The science of the man crush

I have a man crush, and his name is Neil deGrasse Tyson. He’s the natural scientific successor to my original boyhood bromancer, Don Herbert.

Somewhere in between I strayed, becoming enamored with heavy metal icons, gonzo journalists and a cavalcade of rebels, anarchists and assorted troublemakers.

Today, though, I’m back to where I started, in the world of science, from “Mr. Wizard” to Dr. deGrasse Tyson.

I was taken down memory lane in the best possible way this week when a dear childhood friend posted on social media that Herbert’s archives had been acquired by the Smithsonian Institution. The Archive Center of the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., had amassed his personal papers, files and other personal effects from his family to eventually curate and display, I would hope.

That, to me, was about as exciting news as I would hear that day, and I took to YouTube to hang with Herbert, his child sidekicks and whatever scientific principle he was looking to reinforce that episode.

I was a bit obsessed with Nicklodeon’s “Mr. Wizard’s World” in the early to mid-1980s, coming home from school every day and watching several episodes in a row for years on end, dreaming of meeting the man and taking part in his kitchen experiments.

Fiery tabletop volcanoes powered with ammonium dichromate and amped up with crushed sparklers.

The invisibility of light made visible through dust particles, smoke, or a high-speed oscillating piece of string off which invisible light waves could bounce and be seen.

Standing on a homemade cloud created by dunking chunks of compressed carbon dioxide into hot hydrogen dioxide: dry ice in hot water.

It didn’t get any cooler than that.

Imagine my joy — and healthy 10-year-old skepticism — when I learned Mr. Wizard and I had a connection. Her name was Kasey. She was a buddy, from preschool all the way up through junior high, before she moved away.

And, get this, she was Mr. Wizard’s granddaughter. I know, right? I was geeked, before I knew what geeked was.

“Prove it,” I remember telling her. The family photos weren’t good enough. Anyone could paste a picture of Mr. Wizard in a frame and easily trick an un-worldly kid from Imperial County, USA.

But when she hand-delivered a manila envelope with a black and white 8-by-11-½ glossy of Herbert with a personal inscription to me — ME! You peasants! — I knew we would be forever intertwined.

I’ve since lost that autographed photo, but I haven’t lost that inner geek. It took a few unscientific detours that involved unnecessary experimentation, but it was always lurking, waiting to be rekindled when the time was right.

There were some moments, good and bad, like doing my time as Dennis Haworth’s biology aide for a couple semesters at Central (good) or pilfering potassium nitrate, mixing it with sugar and sticking it in random lockers and the bathrooms for smoky effect (bad, and the statute of limitations, post 21 years, would hopefully absolve me of any harm).

But with the rebirth and re-imagination of “COSMOS: A Spacetime Odyssey” starring deGrasse Tyson, my Mr. Wizard fixation has been sparked anew, and in exciting ways.

I’m 40 years old now; I’ve grown decidedly cynical and have witnessed an entire generational culture of science denial and scientific apathy set in among politicians, people and the pop culture of today’s youth.

Less inquisitive as a people as we’ve ever been, there’s a divide in understanding between facts that can be discerned through scientific method and ideas that are true because my god said so. It’s discouraging.

“Cosmos,” for the most part, has made learning and teaching science sexy again. It’s “required” watching for some teachers and their classes, and it is on primetime TV, which is saying something about a concerted effort to spark a new generation in caring for the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) studies of tomorrow.

Real-life astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is the right statesmen for the job, too. He’s the smoothest, most camera-ready nerd you’ll ever see: part Shaft, part Stephen Urkel and all business.

He’s a man on a mission, taking what is a stunning body of environmental data of impending disaster and using it to pummel purveyors of junk science who refute fact through factless opinion, and faith in some cases. And he’s crushing them every Sunday at 8 p.m. our time, and he does it with style, class, and that crazy-tight signature Afro.

He’s doing it for his mentor, Dr. Carl Sagan, the originator of the first “Cosmos” series, a man who took deGrasse Tyson under his wing and inspired him, much like deGrasse Tyson is hopefully inspiring a new generation today.

Mr. Wizard, you’ll always be my first, but Dr. deGrasse, you’re my latest and greatest. It’s a good time to dig science.

This column first appeared in the Imperial Valley Press, May 23, 2014.