Science Comedian

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.