Science Comedian

Vega

January 27th, 2009

Oops.  I think I took a wrong turn…

Mike Brotherton and the Science Comedian

January 18th, 2009

Mike Broth­er­ton has a really nice blog post about me.  Mike is a sci­ence fic­tion writer who also hap­pens to be an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­sity of Wyoming in the depart­ment of Physics and Astron­omy.  Quasars are his spe­cialty!  And there’s a lot of great con­tent in his blog.  Check it out.

I’m ecsta­tic that, of the two jokes he sin­gled out for men­tion, one is an anal­ogy that rarely gets the laugh I wish for it.  It’s about the abil­ity of a virus to take down a human.  We must out­weigh them by a fac­tor of a bil­lion or more.  It’s the ulti­mate David and Goliath…  “It’s like Luke Sky­walker tak­ing out the Death Star in a lit­tle X-Wing Fighter.”

Well, it is, isn’t it?

He also says this about the embed­ded video:

Next time I teach an intro­duc­tory sci­ence class, I’m going to show some of these. I might be able to deliver a cou­ple of the sim­pler jokes and fit them into lec­tures. I’m a good lec­turer, but not great, and wak­ing peo­ple up with a smart joke that has some real sci­ence in it isn’t pan­der­ing, it’s educating.

Too often I think thatI just get depressed about the never end­ing bat­tle with igno­rance and sci­ence illit­er­acy, with the folks who reject our best knowl­edge because it con­tra­dicts their polit­i­cal or reli­gious beliefs.  Get­ting peo­ple to laugh and want in on the joke is prob­a­bly a bet­ter method of doing some­thing other than preach­ing to the choir and bring­ing in some peo­ple who want to chuckle, too.

Thanks, Mike!

I haven’t read his two nov­els yet – Star Dragon and Spi­der Star - but they’ve been praised by David Brin and Paul Di Fil­ippo.  They are hard SF and have been com­pared to the books of Larry Niven and Robert L. For­ward.  Sounds good to me!

Unconvincing Spam

January 15th, 2009

Some phish­ing attempts are bet­ter – more hon­or­able – than oth­ers.  They might be HTML, for instance, and care­fully mimic the look of an actual email from the par­tic­u­lar bank or busi­ness they’re spoof­ing.  They are evil, no ques­tion – but at least they have the respect to make a decent effort to hood­wink you.

There’s some­thing espe­cially insult­ing and infu­ri­at­ing about the much more com­mon spam we get – the uncon­vinc­ing spam:  plain text, ugly for­mat­ting, mis­spelled words, ter­ri­ble writ­ing, appar­ent lack of famil­iar­ity with the lan­guage they’re writ­ten in – in short, embar­rass­ingly poor execution.

Some­times I’m so offended by their appar­ent lack of respect and effort that I’m nearly tempted to reply.  Nearly, but not quite.

Here’s one I just got…

First of all, it’s sim­ply from “Sup­port.”  Then the sub­ject line is mis­spelled and has a dash that leads nowhere – a dash in-between nothing…

Sub­ject:  Messge from eBay -

Inside, I find one block of pathetic plain text that says…

Dear eBay Mem­ber,
This is your offi­cial noti­fi­ca­tion from eBay. Your online has expired.
If you want to con­tinue using our ser­vice you have to renew your online.
If not, your online will be lim­ited and deleted.
To con­firm your Account records click on the fol­low­ing link:

The link, of course, is scary-looking with the word “ebay” sprin­kled through it three times – but not in the one place you want to see it.  And then it is signed…

Thank you,
Scott R. Ship­man, CIPP Senior Coun­sel, Global Pri­vacy Prac­tices eBay Inc.

My online has expired??!!  My online will be lim­ited and deleted??!!

“Scott R. Ship­man,” you dis­honor me with your piti­ful lack of effort.  You call that a lure?  You are a poor excuse for a phisherman.

Science Comedian on Public Radio

January 14th, 2009

Roman Mars of KALW, a San Fran­cisco pub­lic radio sta­tion, pro­duced a piece on me that aired yes­ter­day on the show Cross Cur­rents:

“The Bay Area is home to some of the smartest peo­ple on the planet. So, it makes sense that our brainy nature would demand the occa­sional brainy enter­tain­ment. That’s where Brian Malow, the sci­ence come­dian, comes in. Malow stopped by KALW to tell Roman Mars why he thinks sci­ence is so funny.”

If you have five min­utes, you can hear the seg­ment on their web­site:
Brian Malow, the Sci­ence Come­dian.

My thanks to Holly Ker­nan and Roman Mars of KALW! 

Cross Cur­rents airs at 5pm (Pacific), on FM 91.7, and streams live from the KALW website.

Science Comedian on Pirate Cat Radio

January 12th, 2009

I’ll be on Pirate Cat Radio at 8pm Pacific tonight for about 20 min­utes.  It’s a low-power FM sta­tion that broad­casts on 87.9 FM in SF, LA, and Berlin.  It also streams live for the whole world.

Even if you miss me, check it out some­time.  It’s a good thing.  Pirate Radio!!

———————-

UPDATE:  I had a great time on the Canary Hour.  Pirate Cat Radio makes all their shows avail­able as down­load­able mp3s, so here’s the show for 1/12/09:

http://www.nerdnetworks.org/pcr/Canary-20090112.mp3

I was on for the first 20 min­utes.  Fri­day 1/9/09, I was on the Morn­ing Show with Casey and the Noto­ri­ous BAG:
http://www.nerdnetworks.org/pcr/MorningShow-20090109.mp3

I come on around the mid­point of the show/file.  Much fun.

Pirate Cat rocks!

Domain Name Buying Spree

January 12th, 2009

A clas­sic, from the archives…

Behind the Scenes at ScienceComedian.com

January 12th, 2009

Seems like all my recent posts are about media atten­tion but, fear not, behind the scenes, the sci­ence com­edy team (i.e. me and Tara – and our Texas affil­i­ates, Chuck and Albert – all pow­ered by wheels turned by teams of genetically-enhanced rodents from Mon­santo) has been hard at work on new com­edy mate­r­ial, as well as audio and video con­tent that will appear here soon-ish (and that deliv­ery date is firm).

We are prepar­ing for two big pub­lic shows this week – in San Fran­cisco and Sun­ny­vale – and one next week in Sacra­mento (see Upcom­ing Shows).  All the shows are being recorded.

Plus, we have some inter­views with sci­en­tists and sci­ence fic­tion writ­ers (for instance, Gre­gory Ben­ford – he’s actu­ally a stony killer of both those birds – he’s a physi­cist and a Nebula-award win­ning sci­ence fic­tion writer).

Stay tuned.  Or leave and come back.  That’s fine, too.

Science Comedian Slashdotted!

January 11th, 2009

I’ve lost my vir­gin­ity!  I’ve been slash­dot­ted!

If you found your way here from there – thanks for stop­ping by.  The blog is rel­a­tively new.  There will much image, audio, video, and text con­tent added in the com­ing months.

To find your way from here to there:
Stand-Up Comic Makes Sci­ence Funny

Thanks to Andrew Hes­sel for first bring­ing it to my atten­tion (it became pretty obvi­ous soon after that!).

It feels like a rite of pas­sage – like a geek bar mitz­vah.  Today I am a man geek!

San Francisco Chronicle Features Science Comedian

January 9th, 2009

The San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle ran a fea­ture story on me today (the print ver­sion actu­ally appears in the Date­book sec­tion, Sun­day, Jan­u­ary 11, 2009):

Mak­ing Sci­ence Funny:  Brian Malow

It’s writ­ten by Nick Thomas, who we love!  Last year, Nick did a Q&A with me for Nature:

Helium Walks Into a Bar

In addi­tion to being a pro­lific free­lance writer, Nick is Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Chem­istry at Auburn Uni­ver­sity in Mont­gomery, Alabama.

The arti­cle comes out in time to pro­mote my upcom­ing Bay Area shows – Tues­day at the San Fran­cisco Punch Line, and Wednes­day in Sun­ny­vale at Rooster T. Feath­ers.  Also, a week later at the Sacra­mento Punch Line on Jan­u­ary 22.

P.S.  The book I’m hold­ing is Cosm by Gre­gory Ben­ford, one of my favorite reads of 2008.

SF Chronicle Best of 2008 Portraits

January 9th, 2009

This week­end, the San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle should be run­ning a story about me in con­junc­tion with next week’s shows at the SF Punch Line Com­edy Club (Tues, Jan.13) and Rooster T. Feath­ers (Wed, Jan.14), in Sun­ny­vale.  See Upcom­ing Shows for details.

A Chron­i­cle pho­tog­ra­pher, Paul Chinn, met me over at the new Cal­i­for­nia Acad­emy of Sci­ences sev­eral weeks ago for a photo shoot.

Appar­ently, even though the story hasn’t run yet, they’ve included a pic­ture of me in their “Best of 2008 Portraits.”

They spelled my name “Brain” (I’m used to it) and called the show “Irra­tional Com­edy for an Irra­tional Planet” (which is close – the planet is, indeed, irra­tional but the com­edy is ratio­nal)…  but it’s still pretty cool.

[In the com­ments, Jim Hardy brought it to my atten­tion that they also mis­spelled "science-themd."  Three mis­takes in two sentences!]

The fea­ture is dated 12/29/08.  Nobody even told me it was online.  I had to do a van­ity search on the Chron­i­cle site.  Inter­est­ingly, it only works if you search on “Malow” or “Brain Malow.”  A search on “Brian Malow” returns no rel­e­vant results.

Any­way, nice pic…