I <3 Neil deGrasse Tyson

Friday, October 23, 2009

3 comments:

mom in northern said...

We like Prof. Tyson.
What makes him so special to me is that he can't spell either! Re: Supermova vs Spernova in this video. :-)

John the Scientist said...

Physicists are required by law to have at least one mis-spelling in their slide sets.

In the old days before Powerpoint, the biologists were required to have computer-generated fancy slides, the chemists had computer generated slides but they had to look like they were printed the by the crappy graphical interface on the computer that controlled the instrument - no fancy re-working of the graphs - and the physicists still had hand-drawn acetate overheads*. :D

*Seriously. Back in 1997, when I had already switched over to Powerpoint graphics like the biologists, I went to a series of lectures by Physics Nobel winner Pierre de Gennes and every one of his slides was hand-written / drawn in green pen on overhead acetates.

mom in northern said...

John
I remember those days.
I have even been forced to create some of those dogs.

Try to explain to a geologist that you can't display a seismic line with any kind of clarity in a graphic...