I saw Dr. Tyson last night at the Flint Center in Cupertino California; his years giving those planetarium shows in NY have helped him develop his stage craft. His main message was that the USA is slipping behind the other advanced nations in science and technology. The technology part of that message may have gone better elsewhere, but this was around he corner from Apple Computer, so when he announced that leading edge technology cars were designed and made elsewhere, a bunch of us yelled "Tesla" at him.

Something he did, live, that I had not seen from his videos, (but later found here) is that he put up a slide of a portrait of an Islamic Imam from about the year 1100 who, having studied the Koran, announced that numbers were the work of the devil, and that there was no point trying to find out why things had the natural motion that they had because all things in the world worked by the will of Allah. Dr. Tyson claimed that that ruling stopped the advance of science and mathematics in the Islamic world, ever since.

He also announced that his sequel to the Sagan Cosmos show was going to be on the Fox network. This resulted in some hissing from the audience. He replied that he was an educator, and he needed to go where education was most needed. All and all he was very good and we did appreciate his message.