When I was in 6th grade, my math teacher's father had Einstein as a college professor. That blew my mind at the time.

Anyway, this sure got through the hopper quick.

Hearing him say that was overwhelming.

I miss Uncle Carl, my father was on the faculty at Cornell for a time during Sagan's tenure. He was a kind a man as he was a genius and gifted teacher.
Nye could be an heir to Sagan's public legacy of promoting science, but he's getting a lot of competition from Tyson.

The more the merrier, I say.

Need there be competition? Let a thousand nerd blossoms bloom.

I'm a composer. My professor's professor's professor was Arnold Schoenberg. I always wonder if all other fields trace their lineage like people in music do.

Also, Bill Nye = Automatic 5, etc.

Unfortunately, even if religion and creationism were to die out, they would eventually be thought up again. There will always be wackadoodles who fear the unknown and seek comfort in easy answers, and there will always be lazy people who can't be bothered to try and understand the truth if they find it to be too complicated.

I want to believe that mankind could outgrow those things but I'm just too cynical.

But with every generation there are less and less of those people, just look at the age graph on accepting same sex marriage

http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2009-11-12-age1.jpg

the graph on religion is extremely similar

http://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/files/2012/02/religion-age 1.jpg

Its not that people will just have a revelation one day en masse, its that societal biases die out with the generations that cling to them. There will always be some creationists, just like there are caches of people who still believe the world is flat, but their time of holding sway is ticking past

Everyone in every society ever is 1 generation away from grunting cannibal cavemen and shit-caked feral children.

I always suspected you were a Beakman's World kind of guy.

hehe

He had his first frustrated outburst about the deadblock science keeps hitting in this country a little while back. This was on the subject of Todd Akin:

"Look, these people, they�re fucking retarded. Rape can�t cause pregnancy? Breast milk cures homosexuality? I caused a hurricane by challenging creationism? Who can possibly take these people seriously anymore?

It used to be Republicans didn�t believe in global warming or evolution. That was bad enough. Now they don�t even believe in egg + sperm = baby. Where does Todd Akin think babies come from? Does he think there are separate storks for people who were raped and people who weren�t?

Hey look at me! I�m the rape stork. I drop off all my babies directly at the orphanage.

He�s a fucking idiot. Just a plain fucking idiot. I�m sorry - I don�t say that word very often - but it happens to fit in this case. He�s just a fucking idiot."

http://dailycurrant.com/2012/08/30/bill-nye-blasts-todd-akin-c hallenges-debate/

Daily Current is a satire website.

*currant

Yeah... just realized that like, twenty minutes ago.

WELP

We have to believe we deserve awesome, science-loving people like him; we all have to want more of them, or we're all going right back to suckling the ichorous, brain-poisoning teats of our Todd Akins and Michele Bachmanns and Ken Hovinds.

Except maybe men's fashion.

Bow ties are cool.

The world is too depressing now.

SCIENCE RULEZ

He was caught in the crossfire
Of science and religion
Rode on the steel breeze