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!

My Bizarros

May 4th, 2009

My friend Dan Piraro is the mas­ter­mind (and mas­ter hand) behind the car­toon Bizarro.

And, even draw­ing a daily car­toon – 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year – and being a most active ani­mal rights activist, he some­how finds time to make a daily blog post.  And his blog is hilar­i­ous.  He’s a very enter­tain­ing writer, he includes a lot of car­toons, and he delights in the play­ful use of hyper­links.  Click on every link – it’s always good for a bonus laugh.

Dan and I have col­lab­o­rated on a hand­ful of car­toons.  Basi­cally, I send him an idea every once in a while and, if he likes it, he plays with it, draws it, makes it a Bizarro cartoon.

Go check out his blog – and here are my favorite col­lab­o­ra­tions with genius Dan Piraro:

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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?

Stand Up for Evolution!

February 28th, 2009

Con­tin­u­ing our cel­e­bra­tion of 2009 as The Year of Sci­ence, this is my sec­ond video for the COPUS Project.

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Vega

January 27th, 2009

Oops.  I think I took a wrong turn…

Unconvincing Spam

January 15th, 2009

Some phish­ing attempts are bet­ter – more hon­or­able – than oth­ers.  They might be HTML, for instance, and care­fully mimic the look of an actual email from the par­tic­u­lar bank or busi­ness they’re spoof­ing.  They are evil, no ques­tion – but at least they have the respect to make a decent effort to hood­wink you.

There’s some­thing espe­cially insult­ing and infu­ri­at­ing about the much more com­mon spam we get – the uncon­vinc­ing spam:  plain text, ugly for­mat­ting, mis­spelled words, ter­ri­ble writ­ing, appar­ent lack of famil­iar­ity with the lan­guage they’re writ­ten in – in short, embar­rass­ingly poor execution.

Some­times I’m so offended by their appar­ent lack of respect and effort that I’m nearly tempted to reply.  Nearly, but not quite.

Here’s one I just got…

First of all, it’s sim­ply from “Sup­port.”  Then the sub­ject line is mis­spelled and has a dash that leads nowhere – a dash in-between nothing…

Sub­ject:  Messge from eBay -

Inside, I find one block of pathetic plain text that says…

Dear eBay Mem­ber,
This is your offi­cial noti­fi­ca­tion from eBay. Your online has expired.
If you want to con­tinue using our ser­vice you have to renew your online.
If not, your online will be lim­ited and deleted.
To con­firm your Account records click on the fol­low­ing link:

The link, of course, is scary-looking with the word “ebay” sprin­kled through it three times – but not in the one place you want to see it.  And then it is signed…

Thank you,
Scott R. Ship­man, CIPP Senior Coun­sel, Global Pri­vacy Prac­tices eBay Inc.

My online has expired??!!  My online will be lim­ited and deleted??!!

“Scott R. Ship­man,” you dis­honor me with your piti­ful lack of effort.  You call that a lure?  You are a poor excuse for a phisherman.