com Summary of the talk. Excellent summary. And then the comments... Sigh ... Louisiana needs some stupid knocked out of it.

I've been poking fun at coworkers who went to LSU saying I don't think that they could have managed hosting NDT ("Dr. Tyson, what's your opinion of chicken boxing?"), while Tulane could. Tulane's Campus programming even ate his speaking fee and opened it up for the public (yes, there was a hell of a line, but kudos to Tulane).

I also want to relay a little story. Not only is Neil DeGrasse Tyson a brilliant astrophysicist and the coolest scientist alive, but he's also a tremendous human being.

We bumped into a friend of mine at the overflow room. He had his wife and ~6 year old daughter there with him. As little ones are wont to do, the daughter had to go pee 5 minutes before the event started. The wife & girl hurry off. While they are gone, Dr. Tyson darted into the overflow room, waved at everyone, said Hi, then started running back across McAllister Drive for McAllister auditorium. As he was running through the student union, he saw my friend's daughter. Dr. Tyson stopped in his tracks, turned around, ran back to the little girl, high-five'd her, turned back around, and then hustled back to start the talk. He talked for an hour and a half then took questions.

Update: videos


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgVa4IM-_OU

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arWraUE71so

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QRYvCYhQ4Q

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZP35PvdCE4


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