I received an email about this one and thought I should pass it on to my fellow New Yorkers…

What: A Scientist Goes to the Movies - The Matrix. The 1999 science fiction action film, The Matrix, describes a future in which the world we know is actually the Matrix, a simulated reality created by sentient machines.  Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson (American Museum of Natural History) and Corey Powell, Executive Editor at Discover Magazine, will show selected scenes and discuss the science onscreen.

Where: The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue at 34th St

When: Thursday, Nov. 8, 6:30 pm

Cots: Free

Yes, that sounds like a lot of fun. With the NYC CFI conference starting the next day, I may give it a miss, but I’d certainly encourage all interested people to go. Tyson is great.

Crap! I missed this?

I saw him and Ann Druyan a year ago this month at the Science & Art Festival. The talk was again, “A Scientist Goes to the Movies” but they discussed “Contact.” I enjoyed it. He mentioned a few things the movies get wrong about science. And I thought it’d be cool if he wrote a book about it. He mentioned how in the movies we’ll sometimes see an image of the sun rising, when in fact, it’s an image of the sun setting. (Like, the producction crew is too lazy to wake up at sunrise to film!) The lay person viewing this wouldn’t discern the difference.

That sounds like a blast.  Living in Iowa is a drag.    Anyone find a video of this?