trying to borrow this issue

From Rebecca Mead’s great profile of astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson in the new issue of The New Yorker. Didn’t know this but he’s hosting an updated version of Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos”.

At the age of eleven, Tyson spoke with a teacher at P.S. 81 about his fascination with astronomy. Tyson’s older brother Stephen, who is an artist, recalls “The teacher asked, ‘Why do you want to go into science? There aren’t any Negroes in the field. Why don’t you go into sports?’” One evening, when he and his father were entering Van Cortlandt Park carrying a telescope, the police stopped them. “I guess they thought it as a bazooka,” [Tyson’s mother] Sunchita says. “Just keeping my kids on the straight and narrow—and getting them not to hate people, in some instances, because of the way they were treated—was a full-time job.” On another occasion, police were called to Tyson’s building by neighbors who were alarmed by his rooftop activities. Tyson ended up showing the officers the stars.

(via mark richardson)

note: the wikipedia on him is pretty good, too: “In 1985, he won a gold medal with the University of Texas dance team at a national tournament in the International Latin Ballroom style”; under  honors: “2000 Sexiest Astrophysicist Alive, People Magazine;” and “He met his wife, Alice Young, in a physics class at the University of Texas. They married in 1988 and named their first child Miranda after one of Uranus’ moons.”