Nerd alert!

I'm a nerd. Yes, it's true.

No, I don't walk around with broken horn-rimmed glasses and a pocket protector. I haven't played Dungeons and Dragons or chess since junior high school, and when people ask me my hobbies I tell them playing hockey, building a custom motorcycle and drinking beer. I have created a nearly airtight cover.

Nope, I'm not this guy.

But my wife knows better. She shakes her head at me when I am reading Michio Kaku rather than whatever Stephen King is writing. She graciously sits with me while I watch science documentaries (although she usually falls asleep). She ignores my conversations with my youngest son about quantum mechanics and string theory. She tolerates my attempts to explain to her the mysteries of the universe for which she could not really care less. 

Honestly, she married into this; she has no one to blame but herself. 

My friends on Facebook have probably noticed me getting overly excited about Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey. As Joe Biden would say, it's a big f#€%ing deal. I'm aware that not all my friends "get" my excitement, but that's okay. I still love them. 

It's possible that some people may not share my enthusiasm.

What people may not realize is that my love of science took a huge detour. So if I appear to be a zealot, it's because I feel like I'm making up for lost time. 

I remember when I was a little kid, probably 8-9 years old, I was a massive bookworm, craving facts. I would open an encyclopedia or a dictionary to look something up, and end up getting lost following words and facts around for hours. The adults around me use to laugh at my vocabulary. 

At some point my parents bought me a book called the "Big Book of Amazing Facts". To this day, I would say this was the most influential book I have read in my life. It was a thick, pulpy phone book shaped volume about 2 inches thick that had facts about everything in the world. How old was the earth? What happened to the dinosaurs? Why do trees have rings? What is an atom? I discovered the basics of the way the world worked in this book and in the additional volumes that my parents bought me.

What I wouldn't give to get my hands on one of these now.

Of course, children get older and have to face new challenges, and for me this meant going to a much bigger junior high school and struggling socially. My love of science was forgotten as I tried to do the things that those around me were doing so that I could try to fit in. Not very successfully, I might add. By the time I reached high school, I had found a social group, but it was in a  Christian youth group, where it became much more important to read the Bible than to read Carl Sagan.

I did learn to play guitar, and write my own music. I learned through this that I had a talent for language and writing. When it came time for university, I chose to pursue arts rather than sciences, even though I knew I could go either way.

Before I finished university, I was married and had children. This effectively put an end to any inquisitiveness I had for the next phase of my life. With responsibilities to my wife, my children, my church, my school and then my employer, life settled into a busy hum for the next several years. I didn't read books on science - I didn't even have time to read the Bible, though I had no problem teaching from it. 

When you are young, a generation is a lifetime. But when you have your own children, a generation is just one cycle. And as crazy as it sounds, a generation had passed and I was watching my own children go through the elementary->junior high->high school->university cycle that I remembered going through myself. And as they worked their way through this, their demand on my time lessened and was becoming free again to explore what I found interesting. Without the adolescent requirement to do make this exploration line up with what others are doing, I discovered once again my childhood passion: science.

But had science forgotten about me? Certainly it had changed. There were so many things we have learned about the world since I had last been looking at it. While this was happening, the face of science had also changed; Sagan and Feynman were gone and now the voice came through people Tyson and Krauss. Although Hawking and his Speak & Spell monotone was still to be heard as well. 

WELCOME BACKJOEY. IT'S GOOD TO SEE YOU.

Also, I had changed. As an adult, I was capable of understanding things that were much more complex than those I had been awed with as a child. Where 9-year-old Joey was amazed that that dinosaurs existed, 39-year-old Joey was blown away the biological and geological data showing that the present-day descendants of the dinosaurs who survived a meteor impact 65-million years ago  (aka birds) can be linked back to their ancestors by analyzing their DNA!

So, like any born-again convert, here I am making a fool of myself. I have watched the entire Cosmos series by Carl Sagan multiple times. When I heard that Neil deGrasse Tyson was remaking the series, I could not help but get excited. Tyson is more than just a cameo character on The Big Bang Theory, he is probably the greatest astrophysicist since Sagan himself. So I'm going to continue to talk about it, mmmkay? I can't help myself. 

Watch out, guys! We're dealing with a badass over here!

If you don't share my excitement, I feel bad for you. The story of our universe is the greatest story to be told, and Cosmos may be one of the tellings of this story I can imagine. I have watched the first episode twice now, and I'm sure I will watch it again. It puts our entire existence into perspective in a way that many people have never thought about (or don't want to think about). 

And if my devotion to this story, my evangelism of this series or others like it; if this makes me a nerd, then so be it. In the Bible there is a story about King David where he strips naked to dance before God. I think that's pretty embarrassing, and David's story makes me aware that enthusiasm can seem a little silly to outsiders. But like David, in the face of transcendence it is difficult for me to contain my excitement.

If you have not seen Cosmos, in Canada you can watch it here: Global TV Videos. Or call me and invite yourself over, I will have them all on my PVR, and I would definitely be willing watch it again with someone.

In the US, it is on FOX.

Gratuitous advertising banner for Cosmos. You're welcome.