Archive for the ‘FeaturedVideo’ Category

Hawking, Space Colonization and Jupiter Impacts on Time.com

“Sci­ence Come­dian: Talk­ing Hawk­ing, the Moon and Beyond” – our newest video essay is up on Time.com, as part of their cel­e­bra­tion of the 40th anniver­sary of the Apollo 11 moon land­ing. It’s about Stephen Hawk­ing and space colonization.

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International Year of Astronomy Video on Time.com

I have a new video essay on Time.com about Galileo and the Inter­na­tional Year of Astron­omy. It fea­tures exo­planet hunter extra­or­di­naire Geoff Marcy and Ben Bur­ress of the Chabot Space and Sci­ence Cen­ter.

Check it out. Let me know what you think. And get your own Galileo­scope!…

Science Comedian Riffs on Hydrogen and Helium at Ignite

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?

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Year of Science – Nobel, Edison and the Speed of Light

A sec­ond video for the COPUS Project’s Year of Sci­ence and the March theme of Physics and Tech­nol­ogy.  A few thoughts on…

Alfred Nobel, who funded the Nobel Prize with the for­tune he made from his inven­tion of dyna­mite, the first rel­a­tively sta­ble and safely-usable form of nitroglycerin.

Thomas Edi­son, who per­fected the incan­des­cent light bulb – and, with the phono­graph and movie pro­jec­tor, damn near invented mod­ern enter­tain­ment.  We should all give thanks!

And, then, one of my clas­si­cal, if not “clas­sic,” physics rou­tines about the speed of light…

Related posts:
Year of Sci­ence, March: Jet­Blue and Cell Phones
Year of Sci­ence, Feb­ru­ary:  Stand Up For Evo­lu­tion
Year of Sci­ence, Jan­u­ary:  Why is the Sky Blue?

Year of Science – JetBlue and Cell Phones

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!

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

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Science Comedian, Lincoln, and Darwin on Time.com

If you know me, you prob­a­bly know I’ve always had a thing about Abra­ham Lin­coln.  Noth­ing kinky.  It goes back as far as 2nd grade – at least that’s my old­est sur­viv­ing writ­ing about Abe.

Now, com­bine that with my obvi­ous respect for Charles Dar­win – who shares his birth­day with Lin­coln (Feb­ru­ary 12, 1809) – and you’ll know how excited I am to have tied it all together in a video piece cel­e­brat­ing their birth­days – and also the 150th anniver­sary of the pub­li­ca­tion of Darwin’s “On the Ori­gin of Species.”

I wrote the piece and it was pro­duced by Craig Duff – and today it’s fea­tured on the front page of Time.com – as a “Must See” video about Lin­coln and Darwin.

“Lin­coln and Dar­win – Birth­days and Evolution”

Check it out, let me know what you think – and please feel free to for­ward it to EVERYONE!

* Update 2/23/09: Although it was only a “Must See” video for a short time, now it’s dis­played as one of the most pop­u­lar videos!

Domain Name Buying Spree

A clas­sic, from the archives…

Year of Science – January – Why is the sky blue?

If you don’t already know, let me be the first to tell you: 2009 is the Year of Sci­ence!

It’s the 150th anniver­sary of the pub­li­ca­tion of On the Ori­gin of Species and the 200th anniver­sary of the birth of Charles Dar­win. Abra­ham Lin­coln was also born on the exact same day (and year) as Dar­win, and Lin­coln would found the Acad­emy of Sciences.

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Science Comedy Video

A mon­tage of some of my sci­ence com­edy rou­tines, taken mostly from two events at the Mar­ian Koshland Sci­ence Museum of the National Acad­emy of Sci­ences (in 2006 and 2007).

A cou­ple clips from my 2008 per­for­mance appear ear­lier in this blog (on cell phones and Karma) and more are com­ing soon.