Science Comedian » technology

Tim Westergren of Pandora & the Music Genome Project

Brian — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 22:55:42 +0000

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

Brian — Thu, 20 May 2010 21:18:50 +0000

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.

James Cameron Interview About Avatar

Brian — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:26:29 +0000

New half-hour interview with James Cameron about the making of Avatar. From Popular Mechanics:

Why is Science Important?

Brian — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:30:02 +0000

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

Year of Science – JetBlue and Cell Phones

Brian — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:56:45 +0000

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?

Link: Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science

Hi-Tech Magic Teaser

Brian — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:36:31 +0000

At the end of the Siftables session, I met Seth Raphael (also here), who was sitting two seats over from me. We also happen to be sharing a stage together tonight at the LateTech event – I’ll be doing science comedy and Seth presents “a new technological magic show.”

In the three or four minutes we spoke, Seth gave me an absolutely amazing demonstration of his abilities.

He told me that when top hats and handkerchiefs were in style magicians developed presentations making use of them. But they are no longer in style. So, as a modern magician, he draws from more modern materials.

His demonstration involved a Google search that I defined.

He asked me to type two random words into the search field but not to hit Enter yet. I typed “turtle opinion.” He suggested I add a third word because my two words were going to generate too many hits. I added “candy.”

He jotted something down on a piece of scratch paper that I provided.

Then he asked me to hit Enter on my Google search and, as I did, he quickly put his paper facedown. He estimated that it took him about a third of a second to do so. The Google search took slightly less time.

Now here’s the amazing part:

Seth had written down on the piece of paper the number 2,510,001.

Google returned 2,510,000 results.

Then, apparently off the top of his head, he typed in a url at About.com that he claimed is the one result/page that Google missed.

And, as a bonus, there was another number that he’d first written and then scratched out… it was 3,540,000. And, when we removed “candy” from the search, so that it was simply on “turtle opinion,” that was exactly how many results the search returned.

How did he do it?

I can’t wait to see what else he has up his virtual sleeve.