Science Comedian

New half-hour inter­view with James Cameron about the mak­ing of Avatar. From Pop­u­lar Mechanics:

Awe­some sci­ence cook­ies in a series of posts to a food blog by a bio­log­i­cal anthropologist.

Aren’t all anthro­pol­o­gists bio­log­i­cal?  I’m a bio­log­i­cal comedian.

Ooh, she also has Space Invaders!

I’m on BoingBoing!

Mag­gie Koerth-Baker posted a YouTube clip of me this morn­ing.  It’s an excerpt from my per­for­mance two weeks ago at Won­der­fest, the Bay Area sci­ence festival.

The entire fes­ti­val was video­taped by Fora.tv.  You can see the rest of my 15-minute per­for­mance here.

Also, a dia­logue I mod­er­ated enti­tled Do Robots Make Bet­ter Astro­nauts? (fea­tur­ing Chris McKay of NASA Ames and Kanna Rajan of the Mon­terey Bay Aquar­ium Research Institute).

If you’re vis­it­ing from Boing­Bo­ing… Welcome!

It’s odd to be judged just by these admit­tedly – pur­posely – corny bar jokes.  They aren’t exactly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of my entire act.  They were the silly end to my presentation.

And they also cut the rou­tine short – there are a few more, includ­ing the final bar joke which is arguably the best one….  about Helium.

Check out the rest of that per­for­mance or see my other YouTube clips:  www.youtube.com/sciencecomedian .  Subscribe!

I’m @sciencecomedian on Twit­ter.  Fol­low me!

And check out the sci­ence videos I’ve been mak­ing for Time Magazine’s web­site.

Thank you, goodnight!

Found this great old com­mer­cial for prunes fea­tur­ing Ray Bradbury:

You can eas­ily access all the sci­ence videos I’ve made for Time Magazine’s web­site at this link – the results from a search on my name (Brian Malow) at Time.com.

Read the rest of this entry »

For the hol­i­day sea­son, Google is offer­ing free WiFi on all Vir­gin Amer­ica flights.  So this is my first in-flight post.

I’m fly­ing from Boston to San Fran­cisco, return­ing from a col­lege gig at SUNY Platts­burgh, which is so far up, up, upstate New York that it’s just a stone’s throw from Mon­treal (you’d have to have a very good arm and/or be throw­ing the stone in a weaker grav­ity field, per­haps that of an asteroid).

I’m 38,078 feet over the Nevada desert, fly­ing 463 mph and it’s -64 degrees F. outside.

And I’m surf­ing the web.  +1 Internets.

Vir­gin Amer­ica has the coolest planes – they’re like fly­ing discotheques:

The free in-flight WiFi from Google is only part of the deal.  They are also pro­vid­ing free WiFi in a bunch of air­ports – includ­ing Boston Logan where I took a pic of this sign:

For our newest video for Time.com, I vis­ited an old friend, Norm Ger­shenz of SaveNature.org, to dis­cuss some of their pro­grams for rais­ing aware­ness and sav­ing pre­cious habi­tats that are home to strange and beau­ti­ful crea­tures like the giant thorny phasmid.

Find out more about the Insect Dis­cov­ery Lab and how you can bring it to your Bay Area classroom.

Sci­ence Come­dian Brian Malow

presents

Ratio­nal Com­edy for an Irra­tional Planet

An evening of sci­ence humor

8pm, Wednes­day, Octo­ber 28, 2009

Rooster T. Feather’s Com­edy Club
157 W. El Camino Real
Sun­ny­vale, CA 94087
(408) 736-0921

A cou­ple of the pre­sen­ta­tions at today’s “Let’s Have An Awe­some Time Doing Sci­ence” con­fer­ence were con­ducted via Skype video.

Uri Alon of the Depart­ment of Mol­e­c­u­lar Cell Biol­ogy & Depart­ment of Physics of Com­plex Sys­tems at the Weiz­mann Insti­tute in Israel, gave a par­tic­u­larly fun pre­sen­ta­tion enti­tled, “Peace Love Sci­ence Hap­pi­ness.”

He per­formed his song “I’ve Been Scooped Again” – with audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion from across the globe.  Here’s a snippet:

Music & Lyrics ©2009 Uri Alon

“Let’s Have An Awe­some Time Doing Sci­ence” was a 3-day sci­ence con­fer­ence (and part uncon­fer­ence) held at UCSF’s Mis­sion Bay Cam­pus, Oct. 8-10, 2009. Sci­en­tists from var­i­ous fields and at all stages of career devel­op­ment met to dis­cuss ways to help make sci­ence as fun, sup­port­ive and nur­tur­ing as possible.

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