Bill Nye was amazing. His lecture was funny, poignant, hopeful, personal, and highly informative. The gym in the RFC (our workout center at Morris) was packed with students of all ages. (A mom with her husband and their elementary school aged daughter and son sat in front of me. The girl thought that Bill Nye looked like he was “seventy.” A Google search revealed that he’s actually fifty-eight.)
There was a beautiful roar when he finally took the stage. Phones lit up the dramatic dimming of the lights. I sat in the bleachers next to Rory & Leon with blue hair. We were three of 1,700 people.
Bill Nye said that he doesn’t want to be around scientists who don’t appreciate poetry, or poets who don’t appreciate science. There were made up words for the different shades of shadows, some starting with X. His dad helped create the sundial while in a Japanese POW camp, with a shovel rammed into the stiff earth. Venus is so hot that the rain there never reaches the surface: it gets sucked back up in the thunderheads overhead. If there is life on Europa, we’ll know by flying through the geysers and counting the enumerable bugs on the windshield.
We can, dare I say it, help change the world! Laser bees are going to chop up oncoming asteroids.
And people say that science is boring.
M.B.B.
10/23/14
edited 5/26/2020
The Nerdy Nook 