Before I get started with this post, let me first say that I was a big fan of "Bill Nye, the Science Guy" when my kids were young -- anything remotely educational was better than "Pokemon" or "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" -- cartoons that weren't mercifully killing brain cells, they were torturing them to death. It's virtually impossible to dislike the public persona. As an added benefit was the catchy jingle for the show intro: "Bill Nye the science guy -- Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill!" turned out to be infinitely more pleasant to have permanently etched into your brain than "...heroes on a half shell - Turtle power!" However, even back then I realized that Bill Nye was not actually a science guy, but a television personality playing the role of a science educator of young children. Bill Nye had been an engineer before he entered the world of entertainment as a stand-up comic. "Bill Nye the Science Guy" was literally born on a comedy ensemble show -- it was a character he created that turned out to be a long running joke that people now take very seriously. At a website called Big Think where Nye answers questions from viewers, he is listed in their roster of "experts" as Television Host and Science Educator -- and that catchy, rhyming title of "Bill Nye the Science Guy" appears to give him instant credibility. Basically, Bill Nye merely regurgitates what he's learned from reading popular science books and tries to sound really smart while occasionally reminding his followers that he once was a student of Carl Sagan, presumably to borrow from Sagan's credibility as … [Read more...]