Tyson’s Ask Me Anything

Neil DeGrasse Tyson held an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit yesterday: I am Neil deGrasse Tyson — AMA (probably too late to ask him why some fields have endless golden ages and others have short ones, but you can read the answers and comments).

Many great and funny answers, but my favorite answer is this one (especially relevant for those trying to figure out what to think about Steve Jobs):

Question: Thank you. Just… thank you. You’re one of my personal heroes.
…no pressure. ^_^

[–]neiltyson[S] 241 points 20 hours ago

You should chose your heroes a-la carte. Picking and choosing from one and then another, thereby assembling a kind of composite hero. That way when you discover something reprehensible about any one of them it matters nothing to you because that’s not the part of them that piqued your interest.

By the way, Reddit was founded by two UVa students — Steve Huffman (BSCS 2005) and Alexis Ohanian (COMM 2005). They also founded Hipmunk, the best travel search site on the web.