The Science Guy Returns

hende_jman writes "When I was in high school, the dry science videos that I watched in my classes made me miss the silly and sometimes irreverent Bill Nye the Science Guy. So I was excited to read in the latest issue of Wired that everyone's favorite Science Guy is coming out with a new show, The Eyes of Nye where he tackles some more serious issues like addiction, sex, cloning, and climate change."

Bill Nye ad sex...

Oh God, get that image out of my mind!

Re:Bill Nye ad sex...

Yeah, the abstinence-only crowd apparently has more creativity than I would have assumed.

Re:You can say that again... OT

The pledging group was also less likely to use condoms during their first sexual experience or get tested for STDs, the researchers found.

This is one of those sad realities that you see day in and day out, even with otherwise well balanced people. If there is an activity that you swear off, and promise never to do, invariably it will be done and it will be done irresponsibly. The people in college who really burned out their brains on drugs were the ones in High School who swore they would never do any. The people didn't use condoms were the ones who swore they would never have premarital sex. By swearing off an activity, these people weren't mentally prepared to engage in the activity in a rational fashion. When people fall off the wagon, they fall hard.

To pull this back towards topic, hopefully this is the kind of controversial reasearch that Bill Nye will tackle. Hopefully, politics be damned, he will show that schools which teach abstinence-only sexual education have significantly higher rates of teenage pregnancy than districts with real sexual education courses, even accounting for things like income disparity and location. Or even that 50% of high school students are already sexually active, and educational programs should be tailored to this fact. Of course, it might be stepping over the line to point out that the bible belt has the highest rates of teenage pregnancy, higher than the hedonistic blue states, but no fact should be too controversial for Bill Nye.

Please, please let no fact be too controversial for Bill Nye. Please tell me he doesn't have to cut a story on life forms in aquatic thermal vents because it makes passing reference to evolution.

Re:You can say that again... OT

If there is an activity that you swear off, and promise never to do, invariably it will be done and it will be done irresponsibly. The people in college who really burned out their brains on drugs were the ones in High School who swore they would never do any.

From my experience, that's not exactly true. I swore off drugs, and never "burned out my brain" in college. There have been other things that I have, to one degree or another, sworn off. The ones I have later actually done I did with caution, not irresponsibly, and never over-did to the point of causing a problem. I have also seen this in other people, so I know it's not just me who is like this.

On the other hand, I (and those others I mention) have generally sworn something off based on our own decisions, after considering actually doing it. Among those I have seen who swore something off because they were told to do it, your scenario is much more likely.

The problem is not the insistence that you will not do something so much as having that decision forced on you. If you decide upon such a thing yourself, that generally means you have considered the information and are aware of the risks involved, as well as the possible precautions to be taken if you are involved in the activity. Those who have such things forced upon them are generally lacking in the basic knowledge of what you can do to be safe while doing that activity - after all, if you tell someone they will never, never be allowed to do something, why would you bother to tell them how to do it safely? (Yes, logically you should - but the situations we are talking about are generally forced by people who are are not looking at things logically, but rather as a matter of dogma.)

Re:Bill Nye ad sex...

Bill Nye: "So you see, if we take the Ultra-Glide Lubrication Of Science and rub it well over the penis..."
Deep voice guy: "You know, Bill, I don't know that this is such a... AUUUGH!!!"
Child Assistant Kwon: "Wahhhh, I thought we were talking about grasshoppers today... can I have my passport now?"

Not everyone's favorite!

everyone's favorite Science Guy

I thought Mr. Wizard was far more popular. Most likely especially with the crowd here.

Probably a bit too long ago`

Don Herbert -- still alive and functioning enough to have done a pretty fun interview last year -- hasn't been on the air on a regular basis for a couple of decades, so only a portion of /.ers will remember him.

OTOH, chances are both young and old /.ers watched Bill Nye.

Stefan

I'd go for Beakman's World, personally

Beakman's World was more entertaining and more informative than either of those...

Re:I'd go for Beakman's World, personally

Tell me about it. I'd sooooo bang that fat guy in the rat suit. Wait... what?

My favorite Mr. Wizard

Times were different back then. No PC nonsense, and his science demonstrations were always geared to practical things of use to awkward young science fans growing up in the conformist 1950s.

Like the time Mr. Wizard showed you how to perform a prefontal lobotomy on a school bully using a #2 pencil, an American History text book, and a pipe cleaner.

The guest star / subject was "Whitey" from Leave it to Beaver. He was never the same after that. Of course, what actually slowed him down -- the operation or the home-brewed benzine-based anesthesia -- wasn't clear.

Bill Nye

Bill Nye was the best science teacher because he was also a comedian. I remember seeing him once on some old sketch comedy show (Almost Live?) where he talked about his girlfriend from hell or something.

Incidentally, my 8th grade science teacher looked almost exactly like Bill Nye.

Re:Bill Nye

Bill Nye . . . The Science Guy was originally a sketch on Almost Live. He would do things like take vinegar and baking soda and say that mixing these was like putting the superbowl and a wedding anniversary on the same day . . .

I liked his Speed Walker sketches . . . a superhero that walked heel-toe, heel-toe . . . and he was also one of the "High-Five'en White Guys"

Re:Bill Nye

Bill Nye was an engineer at Boeing before he was a comedian. He was on Almost Live! for years. I remember when I first saw the Bill Nye the Science Guy character was in an Almost Live! sketch. He was spoofing Mr. Wizard and I think he was really inept and caught himself on fire. Later, he took the character on David Letterman and doing other TV guest spots, before finally getting his own show.

Bill Nye is great

I gave him a copy of my TIMIT CD-ROM from the Linguistic Data Consortium, and he accepted it! No other television personality would have been likely to do that, in my estimation.

Bow Tie

There's something disturbing about the image of a pasty, thin nerd in a bow tie talking about sex.

Oh god, is that why my wife grimaces whenever we make love??

Re:Bow Tie

>> Oh god, is that why my wife grimaces whenever we make love??

Weird, she never does that with me...

Eh? Addiction, climate change?

It's TV. People don't want serious science, people want entertainment. There's a reason the Mythbusters blow something up each episode!

Speaking of which, I wonder how much that show's success had to do with exec's decision to bring Nye back.

So that's what's causing it

Wow. Addicted clones having sex are bringing about climate change?
I can't wait for this show!

The Actual Wired Story

Apparently it was too hard to actually link it in the post? http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/play.html ?pg=4 [wired.com]

This guy is great!

He even made the sundial [nwsource.com] used on the Mars Rovers.

Looking forward to it!

Bill Nye has been quite active in the outreach efforts for the Mars Exploration Rovers mission. Back in the summer of 2003, at a launch party, I had the pleasure of sharing a few drinks with him on the beach one evening, and he was telling me about his ideas for this show. It sounded very cool - Mr. Nye is very insightful and is rightly concerned about a lot of these serious issues.

A side note - he really seems to hate people making a big fuss over him being "the science guy" (then again with that annoying theme song, who wouldn't?). He's just a very sharp guy who has a lot of interest in science and outreach. I think he'll be quite capable at holding the attention of adults.

Also, when he was telling me about the show, it was originally entitled "Through the Eyes of Nye," I wonder why they changed it...

Bill Nye is an oil company goon...

I lost my respect for Bill Nye when went on a ride at Epcot called "Universe of Enegry". The ride was sponsored by Exxon, and narrated by Bill Nye and Ellen Degeneres (sp?). Anyway, it was very clear that someone at Exxon had written the script. It totally ruined Bill Nye for me.

The Astronauts - Bill deserves this show.

After seeing Bill Nye do a PBS documentary on shuttle astronauts (very well done and not over the top like science guy) as well as seeing Bill testify before Congress, I knew then that Bill deserved his own science show someday.

Way to go Bill! You've come a long way from "Speed Walker", wiggling your ass in tight shorts superhero costume for laughs on "Almost Live"

bill nye @RPI and BillMaher

Bill spoke at my Alma Mater (RPI) years ago.

He said to remember three things if anything:

1 Use the metric system

2 Never write a memo longer than 1 page

3 Make sure you enjoy what you plan on doing for the rest of your life

Months later I saw him on a panel hosted by Bill Maher with Craig Barret, Pen and Teller, and Peggy Noonan (i think). He was complaining about internet porn affecting people's lives. People laughed, but he was totally serious.

Fascinating man. Even in my late 20's I enjoyed his show on tape as a way to decompress after a long day workin on my PHD

It was because of this show...

...that I donated $50 to my local PBS station. Growing up watching this show proved to be far more valuable than most "dull" classroom environments i've encountered. I learned the order of the planets and newton's laws of physics when I was 10 years old because of this show. It made "understanding" what we were learning actually fun and now that I have a 5 year old daughter, I'm glad he's back into educating and hopefully making learning fun again.