Science Comedian

They Might Be Giants Video for Time

January 19th, 2010

Here Comes Sci­ence is sup­pos­edly a kids’ album but it’s my favorite They Might Be Giants album.  I love it.  And I had the oppor­tu­nity to inter­view John and John at their Brook­lyn rehearsal stu­dio, and attend one of their fam­ily shows at the Amer­i­can Museum of Nat­ural His­tory in New York City.  It’s our newest video for Time Magazine:

Link: They Might Be Giants of Science

Is Time Travel Possible?

January 9th, 2010

With so many recent movies and TV shows about time travel – Star Trek, The Time Traveler’s Wife, Lost, Flash­For­ward, Heroes – I thought it might be fun to explore the sci­ence behind this sci­ence fic­tion device.  Our most recent video for Time.com asks, Is Time Travel Possible?…

Science Cookies

December 13th, 2009

Awe­some sci­ence cook­ies in a series of posts to a food blog by a bio­log­i­cal anthropologist.

Aren’t all anthro­pol­o­gists bio­log­i­cal?  I’m a bio­log­i­cal comedian.

Ooh, she also has Space Invaders!

Videos for Time Magazine

November 20th, 2009

You can eas­ily access all the sci­ence videos I’ve made for Time Magazine’s web­site at this link – the results from a search on my name (Brian Malow) at Time.com.

Science Comedy Show in Sunnyvale

October 13th, 2009

Sci­ence Come­dian Brian Malow

presents

Ratio­nal Com­edy for an Irra­tional Planet

An evening of sci­ence humor

8pm, Wednes­day, Octo­ber 28, 2009

Rooster T. Feather’s Com­edy Club
157 W. El Camino Real
Sun­ny­vale, CA 94087
(408) 736-0921

I've Been Scooped Again

October 9th, 2009

A cou­ple of the pre­sen­ta­tions at today’s “Let’s Have An Awe­some Time Doing Sci­ence” con­fer­ence were con­ducted via Skype video.

Uri Alon of the Depart­ment of Mol­e­c­u­lar Cell Biol­ogy & Depart­ment of Physics of Com­plex Sys­tems at the Weiz­mann Insti­tute in Israel, gave a par­tic­u­larly fun pre­sen­ta­tion enti­tled, “Peace Love Sci­ence Hap­pi­ness.”

He per­formed his song “I’ve Been Scooped Again” – with audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion from across the globe.  Here’s a snippet:

Music & Lyrics ©2009 Uri Alon

“Let’s Have An Awe­some Time Doing Sci­ence” was a 3-day sci­ence con­fer­ence (and part uncon­fer­ence) held at UCSF’s Mis­sion Bay Cam­pus, Oct. 8-10, 2009. Sci­en­tists from var­i­ous fields and at all stages of career devel­op­ment met to dis­cuss ways to help make sci­ence as fun, sup­port­ive and nur­tur­ing as possible.

Visit the web­site

Ten Things I Love About My Academic Job

October 8th, 2009

Wrap­ping up a great first day of the “Let’s Have An Awe­some Time Doing Sci­ence!” conference/unconference, Ron Vale, Chair of the Depart­ment of Cel­lu­lar and Mol­e­c­u­lar Biol­ogy at UCSF, endeav­ored to impart some opti­mism and pos­i­tiv­ity to some pro­ceed­ings that would no doubt also explore some of the chal­lenges and down­sides of doing science.

He began by telling us that he has friends in more lucra­tive jobs that are anx­ious to retire.  They’re always talk­ing about how they hope to be able to retire five or ten years early – not because they have some­thing in par­tic­u­lar they long to do – they just don’t enjoy their careers and want them to end so they can do some­thing else.

Ron said that some­day he will retire from his posi­tion as a uni­ver­sity pro­fes­sor – but he doesn’t look for­ward to it.  Like his fam­ily, his job is inte­gral to his life and who he is.

His pre­sen­ta­tion was enti­tled, “Why I Love My Job,” and was struc­tured around a Letterman-style Top 10 List (though in no par­tic­u­lar order).  He spoke for sev­eral min­utes on each point, and the list itself doesn’t really do the pre­sen­ta­tion jus­tice, but he suc­cess­fully con­veyed how much he loves his job.

Ten Things I Love About My Aca­d­e­mic Job
by Ron Vale

1.  Free­dom to choose your own direc­tions (like Ira Mell­man said ear­lier, “I am seri­ally inter­ested”)
2.  Rein­vent­ing one­self through­out one’s career – flex­i­bil­ity
3.  Par­tic­i­pat­ing in a great era of dis­cov­ery
4.  Being part of an inter­na­tional com­mu­nity joined by com­mon inter­ests
5.  Pleas­ant trav­els
6.  A social and “youth­ful” job
7.  Many mea­sures of “suc­cess”
8.  Flex­i­ble daily sched­ule (“I don’t have to report to the office when the stock mar­ket opens”  “I own one suit and a bunch of t-shirts”)
9.  Doing some good
10.  Scholarship

Why is Science Important?

March 18th, 2009

Alom Shaha has made a won­der­ful 28-minute film enti­tled “Why is Sci­ence Important?”

Shaha is a physics teacher at an inner city school in the UK, and also a TV pro­ducer who spe­cial­izes in sci­ence pro­grams.  The film was made to be broad­cast on Teach­ers TV (a UK cable chan­nel) but it’s also avail­able online in excel­lent HD qual­ity – and can even be shared and embed­ded, as seen below (you can view a larger size if you click over to his site).

The web­site also con­tains “a col­lec­tion of thoughts from lead­ing sci­en­tists, pub­lic fig­ures …and you.”  Add your thoughts on why sci­ence is impor­tant and they’ll appear along­side the thoughts of Bad Astronomer Phil Plait, SETI’s Seth Shostak, LabLit’s Jen­nifer Rohn, and many others.

Visit Alom’s YouTube Chan­nel – sci­ence­films – to see more answers to the ques­tion “Why is Sci­ence Impor­tant?” as well as some of his other films.

Links:
Why is Sci­ence Impor­tant?
Bad Astron­omy blog
SETI
Seth Shostak
LabLit

Vega Next 3 Exits

March 17th, 2009

Oops…  I must’ve taken a wrong turn at Arcturus…

From the Wikipedia entry on Vega:

Vega is the bright­est star in the con­stel­la­tion Lyra, the fifth bright­est star in the night sky and the sec­ond bright­est star in the north­ern celes­tial hemi­sphere, after Arc­turus.  It is a rel­a­tively nearby star at only 25.3 light-years from Earth, and, together with Arc­turus and Sir­ius, one of the most lumi­nous stars in the Sun’s neigh­bor­hood.

Vega has been exten­sively stud­ied by astronomers, lead­ing it to be termed, “arguably the next most impor­tant star in the sky after the Sun”.^[8] His­tor­i­cally, Vega served as the north­ern pole star at about 12,000 BCE and will do so again at around 14,000 CE. Vega was the first star, other than the Sun, to have its pho­to­graph taken and the first to have its spec­trum pho­tographed. It was also one of the first stars to have its dis­tance esti­mated through par­al­lax measurements.

Also:   Vega became the first star to have a car named after it when Chevro­let launched the Vega in 1971.

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