Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Maybe Think About Logging Off Today Bud
Hey there, a happy Friday to everyone! Everyone except Neil deGrasse Tyson, who spent last night and this morning reclaiming his perch as Celebrity Science's Biggest Scold. It started last night with this humdinger of a tweet about his distaste for vernacular usage of the word "awesome" and how it relates to… Jonas Salk and NASA's Apollo program?
With most of Tyson's tweets he's not wrong! Maybe awesome should be reserved for things that truly inspire awe, like the Grand Canyon or John Brooks' belting header into the back of the net in the 85th minute of the US's first 2014 World Cup match against rival Ghana. Maybe! But also: I think the batting average for trying to make a serious point that starts with the phrase "In my day" is hovering near 2015 Jon Lester levels of whiffing.
Okay, okay, fine. It's only one tweet. We should probably ease up on the guy, right? It's hard to get too upset over pedantry when deGrasse Tyson has done so much for promoting science and science literacy. The untold millions he inspires with this work has to be worth a spicy tweet now and again, right?
Well, dang it, Neil. You just had to wake up on this Friday the 13th and tweet about it. You just had to do it.
C'mon bud. These tweets are barely 12 hours apart. This is "Young Sheldon" levels of pedantry. This is Jimmy Neutron refusing to enter the sales into the dang register because of his Galaxy Brain-level mental math skills, and now when Skeet goes to close out for the night Jimmy's register is gonna be off like $300 and oh boy what a pain in the butt.
What's more, a quick Twitter search reveals that isn't even the first time deGrasse Tyson has made this observation about how dates work.
Okay, sure. Who among us hasn't reused their own material from time to time? But here's the rub: When it comes to his own usage of the word "awesome," the man of science isn't even logically consistent.
I know this is dumb thing to get Mad Online about. And I know that fans of Tyson are going to see this and assume that this is an Attack on Science. It's not! It's just a little disappointing to see an accomplished astrophysicist and advocate for the sciences to devolve into a Online Tautology Machine. Maybe, after writing an entire blog post about this, I, too, should log off.
