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Popular astrophysicist and anointed spokesperson for science Neil deGrasse Tyson is not impressed by the recent antics of Republican leaders, from Sen. Ted Cruz’s directive that NASA stop focusing on Earth to Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s reported ban on the term “climate change.” “I don’t know if our country has any precedent for emergent scientific truths to be debated on political grounds,” he said during a live appearance in Sarasota, Florida, referring to the aforementioned censorship. “I’m astonished by that. Astonished and disappointed. I thought as a nation we were above this.” Tyson, who is the director of the Hayden...

Why Advocates of Intelligent Design Owe Atheist Neil deGrasse Tyson a "Thank You" David Klinghoffer October 23, 2014 3:10 PM | Permalink Why Advocates of Intelligent Design Owe Atheist Neil deGrasse Tyson a "Thank You" David Klinghoffer October 23, 2014 3:10 PM | Permalink From living in Manhattan as I once did, I remember many taxi rides listening to the popular news station 1010 WINS with its slogan, "You give us 22 minutes, we'll give you the world." And they did. The producers offered a picture in miniature not only of whatever they regarded as the top stories around the...

After first denying the charge, famed scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson admitted, in a way, that he misquoted former President George W. Bush and will apologize for the mistake at some point in the future. The hoopla began with a series of articles by The Federalist, a one year old conservative news and opinion website. Wikipedia editors also became part of the controversy after they removed references to the misquotation from its website, and at least one of the editors also wants to remove The Federalist's Wikipedia entry. Tyson, host of Fox's "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey" and director of the Hayden...

Puffy pedant Neil deGrasse Tyson is enduring a meteor shower of criticism over his totally unscientific obsession with how stupid everyone is. Most notably, from The Federalist, which first published, “Another Day, Another Quote Fabricated by Neil deGrasse Tyson” and followed it up with, “Did Neil deGrasse Tyson Just Try to Justify Blatant Quote Fabrication.” Turns out, Neil is a complete d*****. I told ya so. I was first annoyed by his fans in the spring of this year. To hear Chris Hardwick slobber all over the guy and talk about his “presence,” you’d think he was describing a deity....

We’ve already established that a newspaper headline touted for years by Tyson likely doesn’t exist. We’ve also established that the exact quote he uses to bash members of Congress as being stupid also doesn’t exist. And then we established that the details within one of Tyson’s favorite anecdotes — a story of how he bravely confronted a judge about his mathematical illiteracy while serving on jury duty — seem to change every time Tyson tells the story. In addition to those two highly questionable quotes and one highly questionable story, we now have another blatantly false quote peddled by Tyson....

AFPASeptember 8, 2014 Managua (AFP) - A mysterious explosion that rocked Nicaragua's crowded capital Managua, creating a large crater, appears to have been caused by a small meteorite, officials said Sunday. Amazingly, in a sprawling city of 1.2 million people, the impact near the international airport did not cause any known injuries, but it did leave a crater measuring 12 meters (39 feet) across and was felt throughout the capital late on Saturday. Nicaraguan authorities believe it was a piece of the small asteroid dubbed "2014 RC," which passed very close to Earth on Sunday and was estimated by astronomers...

When Ideology Trumps Science: Neil deGrasse Tyson and Cosmos on Global Warming Jay W. Richards August 6, 2014 1:15 PM | Permalink I finally had a chance to watch the twelfth, penultimate episode of Cosmos, "The World Set Free." I was out of the country in June when it originally aired, but since there's no doubt the series is headed into the schools and remains relevant, I'll take this opportunity to comment. The episode stands out from most previous installments. Just when we've grown accustomed to circuitous narrative threads with obscure segues from one topic to the next, we get...

Cosmos Finale Takes One Last Shot at the "Delusion that We Have Some Privileged Position in the Universe" As David noted yesterday, the final episode of Cosmos aired Sunday night. It was a fitting end, in keeping with what we've seen already in the series. Much of it covered uncontroversial science, such as how cosmic rays were discovered, or why cosmology developed concepts like dark matter (to help explain why stars orbit so quickly at the edge of their galaxies) and dark energy (to help explain why the universe continues to expand despite all the matter it contains). Neil deGrasse...

Cosmos Scrubs Religion's Positive Influence from the History of the Scientific Revolution Casey Luskin March 25, 2014 5:45 AM | Permalink We live in interesting times. On the one hand, we're constantly assured that science and religion don't conflict. At the same time, we're told -- sometimes by the same people -- that religion hinders science. Perhaps this is to be expected. Materialists want to project a religion-friendly image because popular culture expects it, while at the same time they make arguments that they hope will ultimately erode religious belief. This requires a tricky balancing act, on vivid display in...

The newest episode of "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey" dove into all things big and small including the history of modern science. Aired Sunday night (March 23), the third episode of the reboot of Carl Sagan's beloved TV show "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage" explains how knowledge of the workings of gravity, comets and the solar system changed the way that humans look at the stars and science.

Familiar objects often mistaken for UFOs include bright stars, planets and satellites, but high – if not highest – on the list is Sirius in the constellation Canis Major the Greater Dog. Sirius has attained UFO status for several good reasons: at magnitude -1.5 it’s the brightest star in the sky, it “moves” both slowly and rapidly and shoots out light of different colors. Because it’s bright, and for many of us, falls along an easy line of sight on March evenings, we’re bound to notice it. No star sparkles more intensely especially when hovering low in the sky.

You've probably heard that Cosmos, the new version starring Neil deGrasse Tyson, is causing waves because it's on FOX, and it actually talks about (gasp!) evolution. But this week, Christians upped the ante on crazy by demanding "equal time" for creationists. You know, because they need things to be "balanced." In his typically incisive style, deGrasse explained one reason why that's a silly idea. “You don’t talk about the spherical Earth with NASA, and then say let’s give equal time to the flat Earthers..."

...Jonathan Sabin of Bradenton's Local Group of Deep Sky Observers has met Tyson, and said he's a "gigantic presence." "The guy is one of the most engaging people I've ever met," Sabin said. "He walks in and he just owns the room." On "Cosmos," though, Tyson comes off as a stiff, even bland. He's reading someone else's words -- specifically, those of Ann Druyan, Sagan's widow and the co-writer of the original "Cosmos" -- and so far it's not working...

On ABC, America’s Funniest Home Videos garnered a 1.4, down 7 percent from a 1.5 adults 18-49 rating for its most recent original. ......................................................... Cosmos earned a 1.9 adults 18-49 rating down 10 percent from a 2.1 for last week’s premiere.

Last night, I watched the second episode of "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey" (the reboot of the 1980 series). It was entitled, "Some of the Things That Molecules Do." One of the things Tyson dealt with in this episode was evolution. Now, I myself do subscribe to the theory of evolution, but I found Tyson's treatment to be offensive, condescending, and smarmy. I thought it was an in-your-face chip-on-the-shoulder response against skeptics of evolution. I thought this was supposed to be a science show, not a political show. But this is just my opinion. What is your opinion? If you missed...

On Sunday night, the premiere of the science documentary series "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey" on the Oklahoma City Fox affiliate KOKH was briefly interrupted by a local news promo. These things happen all the time on TV. Big deal, right? Well, it just so happens that host Neil deGrasse Tyson was referring to the theory of evolution just as the accidental preemption occurred. As first reported by the left-leaning website Raw Story, in the omitted portion, Tyson explained how "three and a half million years ago" humans "stood up and parted ways" from our biological "ancestors."

“A man can be a Christian to the end of the world, for the simple reason that a man could have been an Atheist from the beginning of it. … But why our human lot is made any more hopeless because we know the names of the worms who eat [man], or the names of all the parts of him that they eat, is to a thoughtful mind somewhat difficult to discover.” – G. K. Chesterton Cosmos is back on television again, in a reincarnated form hosted by Neil DeGrasse Tyson in place of the late Carl Sagan (host...

"Cosmos- A SpaceTime Odessey" --Tonight in 'Rivers of Life' Neil deGrasse Tyson Covers Evolution and Mass Extinction Events Tonight, the second of 13 episodes of "Cosmos- A SpaceTime Odessey" hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson airs at 9 pm tonight on Fox and at 10 pm Sunday night on the National Geographic channel. Tonight's episode is "The Rivers of Life" and covers evolution and natural selection processes that have made life on Earth as we know it today, and also covers mass extinction events such as asteroid impacts with our planet that have drastically altered the course and progress of...

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. – Dr. Carl Sagan Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, is a sequel to the PBS program Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, hosted by Dr. Carl Sagan in 1980. Unlike the PBS version, this has big names behind it: Seth MacFarlane, creator of successful comedy programs like “The Family Guy”, Brannon Braga, producer and writer for “Star Trek”, and astronomer Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, who is far more famous as a science personality than Sagan was when he hosted the original Cosmos. They are all backed...

...We're shown Bruno sneaking around and are told that "He dared to read the books banned by the Church." The book in question was On the Nature of Things by Lucretius, which he keeps hidden under his floorboards....Tyson tells us that this (meaning reading Lucretius) "was his undoing." That's very interesting, since papal legate and cardinal Nicholas of Cusa had read and commented on Lucretius in the 15th century, formulating ideas that would later be picked up by Bruno, and was widely read and respected. As the poor Giordano secretly reads his precious book, THE CHURCH! bursts into his room...