Science Comedian

Science Cookies

December 13th, 2009

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!

Current.com Science Comedian Interview

June 12th, 2009

Some­one I met via Twit­ter – Delia the Artist – just inter­viewed me for Current.com.  Cur­rent has a shorter, edited ver­sion of the inter­view but Delia is host­ing the full inter­view on her own site.

And, oh look!  Here comes the full ver­sion now…

Where does sci­ence meet com­edy?
Some­where in Brian Malow’s universe.

From muse­ums to com­edy clubs, Earth’s Pre­mier Sci­ence Come­dian brings the funny to the hilar­i­ous 5th install­ment of Sci­ence is Speaking!

Read the rest of this entry »

Vega Next 3 Exits

March 17th, 2009

Oops…  I must’ve taken a wrong turn at Arcturus…

From the Wikipedia entry on Vega:

Vega is the bright­est star in the con­stel­la­tion Lyra, the fifth bright­est star in the night sky and the sec­ond bright­est star in the north­ern celes­tial hemi­sphere, after Arc­turus.  It is a rel­a­tively nearby star at only 25.3 light-years from Earth, and, together with Arc­turus and Sir­ius, one of the most lumi­nous stars in the Sun’s neigh­bor­hood.

Vega has been exten­sively stud­ied by astronomers, lead­ing it to be termed, “arguably the next most impor­tant star in the sky after the Sun”.^[8] His­tor­i­cally, Vega served as the north­ern pole star at about 12,000 BCE and will do so again at around 14,000 CE. Vega was the first star, other than the Sun, to have its pho­to­graph taken and the first to have its spec­trum pho­tographed. It was also one of the first stars to have its dis­tance esti­mated through par­al­lax measurements.

Also:   Vega became the first star to have a car named after it when Chevro­let launched the Vega in 1971.

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

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…

Transporter Pie

December 23rd, 2008

Thanks­giv­ing in Atlanta.  My sis­ter served up a picture-perfect slice of apple pie for Tara.

Mine looked like a trans­porter accident:

It was still deli­cious, of course.  The repli­ca­tor just needs a lit­tle tweak­ing, is all.

New species of insect identified in eBay purchase

August 20th, 2008

Dr. Richard Har­ring­ton, vice-president of the UK’s Royal Ento­mo­log­i­cal Soci­ety, bought a fos­silized insect on eBay and it turned out to be a pre­vi­ously unknown species of aphid.

He bought the insect, which was encased in a 40-50 million-year-old piece of amber, for £20 (about $37).

“It’s a rather unusual route to come by (a new species),” Har­ring­ton explained.

I guess eBay hasn’t iden­ti­fied all the bugs in their system.

Read the full story on BBC News

The Galactomatic-1000 (TM) Basement Universe

August 20th, 2008

…Base­ment Uni­verses aren’t just for base­ments any more! The Galactomatic-1000 comes with an attrac­tive imi­ta­tion wood-grain negative-matter case that makes it per­fectly at home in your den or fam­ily room. The case reduces its total mass to zero, so you won’t have to worry about implod­ing your house into a black hole, or dis­col­or­ing the walls with unat­trac­tive grav­i­ta­tional redshifts (**)…

(**) Although the Galactomatic-1000 has no mass, it still has vol­ume, so a ship­ping and han­dling charge will apply.

- Carl Feyn­man,
Extropy #13

Once upon a time there was a lit­tle tran­shu­man­ist mag­a­zine called Extropy.  I prob­a­bly still have an issue or two around here some­where. Most of the con­tent was seri­ous but I remem­ber this one fake adver­tise­ment for The Galactomatic-1000 (TM) Base­ment Uni­verse.  It was hys­ter­i­cal.  Sci­ence com­edy at its best!

Writ­ten by Carl Feyn­man, com­puter engi­neer and son of Richard Feyn­man, the piece appeared in Extropy #13 (6:2), Third quar­ter 1994, page 39.

The mag­a­zine and the Extropy Insti­tute itself are now defunct.  But god bless the inter­net for its archival uses.

Wit­ness the glory of…  The Galactomatic-1000 (TM) Base­ment Uni­verse!

Bizarro Comedy Show – Two Funny Heads (Piraro & Malow)

August 19th, 2008

On 9/11 this year I’ll be per­form­ing at the leg­endary Pur­ple Onion with my friend, the leg­endary Bizarro car­toon­ist Dan Piraro:  The Bizarro Com­edy Show: Two Funny Heads.

Says Dan about me: “This guy is a long­time friend and a total pro. He’ll show me up, big time. I should actu­ally be open­ing for him but it’s my show so tough monkeys.”

Actu­ally, Dan is incred­i­bly funny and inven­tive on stage, and the most pro­lific artist I know. He pub­lishes a new car­toon EVERY DAY!  That’s seven new jokes a week, plus he draws them by hand in pen, scans them into the com­puter, and col­ors them himself.

We pre­vi­ously did a 10-state, 20-city, 30-show tour of polit­i­cal com­edy (“Bizarro’s Politi-Comedy-a-Go-Go”) dur­ing the ill-fated last pres­i­den­tial elec­tion sea­son, along with pals Michael Capoz­zola and Jeff Kreisler.  We had hoped to play a small part in unseat­ing the incum­bent, but, alas, failed.

How­ever, this time, we are so cer­tain to see a regime change that we don’t even feel the need to do polit­i­cal humor, per se.  Although you can always count on Dan to have some bit­ing com­men­tary on the state of the union.  This time, at the Onion.

Tick­ets for the Sept. 11 Pur­ple Onion show can be pur­chased here.