Environmental Ethics: Neil deGrasse Tyson at Vanderbilt tonight

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Neil deGrasse Tyson at Vanderbilt tonight

Langford Auditorium, 7 p.m. He's at work on a new version of Carl Sagan's renowned "Cosmos." And he's still strangely reviled by Disney fans as the Man who ‘killed’ Pluto.

The event is officially sold out. However, walk-ups are welcome for no-show ticket holders and late seating will be accommodated. Tickets are free for Vanderbilt students; $5 for non-VU students and $10 for the general public.

Tyson received his bachelor’s degree in physics from Harvard University and his doctorate in astrophysics from Columbia University. He is the recipient of NASA’s highest civilian award, the Distinguished Public Service Medal..."

Man who ‘killed’ Pluto

Postscript from the day after:

POSTED BY D. PATRICK RODGERS ON WED, NOV 14, 2012 AT 9:13 AM

Dr. Tyson did indeed acknowledge this meme.

Dr. Tyson did indeed acknowledge this meme.

As promised, renowned astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium, Neil deGrasse Tyson, delivered a lecture last night at Vanderbilt's Langford Auditorium. The event sold out, but a few dozen of the science enthusiasts who braved the cold to stand in line for unclaimed tickets were indeed permitted. (I must personally thank frequent Country Life/Cream commenter Tobin the Gnome for slipping me a ticket. Preesh, Tobes.)

Dr. Tyson's talk, which revolved around "10 things everyone should know about the universe," was of course informative. Avid space nuts and students of Tyson, however, may have found the lecture somewhat cursory — he didn't quite "go deep," as they say, but you'll hardly even scratch the surface of capital-E Everything in an hour-and-a-half. Just as enlightening and entertaining as Tyson's knowledge nuggets, I must say, was the approachable manner with which he provided them. The good doctor gave his entire presentation sans shoes — a lecture hall demands a certain amount of decorum, he explained, whereas a performance stage such as Langford's calls for a more unencumbered motility. He mentioned that last night marked his second trip to Music City — his first consisted of a stay in the "habitat module" known as Opryland Hotel — and he teased geologists and biologists for their penchant for Latin nomenclature. After all, astronomers and astrophysicists give things names like "black hole," "The Big Bang" and "sunspots." Tyson proudly addressed his recent appearance inAction Comics No. 14 alongside Superman (Tyson helped Superman find the star his home planet of Krypton once orbited) and the fact that he was the inspiration for a pretty solid meme. He also noted that there are 7,000 astrophysicists on a planet with a population of 7 billion — thus reaffirming my claim that Tyson is one in a million, thank you very much.

Follow me after the jump to see the 10 universe-related things Dr. Tyson revealed to his audience last night at Vanderbilt. (Note: I'm no astrophysicist, but I'll do my best to relay Tyson's 10 points.)

10. The Universe Has a Shipload of Stars
A sextillion of them, to be precise. That's 10 to the 21st power — unless I'm counting my zeros wrong, I believe that's about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars.

9. The Universe Is Bad for Your Ego
Even less than a millennium ago, humans held that Earth was the center of the universe. Then we discovered the places of our planetary brothers and sisters within the solar system. Then, our galaxy. In the 1920s, we discovered that there is a multitude of galaxies existing within our universe. So why stop at just one universe? If there's one of something, Dr. Tyson explained, then it's typically not unique. There's a solar system, so why shouldn't there be many? And why shouldn't there be numerous galaxies and, yes, even universes. Multiverse. Hypothetical now, sure, but what will we discover in another century? In another millennium?

[and skipping ahead to #1-]

1. We Are Stardust
Tyson shared a Hubble photograph that illustrates the staggering array of just how many galaxies and stars are out there. Feel free to feel dwarfed by that — it's pretty bewildering. But the fact that I have the same molecules inside me as the Superman's sun — well, that shit makes me feel pretty big and important.

Leaves of deGrasse: Neil deGrasse Tyson Shares 10 Things Everyone Should Know About the Universe at Langford Auditoriumhttp://www.nashvillescene.com/countrylife/archives/2012/11/14/leaves-of-degrasse-neil-degrasse-tyson-shares-10-things-everyone-should-know-about-the-universe-at-langford-auditorium …

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First things first--a proper education

“The complexity of our present trouble suggests as never before that we need to change our present concept of education. Education is not properly an industry, and its proper use is not to serve industries, either by job-training or by industry-subsidized research. It's proper use is to enable citizens to live lives that are economically, politically, socially, and culturally responsible. This cannot be done by gathering or "accessing" what we now call "information" - which is to say facts without context and therefore without priority. A proper education enables young people to put their lives in order, which means knowing what things are more important than other things; it means putting first things first.” ― Wendell Berry

The college project

“The American college may be considered a continuation, at the human level, of the self-education process of the earth itself: universe education, earth education, and human education are stages of development in a single unbroken process...The entire college project can be seen as that of enabling the student to understand the immense story of the universe and the role of the student in creating the next phase of the story.” --Thomas Berry, “The American College in the Ecological Age,” in The Dream of the Earth

“Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating.”
― Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

“Nature shrinks as capital grows. The growth of the market cannot solve the very crisis it creates.”
― Vandana Shiva, Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis

“Why should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, a home in insipid surroundings, a circle of acquaintances who are not quite our enemies, the noise of motors with just enough relief to prevent insanity? Who would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal?”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“How can we be so arrogant? The planet is, was, and always will be stronger than us. We can't destroy it; if we overstep the mark, the planet will simply erase us from its surface and carry on existing. Why don't they start talking about not letting the planet destroy us?”
― Paulo Coelho, The Winner Stands Alone

“When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: if you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren't optimistic, you haven't got a pulse.”
― Martin Keogh, Hope Beneath Our Feet: Restoring Our Place in the Natural World

“When the last tree is cut and the last fish killed, the last river poisoned, then you will see that you can't eat money.”
― John May, The Greenpeace Story

“We are being made aware that the organization of society on the principle of private profit, as well as public destruction, is leading both to the deformation of humanity by unregulated industrialism, and to the exhaustion of natural resources, and that a good deal of our material progress is a progress for which succeeding generations may have to pay dearly.”
― T.S. Eliot

“There is a tendency at every important but difficult crossroad to pretend that it's not really there.”
― Bill McKibben, The End of Nature

“We know, at least, that this decision (ending factory farming) will help prevent deforestation, curb global warming, reduce pollution, save oil reserves, lessen the burden on rural America, decrease human rights abuses, improve publish health, and help eliminate the most systematic animal abuse in history.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals

“An attitude to life which seeks fulfilment in the
single-minded pursuit of wealth - in short, materialism - does not fit into this
world, because it contains within itself no limiting principle, while the
environment in which it is placed is strictly limited.”
― Ernst F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered

“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.”
― Aldo Leopold

“Saving the world requires saving democracy. That requires well-informed citizens. Conservation, environment, poverty, community, education, family, health, economy- these combine to make one quest: liberty and justice for all. Whether one's special emphasis is global warming or child welfare, the cause is the same cause. And justice comes from the same place being human comes from: compassion.”
― Carl Safina, The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World

“The re-establishment of an ecological balance depends on the ability of society to counteract the progressive materialization of values. The ecological balance cannot be re-established unless we recognize again that only persons have ends and only persons can work towards them.”
― Ivan Illich

Environmental Ethics

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Neil deGrasse Tyson at Vanderbilt tonight

POSTED BY D. PATRICK RODGERS ON WED, NOV 14, 2012 AT 9:13 AM

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Peripatetics

	Michael Pollan (@michaelpollan) http://michaelpollan.com/
5/14/15, 10:57 AM All the lectures and talks from Edible Education 101 are now online. All told, a great introduction to food politics bit.ly/1Fausvx