On 9/11 this year I’ll be performing at the legendary Purple Onion with my friend, the legendary Bizarro cartoonist Dan Piraro: The Bizarro Comedy Show: Two Funny Heads. Says Dan about me: “This guy is a longtime friend and a total pro. He’ll show me up, big time. I should actually be opening for him …
Bizarro Comedy Show – Two Funny Heads (Piraro & Malow) Read More »
[I’ve made one previous SciFoo post, in anticipation (and trepidation) of the approaching weekend.] Where to begin? How to capture the essence of such an overwhelming experience? Nature! O’Reilly! The Googleplex! 200 certified science geniuses! No less than four (4) Nobel Laureates! And other incomplete sentences! By design, Science Foo Camp has no real agenda …
Science Foo Camp 2008: Chapter 1 – The Wiki & What I Missed Read More »
I’ve been writing up my notes from Science Foo Camp, anxious to get something online about the unconference that ended a week ago already, and from which I’m still on a serious high. Meanwhile… symmetry breaking has a new review of my “Rational Comedy for an Irrational Planet” show. symmetry breaking is a blog supplement …
Symmetry Breaking Reviews Rational Comedy for an Irrational Planet Read More »
My mother used to tell me to “stand up straight.” It was one of her favorite things to say: “Stand up straight!” Many other people, I have discovered, also grew up hearing that phrase. It’s nearly universal. As if mothers were programmed to say it. In fact, I believe mothers have been telling their children …
I noticed a long time ago, whenever my mother would lose weight, my father would gain weight. And when my father lost weight, my mother gained weight. It was like the Conservation of Mass, within our family. Being the young scientist that I was, I developed a theory to explain the facts: You see, you …
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.
Once, when I was maybe ten years old, I asked my dad, “Why is the sky blue?” A pretty reasonable question for a little ten-year-old scientist. But he wasn’t in the mood. He said, “Go ask your mother.” And I thought: Great, she knows. I turned from my dad, and headed toward the kitchen, knowing …
I’m a Jew from Texas – a relatively rare breed, we can’t even propagate in the wild. So, before my migration to Northern California – which is counter to the eastward migratory pattern characteristic of my kind – a migration which, over time, deposits us in the Sunshine State like calcium carbonate on a stalagmite …
An excerpt from “The Final Frontier?” presentation I gave at the Marian Koshland Science Museum, in Washington, D.C., April 10, 2008. Mostly about cell phones, but a bit about Thomas Edison and the light bulb, Las Vegas, Windows Vista, and cost-benefits analysis. More to come… PaperOpus
My sister told me recently that she won’t eat Chinese food anymore because it has too much sodium. But isn’t that ridiculous? To single out one element from the Periodic Table? You’d have to have a pretty sensitive palette: “Oh, I don’t eat Mexican food… too much magnesium!“ or “Waiter, I’m sorry, I asked for …