Ode to Mr Wizards World tv show.

Anyone that is a child of the 80's probablly saw Mr Wizard on tv and if they had any internest in science or curious how things worked then they probablly loved this show.

I was recently checking out some shows on aimed at kids on cable and basically everything was shit, no this isnt a pre-old man staged rant about whats wrong with tv today and so on. No this is simply seeing that kids shows today are safe, stupid, watered down and parent friendly so said parents can rest assured their child is being carefully dumbed down with mindless tv with minimal required interaction. Now granted I grew up in the mid 70's to late 80's watching Gi Joe, Transformers, He-Man and other things which arent exactly mind expanding but atleast they varied stories and characters and much like the show Have Gun Will Travel the shows usually had some sort of descrete moral lesson or in the case of Gi Joe it had real life related lessons and what a child should do, which is better than watching Pokemon or Ben 10 where despite my best efforts I cant figure out what the fuck is going on in them and it really makes no sense. I felt my IQ drop sharply just watching them.

So this is where Mr Wizard comes in. I watched his show as a kid in the early 80's and at the ripe old age of about 7 I actually recall learning about thermal dynamics and thermal expansion from that show. 7 years old and I understood that stuff. It was a episode that really stands out in my mind for some reason. He would in a straight forward and entertaining way scientifically explain how something worked and then he would show you what he just described in a experiment to give visual form to what he was saying. Or sometimes he would simply do some neat trick like I learned you can write secret notes with a brush and lemon juice on paper, once it dries you cant see it, but hold that paper over like a toaster or flame and the dried juice turns brown and you can read what was written and then he would explained how it worked chemically.

Starting in the 50's up till the late 80's with my understand is well over 500 episodes teaching kids the magic of science and educating them on things they may not realize like me till later in life. Mr Don Herbert was one of the last great pioneers of childrens tv and to me atleast he will be missed.

So parents (yeah Im talking to you) if you have children or just like to learn yourself I highly encourage you to check out the dvd's of this mans great show. You can order them off the official site linked below.

So dont let your kids turn into fucking potato heads with todays tv, if you cant kick them in the ass enough to get them fuck out of the house and play outside then atleast introduce them to Mr Wizard.

http://www.mrwizardstudios.com/

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