Science Comedian » Earth http://www.sciencecomedian.com Brian Malow Wed, 26 Oct 2011 00:38:26 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 The Scientific Mind Behind FlashForward http://www.sciencecomedian.com/blog/2009/10/the-scientific-mind-behind-flashforward/ http://www.sciencecomedian.com/blog/2009/10/the-scientific-mind-behind-flashforward/#comments Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:50:18 +0000 Brian http://www.sciencecomedian.com/blog/?p=965 Our most recent video for Time.com is about the new ABC series, “FlashForward.”  The show is based on the 1999 novel by Canadian science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer, whom we met this summer at the Launch Pad…

]]> Our most recent video for Time.com is about the new ABC series, “FlashForward.”  The show is based on the 1999 novel by Canadian science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer, whom we met this summer at the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop.

I went down to Los Angeles to meet Rob on the set of the show.  Well, actually, it was a location shoot for, I believe, the 7th episode of the first season (yeah, I said, “first”!).

In Rob’s book, an experiment at the Large Hadron Collider causes everyone in the world to experience a bit of their own future.  In the television series, we do not yet know what causes the flashforward but since Sawyer is a fan of science as well as science fiction, we took the opportunity to talk about a story that has captivated the press for the past couple years – that the LHC will create micro-black holes that will swallow up the Earth.

See the video – and many more – at Time.com.

]]> http://www.sciencecomedian.com/blog/2009/10/the-scientific-mind-behind-flashforward/feed/ 2 Science Comedian Riffs on Hydrogen and Helium at Ignite http://www.sciencecomedian.com/blog/2009/04/science-comedian-hydrogen-and-helium-ignite/ http://www.sciencecomedian.com/blog/2009/04/science-comedian-hydrogen-and-helium-ignite/#comments Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:39:10 +0000 Brian http://www.sciencecomedian.com/blog/?p=808 Our Ignite presentation is up on YouTube and the O’Reilly Media Ignite Show page.

Tara and I created the presentation – with…

]]> 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?

The evening consisted of about fifteen 5-minute PowerPoint presentations.  Each presenter gets 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds.  Within those limitations, you create a presentation that should be of interest to geeks.

Since Brady Forrest and Bre Pettis started Ignite in Seattle in 2006, events have been happening all over the world and hundreds of presentations have been given.  Recently, they started putting them online, one per week, with some post-production added.  Ours is Episode 11.

It was presented on April 1, 2009, at the Ignite SF event, which was also a party for the Web 2.0 Conference going on that week (hence, the 2.0 reference in the piece).

Links:

Brian Malow – Ignite Presentation – “A Tale of Two Elements”

Brian Malow on Hydrogen and Helium at O’Reilly’s Ignite Show page

For more information about Ignite, visit http://ignite.oreilly.com/show/

Ignite on YouTube:  http://www.youtube.com/ignite

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