Sunday, February 07, 2010

Weird Science

As a kid, I never liked science. It was boring, involved way too many text book pages and not enough blowing things up. That being said, the connection between the hobby and science is actually quite awesome. Here's a recent find from Stargate: Heroes:


Bill Freakin' Nye, the Science guy. I think I was born about a decade too late. His show was great: funny, connected to life, things blew up. Heck, something as simple as changing his pitch would've put him in the TV Scientist Hall of Fame.

Bill Nye actually had a set from SkyBox back in the mid-90s. The base set is 94 cards large including dinosaur and planetary punch outs and crazy window clings (like the one shown above). There's also lots of random science facts and blurry images from the show. The bright colors definitely show off the fact they're from the mid-90s.

But Bill Nye isn't the only scientist to come to my collecting attention as of late. Earlier this week, this card arrived in a small lot of Topps American Heritage Heroes Edition Chrome parallels:


Carl Sagan was more my dad's kind of scientist. When Cosmos aired on PBS, we watched the show together when I visited him every other weekend. Well, I was there in body, at least. The pictures were pretty but little else made sense to my wee little mind. I might revisit the show one day or pick up a couple of Sagan's books, but I might not.

In looking up a video clip to illustrate the genius of Bill Nye and his ability to make science understandable and entertaining to the masses, I cam across the following mash-up that puts the words of both science guys to melody.


Brilliant! But now where's a Stephen Hawking card? He's got a Simpsonized action figure.


5 comments:

Sooz said...

I grew up watching Mr. Wizard. :)

Peterson said...

I did too, sooz. dry ice and all. That Sagan Card akes me weak, I am a HS Biology Teacher and scientist to the core.

BA Benny said...

I love Bill Nye! I used to make my kids watch him so I could watch too.

Anonymous said...

Being close to Cornell, I feel as if I live in Sagan (and Serling) Land. I liked both shows - But Nye taking on UFOlogists on Larry King was awesome.

Community Gum said...

I guess Beakman's World never got any love from the card makers.

I'm with Sooz, Mr. Wizard was THE guy and THE theme song!