Barbara McClintock and that famous joke about the gene, the cell, and the hatless Bolivian : The World's Fair

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- David Ng is Director of the AMBL at the University of British Columbia - fancy speak for a science teacher. Follow Dave on twitter @dnghub.

- Vince LiCata is a faculty member in Biological Sciences and Chemistry at Louisiana State University (LSU). His laboratory studies protein-ligand interactions, protein folding, and biothermodynamics. He also writes plays that have been produced in a number of different US cities, and, oddly enough, in Thailand.

- Benjamin Cohen was a co-founder and is now Blogger Laureate at The World's Fair. He teaches at the University of Virginia and is the author of Notes from the Ground: Science, Soil and Society in the American Countryside (Yale, 2009). Now you can find him at brcohen.net.

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Barbara McClintock and that famous joke about the gene, the cell, and the hatless Bolivian

Category: Knoxville '82: Where Miscellany Thrive
Posted on: November 26, 2008 8:30 AM, by Benjamin Cohen

(Cartoon by Randall Munroe, at XKCD, here)

Here's what we have: "ENTERTAINING SCIENCE" at the Cornelia Street Cafe.

It's the next in a monthly cabaret-like series run by Roald Hoffmann. He's a Nobel Prize winner, you know. Chemistry, '81. And he writes plays. Like Oxygen. We are not Nobel Prize Winners, as it were. Although I (Ben) did once win a baseball signed by the World Series-contending Baltimore Orioles in 1980 (after their '79 defeat) at their winter traveling caravan. That was huge. And it predates Hoffmann's Nobel Prize, you might notice.

This is the title for the December 7 show: A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE LAB

This is the line-up: Vince LiCata; David Ng; Benjamin Cohen; Stephanie McGuire.

This is the abstract:

In conversation with Lavoisier, the Comte de Buffon once noted that, despite the King's claims for France, he only did science for the jokes. Some time later this got Bohr laughing, since Buffon was actually famous for not getting Linnaeus's double entendres, all of which, when told by Bohr, put Heisenberg in stitches, explaining how Barbara McClintock came to tell that famous joke about the gene, the cell, and the hatless Bolivian. So you tell us, was there ever science without humor? Vince LiCata, David Ng & Benjamin Cohen will take time off from their university day jobs to ponder the query, reading and performing. Mezzo Soprano Stephanie McGuire leavens this mix with science-related arias. New material is possible. Accidents will happen. Asymptotes included. Azeotropes not.

This is the rock-bottom price, though Dave believes he can sneak folks in through the service entrance (He's Canadian, so maybe they do that up there.): Cover $10

Any questions? Of course you have some, I kid. I'd like to say there are more details on the way, and who knows, maybe there will be. But more likely it'll just be us posting more notices of the event on the assumption that the audience will mostly be stocked with second cousins whose mothers told them to support the family.