Little ol’ Morris got that hashtag trending last night — I guess when essentially everyone in a small town suddenly starts tweeting exactly the same thing, it shows up as a bright blip in the data. It was an impressive reaction by the audience, too. These were college students who grew up with Bill Nye, and apparently even the ones who were too young to have watched his show when it was on the air got regularly exposed to episodes that were shown in the public schools. So he was welcomed like a rock star.

His talk was rather long and rambly…he talked about everything. His family history, sundials, what kind of car he drove, the debate with Ken Ham, climate change, science education, the importance of the humanities, etc. He said all the right things, and had the audience cheering for the whole two hours. Well over half the student body were there — about 1100 student tickets were sold –and I have no idea how many townsfolk were there, but I did see a lot of middle-aged and young adults with troops of kids. He didn’t pander to them, either: there were some sharp remarks pointed at religious conservatism, the absurdity of believing the earth is 6000 years old, and the folly of ignoring environmental problems because your bible says there is no problem.

I will be checking the local paper to see if there are any negative reactions. There was also someone there taping the whole event — if that’s made public, I’ll let you know.