Science Comedian

Science Comedy at the Purple Onion, San Francisco

August 9th, 2010

Thurs­day, Sept. 23, 2010

An evening of sci­ence com­edy – and a cou­ple guests on the show.  More details com­ing soon!

San Francisco’s Pur­ple Onion, in North Beach, is an awe­some venue with a lot of history.

140 Colum­bus Avenue
San Fran­cisco, CA 94133
(415) 956-1653

SkeptiCal 2010 Science & Skepticism Conference

April 19th, 2010

I will be speak­ing at Skep­ti­Cal 2010, the North­ern Cal­i­for­nia Sci­ence & Skep­ti­cism Con­fer­ence in Berke­ley, April 24.

Other speak­ers include Euge­nie Scott, Seth Shostak, Kirsten San­ford, Brian Dun­ning, and more.  See the list of speak­ers.

• Date: Sat­ur­day, April 24, 2010. 9AM to 6PM.
• Loca­tion: Brower Cen­ter, Berke­ley, California.
• Spon­sors: Bay Area Skep­tics and Sacramento-Area Skep­tics
• Tick­ets: Tick­ets are $40 for the reg­u­lar reg­is­tra­tion and $55 for reg­is­tra­tion and a t-shirt. See the fan­tas­tic t-shirt design by Ranch7 Cre­ative. This event is expected to sell out, so please reserve your ticket as soon as possible!

Green Vanity License Plates

April 1st, 2010

I’ve been per­form­ing stand up com­edy for two decades. I get all the stage time I need.  But I real­ize not every­one has such an out­let. And, yet, humans are such com­pli­cated, emo­tional crea­tures.  They have so much to express!

That’s why I’ve always been fas­ci­nated with van­ity plates and bumper stick­ers.  And I’ve always lumped them in with answer­ing machine out­go­ing mes­sages and Karaoke.  I think, for some peo­ple, these might be the only out­lets they have through which to express them­selves to the world.  They have so much to say – and so lit­tle space!  But humans are creative.

And humans that drive the Toy­ota Prius Hybrid Vehi­cle in the San Fran­cisco Bay Area…  well, they are par­tic­u­larly cre­ative.  And con­sis­tent with their mes­sage.  I keep see­ing hybrids with green-themed van­ity plates.  Not every one below is a Prius, but most of them are.

Have you seen any other van­ity plates with envi­ron­men­tal themes or mes­sages?  Let me know!

Thanks, as always, to Tara for photo touch-up and editing!

Science Comedian on BoingBoing

November 23rd, 2009

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!

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 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.

Meteor Caught on Video Over Edmonton

November 25th, 2008

A police dash cam caught this amaz­ing mete­oric fire­ball on video near Edmon­ton, Alberta, Novem­ber 20, 2008.  It lights up the sky!

Link to video

For a bit more detail, here’s a story in the Edmon­ton Sun and a story in the Edmon­ton Jour­nal.  Look under “Related Links” for addi­tional video.

I’ve only wit­nessed one or two good meteor show­ers, away from city lights (and, in the case of San Fran­cisco, away from the Fog).  I hope to see more.

Accord­ing to Star­Date – the pub­lic edu­ca­tion and out­reach arm of the Uni­ver­sity of Texas McDon­ald Obser­va­tory – there is one remain­ing meteor shower for 2008, the Gem­i­nids, the night of Decem­ber 13.  But, they also point out, there will be a gib­bous moon that night, over­pow­er­ing all but the bright­est meteors.