Degrassi Tyson TNG?

No and this video proves it.

Also when did Eugene Merman start looking like Gene Belcher IRL.

He's never been cool, except in the minds of the "I MOTHERBITCHING love SCIENCE! For the epic win!" crowd.

Both of these fellows are mediocrities who've coasted by on pandering.

Tyson panders to the easily impressed "I LOVE SCIENCE!" crowd

:hands person a peer reviewed journal:

"No, when I say I LOVE SCIENCE I mean I like looking at pics of starscapes with hilarious captions on them"

and Wil Wheaton panders to the crowd who've drunk the "geek culture" Kool-Aid and look for reassurance that they're special and all around better people than those dumb mundanes and normals because they watch movies with Iron Men and Thors in them.

Shut up you dumb mundane, you just don't understand these sorts of things. Also take your stick ball or whatever and go do whatever you people do with them.

And the BBWH smugly went back to watching Real Housewives of Someplace

You know, I can forgive PoETV for being Too Good For Pretty Much Everything Ever (really, I can), but acting like Neil deGrasse Tyson isn't fucking awesome is a red fucking line.

No human with Federation reg sideburns ever has to answer to a rhetorical argument. This is General Order 1.b.

I think Will Wheaton is Rich Evans from the Mirror Universe, but Rich's laugh has the goatee.

I'm on the fences. Degrassi's about a million times smarter than I will ever be, but the "SCIENCE RULES" thing reminds me of Bill Nye, who is also around a million times smarter than I am. The problem is that if you keep doing these sort of this enough you wind up like Dave Mustaine judging air guitar competitions or something. Does he even teach anymore? And also I don't agree with his views on Pluto. Otherwise Degrassi is cool, but hopefully not too cool for school.

I think the problem with NdT is that he falls into the same trap as many other popular science commentators: that is, he fails to properly manage his brand.

Most popular celebrity commentators understand that, in order to thrive in the public eye, one has to cultivate a specific demographic. Jon Stewart panders to Democrat voters, Alex Jones appeals alternately to truthers and social conservatives, Joss Whedon is careful not to offend Tumblr, ICP refuses to alienate rednecks, TheAmazingAtheist panders to assholes - hell, even our pal Wil Wheaton carefully cultivates a crowd, ironically, the very same Trekkie-Nerd crowd which hated his Wesley Crusher character!

Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn't seem to understand this. Perhaps it is because he was trained as a scientist, and seems to believe he can say anything he wants without jeopardizing his life or career (see also: Michael Shermer, James Randi, and of course Dawkins, particularly towards the end of his life)? Whatever the reason, Mr Tyson is terrible at managing his personal brand image. NdT has, at various points in time, been openly critical of groups as diverse as Creationists, anti-GMO activists, philosophy students, racists, and lovers of Pluto. Regardless of who you are or what preconceived values you hold, Tyson has probably said at least one thing which would offend you, and for this impudence he rightly suffers.

Oh yeah! I had almost forgotten about the Philosophy thing, which actually pissed me off more than the Pluto thing. For me anyway, I grew up assuming that Bill Nye knew as little about science as any substitute teacher: just read whatever's written down for you and try to make a good impression and if you're good kids won't throw spitballs at you. It was only later that I realized that he actually knew his shit. But Degrassi I knew mostly as an Ivy League professor for a good decade before he became a celeb, so it was weird: I knew some people who attended his lectures just to hear him speak: his personality, much like Carl Sagan's, is very approachable and fit as much for TV as a large lecture hall, but whereas Sagan would use his fame to write speculative fiction and continue his studies, Degrassi would rather spend his free time with the cast of Bob's Burgers discussing pop culture.

And that's fine! I'd love to talk with Gene and Louise about Star Trek. In fact, I even ran into Wil once, since he was jogging on the same esplanade I worked on and came in to ask for directions. I told him where to go but asked why he didn't just teleport there. He laughed and said that nobody recognized him anymore. Very cool guy. And likewise I'd love to have a conversation with Degrassi, but his sensibility is getting closer to Big Bang Theory than The Big Bang Theory. Or something like that.

IZ: NdT's day job is Director of Hayden Planetarium (at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC.) He's also a research associate at AMNH. Don't think he teaches.

5 stars for BHWW's insane nonsensical diatribe against Anything That Gets More Popular Than He'd Like.

Maybe you WANT to pander to people when the goal is educating them. Just a thought.

Yes, I don't care for NdT's superficial "WE ARE THE STUFF OF STARS"-level SCIENCE! appreciation. It has nothing to do with a kneejerk reaction to his "popularity". As an ambassador for science he encourages only the most shallow and dilettantish appreciation of it, for the Oatmeal-and-XKCD-reading crowd.

He's a mediocre scientist who has managed to extract adoration from bloggers, students and nerds while engaging in fabrications, misattributed quotations, obvious errors and stories all meant to make Tyson (and his fans) look like smarty science people and anyone else look like a bumbling ignoramus. Then of course, his fans have argued that dubiously sourced quotes and factoids don't matter, so long as they get people thinking about science, or rather SCIENCE!

@otkay I think you're right as far as Desgrassi never officially conducting a class, so yeah he was never a professor but he did a ton of guest lectures and tenures, which would just be fun because you don't necessarily have to grade any papers afterwords.

I also had to wikipedia this, which led me to a new Ice Age movie coming out in 2016 where he plays Neil DeBuck Weasel. Oh lord, I think I'm with BHWW on this one..

Or I guess he was a professor like Milo Auckerman was at UW-Madison. That's to say that he was but wasn't, and a lot of people just attended his lectures because they liked the Descendents and punk rock but nothing about biochem, one of those students being me. :)

That's an interesting perspective you have there, BHWW. Might I ask, what are your thoughts on Michio Kaku?

Yeah, I was going to say. If you want to hipster hate a scientist, do it to one who really deserves it like Kaku.

I actually sat down and watched this instead of just casually bitching from a minute of it, and I get the appeal. It's Degrassi having fun like any other forum should be, but he still manages to get in a whole bunch of SCIENCE in there. And hey, college professors have been using Joseph Campbell in their lectures for decades so they have an excuse to talk about Star Wars, so is there really that much of a difference?

I do wonder what Sagan would be doing if he were alive today; guess I'm just thinking Paul F. Thompkins right now, but Bojack Horseman summed it up pretty well with JD Salinger's appearance on the show, where his favorite thing is appealing to our lowest common denominators of what's entertainment these days. It breaks down to the inevitable "SO YOU THINK YOU'RE SMARTER THAN AN ASTROPHYSICIST," but if people are having fun I guess I don't have a problem. Next episode, Degrassi gets thrown out of a helicopter into a target naked at night and is forced to use his star knowledge to get back to the chopper, or something..

I'm going to guess he was only slightly stoned enough for this to not feel so socially awkward for him but also make him an annoyingly interrupting ass.

"He's a mediocre scientist who has managed to extract adoration from bloggers, students and nerds while engaging in fabrications, misattributed quotations, obvious errors and stories all meant to make Tyson (and his fans) look like smarty science people and anyone else look like a bumbling ignoramus."

I've never read a panic attack over science before.

I submitted this because the panel took this to a whole other hilarious level, they are great.

Kristen Schaal is so fucking sexy.

That she is. Same with Paul. It's strange that Scott and Paul from Mr. Show have become much more attractive since the end of that show's run, whereas David and Bob have kinda let themselves go, having been the hot ones on the show.

Wil (one L) Wheaton used to annoy the hell out of me when TNG was airing. I hated that he even had anything to do with the show. But ever since I've really grown to appreciate the guy and he doesn't disappoint in this "showcase panel". It's kind of like hitting adulthood regretting bullying that one kid back in school.

A lifetime of not actually teleporting has taken its toll

I dunno, as far as child stars who played losers (so Miley and Degrassi's own Drake don't count among others) he seems to have adjusted better than most. I still haven't watched more than the first 2 minutes of this so maybe he gets into it, but everybody hated Wheaton like they hated Jonathan Brandis on Sealab.

I could never get it to do that right.

The ASCII I mean. :)

Hilariously, you forgot the scrotum.