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Bill Nye, Harry Potter, and Why Millennials Can’t Think
Millennials can’t think. They get their science from Bill Nye. Their only form of literary reference is the Harry Potter franchise. Read another book, please! Bill Nye was fun in the 90’s to get the basics about science – law of gravity, simple machines, energy transfer. I think the place that Bill Nye holds in the culture today is due to the nostalgia of millennials.
I’ve seen a number of the episodes of Nye’s original series, Bill Nye the Science Guy. I remember watching the show in grade-school and junior high. His shows and topics covered in each episode were quite superficial; they served as an entertaining introduction to whatever new topic we were beginning to learn about. There was no depth there. He was an entertaining figure when I was in fifth, sixth, and seventh grade; now he’s just a dolt. Fellow millennials (and you gen-xers) please stop holding up this bad actor as a “scientist.”
I’ve read the Harry Potter franchise many times. I’ve seen the movies multiple times. I was six years old when the first book came out. It was one of the first longer books that I read, not the first but one of the first. I read each book when it came out. When the later books came out, I remember going to the midnight releases and rushing home to read it until I was too tired to read another word. A good series. I enjoyed it and I still enjoy it.
With all that being said, fellow millennials please read another book! Harry Potter is good. It’s not great. The first longer books that I read were Roald Dahl books. I also loved C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, and there is actually some depth with that series. Mark Twain is fantastic. The Little House on the Prairie series is delightful.
Why should you read another book? So that you can make a literary reference. You can understand a reference in the newspaper. So that you’ll know what a Bacchanal is and where it comes from. You’ll know what big brother is. Some are more equal than others. (I hope you all caught that last one.)
The worst part of this lack of thought is that there are countless “journalists” that always and only ever make a reference to the principal villain in Harry Potter, Voldemort, when talking about the “evil” Donald Trump. There are many, many tweets and articles that do this (I have no desire to find them again, because whenever I see one I am usually half-tempted to throw my computer out the window). If you think Trump is so bad, then why not compare him to Mustapha Mond? Or maybe call him Ralph?
This ignorance to other literary references and to trusting Bill Nye as a “scientist” is due to blind nostalgia. Harry Potter and Bill Nye remind us of our adolescence. They remind us of a time with no responsibility. It’s fine to have memories. It’s problematic to use those memories as a crutch and a reason to never expand your mind.
Millennials, Screwtape would be proud of your ignorance.
Published in General
What’s the over/under on Disney’s first transgender
princeprincess? I’d put it at 5 years.I regret to announce there’s already talk that Finding Nemo 2 has a transgender character: Sting-Ray, who became Sting-Rhonda.
Blech.
Snopes says that was a false rumor based on a joke Ellen DeGeneres made in an interview — for which she was promptly scolded by the left:
Transgender stingrays are no laughing matter, people!
Yeah, since the males give birth, We all know that seahorses are the transgenders of the sea.
I’m pretty sure there are at least a thousand times more people offended at this on behalf of this “community” than actual “trans” people.
Haha! Too bad there doesn’t seem to be a single area of news that the media doesn’t verify before printing a story:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/finding-dory-to-feature-disney-pixar-first-transgender-character-ellen-degeneres-stingray-a7081056.html