Posts Tagged ‘astrophysics’
Bad Science in Star Wars
December 4th, 2010
FORA.tv has a short video of me performing at the recent Wonderfest science festival in Berkeley. I’m talking about bad science in science fiction movies, and the example in the clip is a classic moment from Star Wars…
Wonderfest
September 27th, 2010
Sunday, November 7, 2010. Once again I am thrilled to be performing at Wonderfest – the Bay Area’s long-running festival of science. This is their 12th annual event – and my third time participating.
As always, it’s a 2-day event – Saturday on the Stanford campus and Sunday on the Berkeley campus.
I am only attending Sunday, November 7, at UC Berkeley’s Stanley Hall. I will perform and then moderate a dialogue:
3pm: Science Laughs with Science Comedian Brian Malow
4pm: Moderator for “Do We Understand the Structure of the Universe?” – a dialogue between Lloyd Knox, a physics professor from UC Davis, and Chung-Pei Ma, an astronomy prof from Berkeley
And, in between my two slots, you can enjoy a live podcast of “This Week in Science” with my friends Dr.Kiki and Justin!
The Galactomatic-1000 (TM) Basement Universe
August 20th, 2008
…Basement Universes aren’t just for basements any more! The Galactomatic-1000 comes with an attractive imitation wood-grain negative-matter case that makes it perfectly at home in your den or family room. The case reduces its total mass to zero, so you won’t have to worry about imploding your house into a black hole, or discoloring the walls with unattractive gravitational redshifts (**)…
(**) Although the Galactomatic-1000 has no mass, it still has volume, so a shipping and handling charge will apply.
– Carl Feynman,
Extropy #13
Once upon a time there was a little transhumanist magazine called Extropy. I probably still have an issue or two around here somewhere. Most of the content was serious but I remember this one fake advertisement for The Galactomatic-1000 (TM) Basement Universe. It was hysterical. Science comedy at its best!
Written by Carl Feynman, computer engineer and son of Richard Feynman, the piece appeared in Extropy #13 (6:2), Third quarter 1994, page 39.
The magazine and the Extropy Institute itself are now defunct. But god bless the internet for its archival uses.
Witness the glory of… The Galactomatic-1000 (TM) Basement Universe!
