Neil deGrasse Tyson is the man. He's an astrophysicist, author, lecturer, planetarium director, and the presenter of the remake of Carl Sagan's Cosmos, which was on TV earlier this year (and is incredibly good). I found this awesome mural of him gazing dreamily off into space in downtown Baton Rouge last Friday when going for an after-work beer. Apparently it's part of a series of paintings by local artists which are being made into murals for buildings (http://www.thewallsproject.org), which is a cool concept, especially if the art looks as good as this!
I was lucky enough to "see" Neil deGrasse Tyson give a talk at Tulane University in New Orleans earlier this year with my labmate and friend Ganesh and his wife Sara. I use quotation marks because while we were at Tulane University, we weren't even in the same room as deGrasse Tyson. So many people turned up and waited in the rain that they couldn't fit everyone in the lecture hall, or even the overflow room, where we had to settle for watching a video feed of the lecture. The talk was titled This Just In and it was excellent. He could have had a career as either a scientist of a stand-up comedian as he has a rare ability to be simultaneously funny and informative. The lecture has made its way to YouTube and I highly recommend watching it if you desire to learn the latest happenings in the cosmos and be thoroughly entertained in the process.
