Science Comedian

The Secret Life of Flies

February 22nd, 2010

If you know me, you know I like my insect pho­tog­ra­phy. I pri­mar­ily shoot (and release) live insects. But who amongst us hasn’t seen a dead bug pos­ing while repos­ing in death and felt the need to cap­ture that macabre Kodak moment?  If my eyes are the only eyes of the uni­verse to observe this detail, am I not oblig­ated to record it?

Any­way, that’s how I feel about it.  So, I’ve shot a few dead flies.

But this guy at Muhr Pho­tog­ra­phy takes it to a new level, com­bin­ing real live dead flies with sim­ple line draw­ings. And I think they’re hilar­i­ous. I applaud the idea and the exe­cu­tion.  I’m jealous!

After you start the slideshow – click the icon in the lower left cor­ner to make it big­ger so you can see the titles  (in some cases, it helps you appre­ci­ate the image).  Or you can see this gallery and oth­ers here.

Giant Insect Ambassadors for the Rainforest

October 21st, 2009

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 Riffs on Hydrogen and Helium at Ignite

April 28th, 2009

Our Ignite pre­sen­ta­tion is up on YouTube and the O’Reilly Media Ignite Show page.

Tara and I cre­ated the pre­sen­ta­tion – with me doing most of the writ­ing and her doing most of the graph­ics. Our friend Michael Capoz­zola hand-drew the final slide for us (prim­i­tive tech­nique but effective!).

We attempt to tell a 14-billion year story in five min­utes: “A Tale of Two Ele­ments” takes us from the Big Bang to the Earth and touches on a prob­lem that many peo­ple are not aware of – the helium short­age (a local prob­lem). Enjoy!…

What is Ignite?

Read the rest of this entry »

Science Comedian Essay in Symmetry Magazine

March 31st, 2009

A few months ago I was asked to write an essay about being a sci­ence come­dian for a really cool pub­li­ca­tion – Sym­me­try Mag­a­zine – and it finally came out today!

Sym­me­try is “a mag­a­zine about par­ti­cle physics and its con­nec­tions to other aspects of life and sci­ence” – and it’s put out jointly by Fermi National Accel­er­a­tor Lab­o­ra­tory and the Stan­ford Lin­ear Accel­er­a­tor Cen­ter, two national labs funded by the Office of Sci­ence of the US Depart­ment of Energy.

It’s avail­able in print and online edi­tions – and any­one can receive a free sub­scrip­tion to the print ver­sion sim­ply by fill­ing out a form.  That’s a ben­e­fit of it being paid for by our tax dollars.

Sym­me­try is a great sci­ence mag­a­zine for the layper­son, giv­ing fas­ci­nat­ing glimpses into the world of sub­atomic par­ti­cles and gigan­tic par­ti­cle accel­er­a­tors and the peo­ple who attend to them.

The cur­rent issue is par­tic­u­larly good!

Ahem.

The pic­ture was taken by my friend John Gilbey dur­ing a ses­sion at Sci­Foo 2008 enti­tled “Seduc­ing the Pub­lic With Science.”

Link: 
Brian Malow Essay in Sym­me­try Magazine

Year of Science – JetBlue and Cell Phones

March 16th, 2009

In con­junc­tion with the COPUS Project’s Year of Sci­ence – and the March theme of Physics and Tech­nol­ogy – I offer up a bit of humor on bad web­site usabil­ity on the Jet Blue web­site and also a cou­ple thoughts on cell phones – loud users and shrink­ing sizes.

Do you think we’ll live to see implantable cell phones?…  or the end of obnox­iously loud cell phone talk­ers?  When will they real­ize that tech­nol­ogy is here to relieve the strain on their voices?

Comedy.com Brian Malow Videos

February 23rd, 2009

Comedy.com has some videos of me on stage at the San Fran­cisco Punch Line Com­edy Club, from about two years ago, I think. If you fol­low the links to their web­site, you can also rate the video…

Brian Malow – Exit Strat­egy link: 

http://www.comedy.com/video/brian-malow-exit-strategy

Brian Malow – Canine Lives link:
http://www.comedy.com/video/brian-malow-canine-lives

Brian Malow – Bed, Bath and Beyond Repair link:
http://www.comedy.com/video/brian-malow-bed-bath-beyond-repair

Science Comedian, Lincoln, and Darwin on Time.com

February 16th, 2009

If you know me, you prob­a­bly know I’ve always had a thing about Abra­ham Lin­coln.  Noth­ing kinky.  It goes back as far as 2nd grade – at least that’s my old­est sur­viv­ing writ­ing about Abe.

Now, com­bine that with my obvi­ous respect for Charles Dar­win – who shares his birth­day with Lin­coln (Feb­ru­ary 12, 1809) – and you’ll know how excited I am to have tied it all together in a video piece cel­e­brat­ing their birth­days – and also the 150th anniver­sary of the pub­li­ca­tion of Darwin’s “On the Ori­gin of Species.”

I wrote the piece and it was pro­duced by Craig Duff – and today it’s fea­tured on the front page of Time.com – as a “Must See” video about Lin­coln and Darwin.

“Lin­coln and Dar­win – Birth­days and Evolution”

Check it out, let me know what you think – and please feel free to for­ward it to EVERYONE!

* Update 2/23/09: Although it was only a “Must See” video for a short time, now it’s dis­played as one of the most pop­u­lar videos!

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.

Domain Name Buying Spree

January 12th, 2009

A clas­sic, from the archives…

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.