Science Comedian

Tim Westergren of Pandora & the Music Genome Project

June 2nd, 2010

My newest video for Time Mag­a­zine is about Pan­dora, the inter­net radio ser­vice.  I vis­ited the Oak­land offices of Pan­dora and spoke with founder and Chief Strat­egy Offi­cer Tim West­er­gren.  We dis­cussed var­i­ous rec­om­men­da­tion engines used by other com­pa­nies and what makes Pandora’s Music Genome Project different.

Link to the Pan­dora video on Time’s website

H+ Summit @ Harvard

May 20th, 2010

I’m thrilled to be speak­ing at the H+ Sum­mit @ Har­vard. An amaz­ing lineup of 50 speak­ers includ­ing Ray Kurzweil, Stephen Wol­fram, and Aubrey de Grey.

The H+ Sum­mit @ Har­vard is an edu­ca­tional, and sci­en­tific out­reach event that cov­ers the themes of the impact of tech­nol­ogy on the human con­di­tion. It is hosted, and orga­nized by the Har­vard Col­lege Future Soci­ety, in coop­er­a­tion with Humanity+.

June 12-13, 2010.

TIME 100′s Elon Musk

April 30th, 2010

Time Mag­a­zine has announced the Time 100 – their annual list of the most influ­en­tial peo­ple of the year.  It’s divided into four main cat­e­gories:  Lead­ers, Heroes, Artists, and Thinkers.

One of those Thinkers is Elon Musk, co-founder of Pay­Pal and cur­rent CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX.

Jon Favreau – direc­tor of the Iron Man movies – wrote the entry on Musk, hav­ing used him as a model for the bil­lion­aire Tony Stark char­ac­ter.  David Clair and I made a new video about him:

Here’s the new video on Time’s site.

For a more in-depth piece, check out our pre­vi­ous piece about SpaceX and pri­vate enter­prise in space:

Space: The Pri­vate Frontier

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!

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 »

Science Comedian Riffs on Hydrogen and Helium at Ignite

April 28th, 2009

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?

Read the rest of this entry »

Science Comedian Essay in Symmetry Magazine

March 31st, 2009

A few months ago I was asked to write an essay about being a sci­ence come­dian for a really cool pub­li­ca­tion – Sym­me­try Mag­a­zine – and it finally came out today!

Sym­me­try is “a mag­a­zine about par­ti­cle physics and its con­nec­tions to other aspects of life and sci­ence” – and it’s put out jointly by Fermi National Accel­er­a­tor Lab­o­ra­tory and the Stan­ford Lin­ear Accel­er­a­tor Cen­ter, two national labs funded by the Office of Sci­ence of the US Depart­ment of Energy.

It’s avail­able in print and online edi­tions – and any­one can receive a free sub­scrip­tion to the print ver­sion sim­ply by fill­ing out a form.  That’s a ben­e­fit of it being paid for by our tax dollars.

Sym­me­try is a great sci­ence mag­a­zine for the layper­son, giv­ing fas­ci­nat­ing glimpses into the world of sub­atomic par­ti­cles and gigan­tic par­ti­cle accel­er­a­tors and the peo­ple who attend to them.

The cur­rent issue is par­tic­u­larly good!

Ahem.

The pic­ture was taken by my friend John Gilbey dur­ing a ses­sion at Sci­Foo 2008 enti­tled “Seduc­ing the Pub­lic With Science.”

Link: 
Brian Malow Essay in Sym­me­try Magazine

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?

Science Comedian in The Manitoban

February 24th, 2009

There’s a new Q&A with me up at The Man­i­to­ban – the inventively-named offi­cial stu­dent news­pa­per of the Uni­ver­sity of Man­i­toba, in Canada.

Stu­dent jour­nal­ist Trevor Beko­lay con­tacted me two weeks ago, intend­ing to write a short arti­cle about sci­ence and humor (or “humour,” as he calls it) but, after tran­scrib­ing our tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion, he decided to just run it as a Q&A with a brief intro…

“No one has explored the con­nec­tion between sci­ence and humour more than Brian Malow.  A vet­eran standup come­dian, Malow frames his witty obser­va­tions with sci­en­tific the­ory, ask­ing from his audi­ence a basic under­stand­ing of the uni­verse and reward­ing them with laugh­ter from start to finish.

“Malow is tread­ing in uncharted ter­ri­tory for a standup comic…”

Thanks, Trevor!

One of the top­ics we dis­cussed was sci­ence and sci­ence fic­tion, which leads me to my next post – Astron­omy in Sci­ence Fic­tion – about Mike Brotherton’s fan­tas­tic new anthol­ogy of sci­ence fic­tion sto­ries that fea­ture accu­rate por­tray­als of sci­ence concepts.

Links:
Q&A: Brian Malow, sci­ence comedian

Related post:  Astron­omy in Sci­ence Fiction