Kanye West's Twitter fingers were the focus of everyone's attention yesterday, and they stole the spotlight away from another social media battle that captivated the internet earlier in the week: B.o.B. and Neil deGrasse Tyson going head to head in a dispute about the earth's flatness. Larry Wilmore brought everyone's favorite astrophysicist onto his show last night for a pointed rebuke of B.oB.'s anti-science stance. "Listen once and for all," Tyson declared. "The earth looks flat because one, you're not far enough away at your size; two, your size isn't large enough, relative to earth, to notice any curvature at all."
Tyson went on to link B.o.B.’s tweets to dangerous trends in politics. "This whole thing is just a symptom of a larger problem. There's a growing anti-intellectual strain in this country that may be the beginning of the end of our informed democracy. In a free society, you can and should think whatever you want… but if you think the world is flat and you have influence over others—as would successful rappers, or even presidential candidates—then being wrong becomes being harmful to the health, the wealth, and the security of our citizenry."
In conclusion: "Isaac Newton said, 'If I have seen farther than others, it's by standing on the shoulders of giants.'… so when you stand on the shoulders of those who came before, you might just see far enough to realize the earth isn’t fucking flat."
Wilmore added on Twitter, "Neil deGrasse Tyson Mic Drop sponsored by gravity."
