Video
ksharpe | March 24, 2009Here's something new, ScienceBlogs Book Clubbers—hopefully the first of many. When we stumbled across Joanne Manaster's science book review channel on YouTube, we were riveted, and we thought you might be, too. We will be posting Joanne's videos here on an informal, ongoing basis, and we've listed her on our contributors page. Let us know what you think!
sciencepunk | March 14, 2009Musical parody duo Hard'n'Phirm are best known for their bluegrass medley of Radiohead songs, but also conjured up this nugget of surreal joy, a song about everyone's favourite irrational number, Pi.
sciencepunk | March 13, 2009
For the last few weeks, community action site Amplify Your Voice have been chronicling the extraordinary vestiges of the Bush administration's disastrous policies on sexual health and education: Derek Dye, the Abstinence Clown.
Derek Dye is supported by Elizabeth's New Life Center, a Christian-orientated organisation that received a federal grant of $800,000 in 2007. Dye appears to be a little more reticent to wear these religious overtones during his talks, preferring instead to compare pre-marital sex to juggling with machetes.
For a person whose success depends upon popularity, it was…
bioephemera | March 12, 2009You've probably heard about the man with the eyeball camera. Here's the most detailed (and sometimes graphic) video I've yet seen about documentary filmmaker Rob Spence (aka Eyeborg), who is working on getting his prosthetic eye replaced with a wireless eye socket camera:
I first encountered Spence in this writeup at Wired last fall. According to the new video, they've hit a few snags since then, but for some reason Spence is all over the news right now. And it's a safe bet he'll continue to be, if he becomes the first cyborg reporter with a bionic eyecamera!
More: a briefer AP video on…
sciencepunk | March 10, 2009
Some time back film-maker Alom Shaha asked me to contribute to a project he was working on entitled Why is Science Important?. I'm pleased to see that the finished film is now complete, featuring such luminaries as Adam-Hart Davis, Professor Robin Weiss, Prof. Marcus du Sautoy, A.C. Grayling and Susan Blackmore, and skipping from Antarctic survey to rocket lab to fusion reactor. You can watch the film in individual clips here, or as a single half-hour film here. You can also contribute your thoughts as to why science is important by leaving a message here.
sciencepunk | March 6, 2009
Thanks to BoingBoing for this great video of Mr George the SuperMagnetMan, vendor of all manner of high quality, super-powerful magnets. As he demonstrates in this video, these magnets aren't toys! Or rather they are toys, albeit ones powerful enough to crush your puny, fleshy fingers. The money shot is around the 3-minute mark...
So perhaps you've watched the lime getting pulverised into the beginnings of a good pie, and you're still not convinced these magnets are dangerous. Lucky then, that someone out there was unlucky so you don't have to be stupid. Here's the aftermath of Dirk's…
rallain | February 21, 2009This is one of my favorite demos. Easy to do and doesn't really require any equipment. The basic idea is that you support a meter stick horizontally with two fingers. Slide your fingers in and they will both meet at the center of mass. Here is a video.
Meterstick friction demo from Rhett Allain on Vimeo
So, how does it work? To explain this, you need to understand friction and equilibrium. Well, nobody really understands friction - but anyway..
First, what is equilibrium? Equilibrium means that an object's motion does not change. For this case that means that both it's velocity and it…
rallain | February 17, 2009The first thing from AAPT that I would like to mention is SAM Animation that Brian Gravel demonstrated. SAM is free software that allows for the easy creation of stop motion animations. Basically, you use a web camera to take successive pictures and put them together as a movie. The software includes features (I think they call it an onion view) to see your previous frame while you are making the next frame. I think the software also lets you do time-lapse videos (which I think are awesome but they take lots of patience).
Fine, it is cool, but what do you do with it? Besides make movies…
grrlscientist | February 16, 2009tags: Dancing cockatoo, Little Corella cockatoo, Bare-eyed cockatoo, Cacatua pastinator, Frostie, Shake your Tailfeather, streaming video
This streaming video documents a Bare-eyed (Little Corella) cockatoo, Cacatua pastinator, named Frostie, dancing to the song, "Shake Your Tailfeather" [2:42]
grrlscientist | February 13, 2009tags: The Blue Planet, marine life, evolution, streaming video
Thanks to one of my readers who wishes to remain anonymous, I have the great pleasure to own this fascinating BBC documentary, The Blue Planet [Amazon: $38.99], about those amazing creatures that live thousands of feet beneath the waves. I think you would love this series as much as I do. Narrated by the amazing David Attenborough [8:21]
cevans | February 12, 2009
In middle school, my friends and I secretly referred to athletic jocks as "creationists." The joke was, of course, that they -- with their neanderthal postures, fixation on brute strength and obsession with the less decorous emissions of the human body -- were "less evolved." Of course, this is before teaching evolution in schools was made illegal (or whatever).
It is in this spirit of snickering precociousness that I offer my birthday greeting to Charles Darwin, who would have been 200 years old today. Thanks, old chap! Many accolades are due; in your honor, and at the behest of SEED…
grrlscientist | February 12, 2009tags: The Blue Planet, marine life, evolution, streaming video
Thanks to one of my readers who wishes to remain anonymous, I have the great pleasure to own this fascinating BBC documentary, The Blue Planet [Amazon: $38.99], about those amazing creatures that live thousands of feet beneath the waves. I think you would love this series as much as I do. Narrated by the amazing David Attenborough [10:17]
grrlscientist | February 11, 2009tags: Charles Darwin, nature, evolution, streaming video
The life and times of Charles Darwin -- a failed student from a rich family whose five year voyage round the world inspired The Origin of Species, a groundbreaking work outlining the theory of evolution. Dr. Chapman explains how Darwin's ideas caused outrage in polite society at the time. [7:16]
grrlscientist | February 10, 2009tags: Charles Darwin, nature, evolution, streaming video
The life and times of Charles Darwin -- a failed student from a rich family whose five year voyage round the world inspired The Origin of Species, a groundbreaking work outlining the theory of evolution. Dr. Chapman explains how Darwin's ideas caused outrage in polite society at the time. [8:34]
sporte | February 9, 2009Have you ever wondered how to find things in the NCBI databases? Maybe you tried to find something but didn't know how it was spelled. Or maybe you tried to use a common name like "pig" or "deer" to find information in a database, not knowing that all the organism names are in Latin. Or perhaps you're wondering just what kind of information is stored for different kinds of records and if you could search for this information.
I wrote a book that covered this topic quite thoroughly, a couple of years ago, for the NCBI structure database. Now, I've decided to make some movies, too.
This…
grrlscientist | February 9, 2009tags: Charles Darwin, nature, evolution, streaming video
The life and times of Charles Darwin -- a failed student from a rich family whose five year voyage round the world inspired The Origin of Species, a groundbreaking work outlining the theory of evolution. Dr. Chapman explains how Darwin's ideas caused outrage in polite society at the time. [9:08]
grrlscientist | February 8, 2009tags: Charles Darwin, nature, evolution, streaming video
This video "has stunned scientists around the world" (really?) as this bird thinks critically, just like a human, to catch fish. Give this bird a piece of bread and watch it use it as fish bait [1:17]
Okay, a special question for all my mystery birds fans: can you name this species? What field marks led you to this identification? Oh, and have any of you ever seen something like this?
omnibrain | February 6, 2009In preparing for this issue of Encephalon I got access to the submission email account and realized that I had won 500,000.00 euro! I am in no way going to share this wealth with anyone else since it is my turn to do Encephalon. Here's the proof:
Dear Email ID Owner,
This is to notify you that you have won 500,000.00 euro in our online email Promo Draw in which email ID´s are picked randomly by computerized balloting, Your email address was amongst those chosen for this period.
contact: Dr. Mike Mejia, Accu Online Promotion.
!#$%!#$%@I'mnottellingyousinceIwon.com…
grrlscientist | February 4, 2009tags: David Attenborough, nature, evolution, environment, streaming video
British broadcaster Sir David Attenborough presents his views on Charles Darwin, natural selection, and how the Bible has put the natural world in peril in an exclusive interview for Nature Video [4:27]