Neil deGrasse Tyson: Space Exploration is Good for Our Culture (and More Good Links From Around the Web)

Pre­sent­ing the keynote speech at the 28th Nation­al Space Sym­po­sium, the new pub­lic face of astro­physics, Neil deGrasse Tyson, con­tin­ued mak­ing his case for fund­ing NASA and fund­ing it well. Here he tried out a new argu­ment. NASA is not just good for sci­en­tif­ic progress. It’s good for our cre­ativ­i­ty, imag­i­na­tion and col­lec­tive cul­ture. His argu­ment begins at the 14:45 mark, which is where we start the video.…

Now dis­cov­er more Cul­ture from Around the Web (which all orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our Twit­ter Stream): 

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

Har­vard Biol­o­gist E.O. Wil­son Explains the Evo­lu­tion of Cul­ture

Extend­ed Trail­er for David Cro­nen­berg’s Adap­ta­tion of Don DeLil­lo’s Cos­mopo­lis Now on the Web

Lis­ten Online: Norah Jones’ New Album ‘Lit­tle Bro­ken Hearts’

Allen Gins­berg Reads “What would you do if you lost it?,” 1973

Ray­mond Chan­dler on the Split Infini­tive

To Infin­i­ty and Beyond: BBC Untan­gles the Most Expo­nen­tial Mys­tery

Alan Tur­ing’s WWII papers on Code Break­ing Released by British Gov­ern­ment

Wish You Could be Jane Eyre? Com­pa­ny Will Reprint Clas­sic Nov­els Star­ring You & Your Friends

Par­ents Were Pushy Too in Ancient Rome, Accord­ing to Mary Beard, Pro­fes­sor of Clas­sics, Cam­bridge U

Jen­nifer Egan and Neil Gaiman Vis­it Google and Talk Lit­er­a­ture.

Kurt Von­negut Reads the Begin­ning of “Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons”

The Craft of Verse: The Nor­ton Lec­tures, 1967–68 by Jorge Luis Borges. Audio

Spike Lee’s Advice to Aspir­ing Film­mak­ers

A Trove of Rare James Joyce’s Unpub­lished Man­u­scripts (inc Ulysses & Finnegans Wake) as PDFs