I sometimes read Gawker, a celebrity gossip site, because I enjoy the snark. They go too far sometimes (many times), but it’s usually entertaining.
And it’s a gossip site, which means you can awaken any particular writer there out of a cold sleep and they’d still be able to recite Lindsay Lohan’s daily measurements. So it’s no shock that they don’t know much about astrophysicists.
It’s an article about a crowd going to a book signing event by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, head of the Hayden Planetarium in NYC, author of many books, and frequent talk-show guest. I have no surprise that the Gawker writer didn’t know who he was, since Neil’s never hit a paparazzi, not been seen to do drugs after swearing he doesn’t do them, or hasn’t had massive plastic surgery.
Neil is, though, kind of a big deal. He’s hosted his own PBS series, been on Colbert a number of times, and was on Conan Leno recently too. Of course, readers of this particular blog are probably far more likely to know who Neil is, so we’re biased.
But in a sense, it’s cool that Neil has risen to the level of getting snarked by a gossip blog. It’s something all us astrobloggers can aspire to.
Tip o’ the autograph pen to Rebecca.
January 27th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
I avoid celebrity gossip like ebola. Bleah.
January 27th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Wasn’t Neil Tyson on the Tonight Show with Leno? I don’t remember seeing him on Conan though.
Hopefully, his book tour eventually brings him around to this Central Pacific rock we call the aloha paradise. Maybe it’ll even be on my birthday, since it’s on the same day as his, and we could party it up.
January 27th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Well, that site is blocked by CEBTAF, but for once I am thankful. Dr. Plait, I think we just found out about one of your most guilty vices. Eep!
January 27th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
If it helps you out, we’d be more than happy to start a celebrity rumour about you. Any preference?
January 27th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
I told you that at Dragon Con!! I think that a skeptic/scientist gossip site is in order.
We could even have pretend papparazi and stalkers. I volunteer to go to Las Vegas and stalk Penn Jillette! Only pretend, of course.
January 27th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Tyson also did a cameo on an episode of Stargate Atlantis, but for some reason Bill Nye (who cameoed in the same episode) stole the spotlight. Not that I have anything against Nye, but I would have preferred to see more Tyson.
January 27th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
I guess this just shows that its a big world. What you think is important or famous may not be to others. I kind of thought that the article was cool. It may help get exposure to a larger audience and pull those people in.
January 27th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
I think I need to take some more Vitamin O.
January 27th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
They have posted an update:
We’re reliably informed by an actual science geek that Tyson appears regularly on Discovery Channel and the channel Science as a talking head and that he hosts Science Now (a Nova spinoff) on PBS.
Is Phil the actual science geek in question?
January 27th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Randall: If you read the blog of the writer of the episode of Stargate, it says that they wanted him to be in the whole thing (along with someone else that they couldn’t get), but that NDT is such a big shot that they couldn’t manage it. Plus, he’s not an actor, whereas Bill Nye is. Still, it was fun watching Bill Nye be a scienction, heh.
I too wanted more Tyson in that episode though. He’s great:).
January 27th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
I had the honor of attending a lecture Dr. Tyson gave at Michigan State University last week. He was excellent, and his talk – fortunately – went way over time.
And, like a true science geek, I got him to autograph swag for me. And I took a bunch of photos.
January 27th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
That’s hilarious. If I lived there, I would have been there in the front row!
He is one sexy scientist!
January 27th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
I always thought science needs to have much more to do with sex and other possibilities for scandal.
This just confirms it.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
January 27th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
It was painful to even visit that site.
January 27th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Plus Jon Stewart appears to be a fan-boy. Which just proves that Jon has good taste.
January 27th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
LOL! Read the comments, one of them says “He’s the Barack Obama of the Physics world.”
That’s great.
January 27th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
OK – you made me read that dreck. Now I have to go shower again. Uggh. And to think I live just upstream from those clueless.. .Oh wait – we are talking NYC here. I suppose that was redundant.
JC
January 27th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
This is /almost/ as bad as asking “Who is Carl Sagan?” back in the 80s/90s. Literati my ass.. illiterati is more like it. The article even starts with “WTF” and at one point I counted four consecutive question marks.
The stupid, it burns!
January 27th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
[pedant]a paparazzo is the singular of paparazzi[/pedant]
January 27th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Hayden Planetarium? Oh, I love her character in “Heroes”!
January 27th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Dr. Tyson is one of the coolest cats out there! This guy needs to crawl out from under his rock and take notice of Dr. Tyson’s greatness!
January 27th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
If it helps you out, we’d be more than happy to start a celebrity rumour about you. Any preference?
I heard Phil Plait is dating Kaley Cuoco.
January 27th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Save the Planetarium. Save the world.
January 27th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Just a quick correction Phil. But wasn’t Neil on Leno not Conan recently?
January 27th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Oops. It was Leno. Fixed.
January 27th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
There’s a lot of morons on that site, and this line proves it:
Sigh…
January 27th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Phil, shame on you. That site (that article in particular) vilifies intelligence. I don’t know what dung heap the author of the article evolved from, but that article is a classic study of how modern tv and gossip mags can rot your brain. The author also seems to subscribe to the myth of “wikipedia research” which features in modern movies. I would never pay to see the “X-Files” movie, but it featured on a recent plane trip. I fell out of my seat laughing when I learned that Dr. Scully does her research via Google. I wonder if I could present a google-researched paper on atmospheric chemistry at the next American Geophysical Union conference … I don’t think I’d dare try.
January 27th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
drksky:
I was kinda hoping that was said tongue in cheek.
Gary 7
January 27th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
they’d still be able to recite Lindsay Lohan’s daily measurements.
Whose?
“This sudden popular interest in both science and books, simultaneously, is disturbing and we’re determined to get to the bottom of it.”
That’s the sort of humor you get a Gawker. They were kidding. Some of the people in the comments, however, appear to be serious.
January 27th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
[...] 27, 2009 by Ben Lillie Via The Bad Astronomer, my picture was on gawker.com! Well, kinda. It’s of the crowd at a recent reading by Neil [...]
January 27th, 2009 at 11:07 pm
Just FYI, Neil deGrasse Tyson will be on The Daily Show, Wednesday the 28th!
January 28th, 2009 at 7:48 am
C. P. Snow’s The Two Cultures continues.
I am praying this quote from that Paris Hilton brain of a blog is an ironic one:
“This sudden popular interest in both science and books, simultaneously, is disturbing and we’re determined to get to the bottom of it.”
I see that one of the commenters had NDGT as a teacher and then begged the blog readers not to think of him (the writer) as a total douchebag.
Now you know why Bush was elected twice and why another Village Idiot may become our President again. Obama must have been a fluke.
January 28th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Shouldn’t that be paparazzum? Or possibly paparazzo as it’s Italian I think.
January 30th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
So, let me get this straight: The fact that I didn’t know who Neil DeGrasse Tyson was before reading this post is worse than another commenter not knowing about Lindsay Lohan? I think that’s a little…biased. I’d venture to say it’s different sides of the same coin.
February 2nd, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Elwood: paparazzo, you beat me to it.