Pop Culture
drorzel | January 20, 2007I'm going to be on a few program items at Boskone again this year. The highly preliminary schedule I received a couple of days ago includes a Saturday afternoon talk on "Spooky Action at a Distance," which will be a sort of popular-audience explanation of the EPR Paradox and Bell's Theorem. "Weird Quantum Phenomena" was a hit last year, so I'm looking forward to this one.
Also on the list is "SF and the History of Science," described thusly:
Let's look at SF (or historical fantasy) involving the development of science: something that's interested writers in our genre from DeCamp to…
evolgen | January 17, 2007Esquire runs a regular article called "Answer Fella" in which stupid questions get stupid answers. In this month's edition we find out whether cloned humans have souls, why South Dakota's badlands are called badlands, and how many potatoes make up a bag of chips. My favorite answer, however, is to the question of what happens to the bodies of large animals when they die at the zoo:
According to Brandie Smith, director of conservation and science for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, a necropsy--an animal autopsy--is performed first, to determine the cause of death and for research. "We…
evolgen | January 15, 2007T-Rex thinks he's eliminated zombies with logic. The basic idea: Zombies depend on human brains to survive, but they also must bite humans (turning them into zombies) to create more zombies. If zombies were really good at catching humans and eating their brains, there would be no more humans and the zombie population would die off. Conversely, if the zombies had trouble getting to the human brains, they could convert humans into zombies (by biting them without eating their brains), but they would starve due to brain deprivation.
Anders Sandberg disagrees, and he's done the simulations to back…
purepedantry | January 3, 2007A UK charity called Sense About Science is taking on celebrities who misrepresent scientific reality:
MELINDA MESSENGER, TV PRESENTER
"Why should I allow my body or my children to be filled with man-made chemicals, when I don't know what the health effects of these substances will be."
Dr John Hoskins, toxicologist: "Away from the high doses of occupational exposure a whole host of unwanted chemicals finds its way into our bodies all the time.
"Most leave quickly but some stay: asbestos and silica in our lungs, dioxins in our blood. The most important thing is dose: one aspirin cures a…
drorzel | January 3, 2007Today is the first day of classes, so I'm going to be kind of busy at work. Here's a bit of pop-culture silliness to lighten things up while I'm teaching and setting up labs.
The Neil Diamond chestnut "Sweet Caroline" got brought up in a back-channel discussion, prompting much revulsion from the older members of the ScienceBlogs collective. I'm in the age range where the song was just starting to acquire kitsch value, so I don't really mind it.
It occurs to me, though, that between Neil Diamond and OutKast (specifically, the song "Roses"), pop music has been pretty rough on people named "…
evolgen | December 25, 2006
James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, has passed away at the age of 73 in Atlanta, Georgia. The world is a slightly less funky place today. I've posted some videos -- in honor of the hardest working man in show business -- below the fold.
The early years:
Eddie Murphy as James Brown in "Celebrity dHot Tub Party":
James Brown -- along with Clive Owen, Gary Oldman, and Marilyn Manson -- in BMW Films' "Beat the Devil". Brown plays a Robert Johnson character looking to renege on his deal with the devil:
drorzel | December 4, 2006Another idle thought inspired by the Bond movie (I may or may not post comments about the movie as a whole, but you can check out Kate's spoiler-laden comments. I liked it a little more than she did, but I'm more familiar with the genre, and willing to cut them more slack...):
From what I can tell, this movie appears to have gotten about 50% of its budget from product placement. Any time Bond uses his laptop, the shot is carefully set up to put the big "VAIO" logo right in the center of the screen. His magic cell phone gets almost as much screen time as the girl, and there's even a scene…
drorzel | December 3, 2006Kate and I saw the new Bond flick last night (short review: nice re-launch of the franchise, Daniel Craig does a great job with the role), and as the final credits started to roll, they played that signature James Bond riff-- the "dum di-di dum, da-da-da" bass line, the "da-da di dahh, di dah-daaaah" brass thing. You know the song I mean-- it or something like it is in pretty much all of the movies.
It made me wonder about the guy who wrote it, though. Does he think of it as the crowning work of his career, or is it a cheap bit of hackwork that he banged out over a bottle of muscatel in 1967…
drorzel | November 22, 2006Kate and I have a Netflix subscription that we've mostly been using to obtain various anime series. We're running a little low on Japanese cartoons, though, having recently finished Martian Successor Nadesico, and with only four discs left of Trigun (two of which will probably be polished off while lolling around Friday after hosting Thanksgiving dinner).
I've got other stuff on the Netflix queue-- various movies, season two of The Wire-- but I'm always looking for suggestions. So, recommend some DVD's: what movies, tv shows, or foreign cartoon series should I be adding to the Netflix queue…
evolgen | November 1, 2006You are all the products of retard fish having sex with squirrels. And monkeys are involved somehow. Anyway, someone needs to post Mr. Mrs. Garrison's lesson on evolution from tonight's South Park. All I've got is this:
All hail the retarded fish frogs!!
But Dawkins having the hots for Garrison is a bit too much. Isn't he married to a sex symbol?
evolgen | October 25, 2006Chuck Norris doesn't "believe" in evolution. And he's writing about it in the Wing Nut Daily. I won't link to the actual article, but you can read about it here. Thanks Bora for ruining my appreciation for the Texas Ranger.
To make up for bringing you that bad piece of news, here are the first four minutes of Borat's movie:
evolgen | October 16, 2006This video confirms two things I've long suspected: nature is really cool and white people can't dance. Okay, I have independent evidence for the second thing, but check out this little fella's moves:
He really shakes a proverbial tail feather. But like human males, the only reason for this guy to get on the dance floor is so that he can score a little trim. Unless that male is Michael Jackson, who dances 'cause he's freakin' weird.
evolgen | September 30, 2006Thomas Huxley was known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his many public defenses of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. Richard Dawkins has been labeled "Darwin's Rottweiler", drawing a parallel between Dawkins's current role as a popularizer of science (and defender of reason) and Huxley's as a public face for Darwin. All that is well and good, and you probably knew it already. But when can we start calling PZ Myers "Dawkins's Pit Bull"?
evolgen | September 24, 2006I'm so vain I think I every single song is about me.
Dave wants us to "make a music mix that is a reflection of your informative years." I have no idea what he means by informative years, so I'm going to give you a list of a dozen or so songs (Dave's suggested amount) that I like, each by a different band. The order makes sense to me, but it probably won't make sense to you.
Faith No More - Falling to PiecesFaith No More's The Real Thing was the first album I ever bought with my own money. I would listen to the album over and over, singing along to the lyrics in the liner notes. Once I…
stcynic | September 23, 2006The World's Fair has a post up asking the ScienceBloggers the following question:
If you make a music mix that is a reflection of your informative years, what would those dozen or so songs be, and maybe more interesting, why? You don't have to be proud of the song choices - they're not necessarily a reflection of taste, more about your history.
Being a music fanatic myself, I'll gladly take up this challenge. I do wonder, though, what the parameters are of our "formative years" are. But rather than answer that question, I'm just going to assume the broadest possible answer and write of my…
evolgen | September 6, 2006A lot of people at ScienceBlogs and around the blogosphere have been chattering about the death of Steve "Croc Hunter" Irwin, but here at evolgen we know who the real killer was:
We're on the ball like the Boulder District Attorney's Office. Now, we're off to arrest Kevin Vranes for sexually harassing the football team. They lost to Montana State, Kevin. Montana State!
evolgen | September 3, 2006In case you don't know why, check this out. Even Stephen thinks you better watch your back:
purepedantry | August 31, 2006I don't even want to know how he got it:
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes have yet to show their baby daughter off in public, but eager fans were given an unusual preview with the chance to see a bronze cast depicting her first solid stool.
The scatological sculpture -- more doodoo than Dada -- is purportedly cast from 19-week old Suri's first bowel movement and will be shown at the Capla Kesting gallery in Brooklyn, New York, before being auctioned off for charity.
The artist behind the work, Daniel Edwards, previously courted controversy with a life-size nude sculpture of pop star Britney Spears…
drorzel | August 28, 2006Here's the other quote from Chuck Klosterman IV that I mentioned earlier, this one from an essay in Esquire on people who feel betrayed by pop culture:
Do you want to be happy? I suspect that you do. Well, here's the first step to happiness: don't get pissed off that people who aren't you happen to think Paris Hilton is interesting and deserves to be on TV every other day; the fame surrounding Paris Hilton is not a reflection on your life (unless you want it to be). Don't get pissed off because the Yeah Yeah Yeahs aren't on the radio enough; you can buy the goddamn album and play "Maps" all…
drorzel | August 28, 2006It feels a little silly to quote Chuck Klosterman as some sort of Deep Thinker-- this is a guy whose whole claim to fame revolves around the expression of weirdly absolute opinions about pop culture ephemera, after all. Then again, the best political reporting being done these days is done by a pair of comedy shows, so maybe it's not so stupid.
Anyway, there were two passages in his new collection, Chuck Klosterman IV, that really struck a chord when I read them the other night. Well, OK, there were more than two, but there were two that struck me as worthy of blog posts. Here's the first:
It…