Science Comedian

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.

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…

Year of Science – January – Why is the sky blue?

January 4th, 2009

If you don’t already know, let me be the first to tell you: 2009 is the Year of Sci­ence!

It’s the 150th anniver­sary of the pub­li­ca­tion of On the Ori­gin of Species and the 200th anniver­sary of the birth of Charles Dar­win. Abra­ham Lin­coln was also born on the exact same day (and year) as Dar­win, and Lin­coln would found the Acad­emy of Sciences.

Read the rest of this entry »

LabLit Interviews Science Comedian

November 24th, 2008

I was gone but now I’m back, apparently.

Rea­son­ably objec­tive third-party proof of my exis­tence is to be found in the form of an inter­view with me on LabLit.com – a web­site ded­i­cated to “the cul­ture of sci­ence in fic­tion & fact.”

I met LabLit edi­tor Jen­nifer Rohn at Sci­Foo this year.  She’s a cell biol­o­gist at Uni­ver­sity Col­lege Lon­don, a writer for pub­li­ca­tions such as Nature, and a fre­quent blog­ger.  Her first novel, Exper­i­men­tal Heart, has just been pub­lished, too.  It’s avail­able from Ama­zon or directly from the pub­lisher, Cold Spring Har­bor Lab­o­ra­tory Press. And, of course, it’s an exam­ple of “lab lit” – it’s described as a “roman­tic thriller set against the back­drop of con­tem­po­rary sci­en­tific research.”

Jenny attended my sci­ence com­edy ses­sion at Sci­Foo, and I par­tic­i­pated in a ses­sion that she and John Gilbey pre­sented enti­tled, “Seduc­ing the Pub­lic with Sci­ence.”  It was one of my favorite ses­sions and was attended by Ann Druyan, Brother Guy Con­sol­magno, Kevin Gra­zier, Ben Goldacre, Tim O’Reilly, Euge­nie Scott, Shel­ley Batts and others.

Any­way, Ian Brooks inter­viewed me and LabLit is an excel­lent web­site worth explor­ing and here’s a great place to start:

LabLit’s inter­view with sci­ence come­dian Brian Malow.

Science Foo Camp 2008 on Nature Podcast

August 20th, 2008

While at Sci­ence Foo Camp 2008, I grabbed a few quick inter­views for the Nature pod­cast, which was posted today on Nature.com.  Just a few sound­bites from atten­dees David Bauer, Brian Cox, Chris Patil, and Mar­tin Rees. And a shout out to me.

It’s the lat­est episode so, for now, you can find it here.  When it gets moved to the archive, I’ll link to its per­ma­nent location.*

Thanks to every­one who took the time to speak to me!

* Update:  Here’s the pod­cast episode (21 August 2008) in mp3.  And also a text tran­scrip­tion.