My Newest Hero

Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist and the Director of the Hayden Planetarium. He's part of the rational-thinking skeptic community, fighting to keep pseudo-science and religion out of science classrooms. He is smarter than you, smarter than me, smarter than darn-near anybody. His intellectual equals are Hitchens, Dawkins, Chandrasekhar, Gould et al...

He is also a really, really funny guy. Check him out on the youtube machine, read his Twitter feeds, website and blogs, watch his television appearances and, if you ever get a chance to see him live and in-person, go listen.

To paraphrase him, we don't need to worry so much about separating church and state. We need to worry about separating ignorant, scientifically-illiterate people from the ranks of teachers.

Here's a video of Neil in action. Enjoy.