With the Laws of Science, You Must Be in Compliance

Couldn’t resist trying my hand at a little Dr. Suess style title for this one.  I had to in honor of the new PBS series The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That. Based on the Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library, each episode will take on a different area of science.

The Cat is voiced by Martin Short.  Mercifully, the whole show does not rhyme, just at the end during the wrap up.

Here’s the promo clip.

I hope they include some of the adult humor that made the Dr. Suess material so enjoyable…in addition to good science.  You can bet I’ll be looking for that!

Another Bad Universe Preview

Bad Universe premieres this Sunday, August 29th, at 10pm ET on the Discovery Channel.  Here is another preview involving high explosives.

I could have warned them about letting him play with explosives!  You will have to watch the show to see the super slo mo replays!

Max Headroom Comes to DVD (FINALLY!)

One of those cult classic television shows from the ’80s is finally making its debut on DVD: Max Headroom.  I have been waiting for this one for a long time.

I remember watching it in the spring of ’87 in college.  It came on in the fall of ’87 on Friday nights, but was low rated (competing against Miami Vice which I hated).  It was cancelled but they aired the remaining episodes in the spring opposite the Cosby show which led to me and some of my friend staking out a dorm television and refusing to change the channel to the outrage of Cosby show fans who had to walk all of 100 feet to the next dorm.

In many ways, Max was ahead of its time.  Remember that popular shows included the Cosby Show, Family Ties, Growing Pains and other gentle family friendly shows.  Max Headroom was gritty, fast paced, cynical, biting, snarky and satirical, riffing on cultural trends that are still relevant today.  The show’s ominous tagline is “20 Minutes Into the Future.”

The protagonist is investigative journalist Edison Carter and his computer generated alter ego Max Headroom.  The world is dominated by the major network television players.  Ratings are monitored by the second and it is illegal to turn off your television…and televisions are everywhere.  Carter deals with shady characters known as Blanks, referring to the fact that they have managed to erase all computer records of their existence (i.e. they have no papers!) to expose the truth.

I watched the show again in the early 2000’s on the now defunct Tech TV network.  Although the effects and fashions look dated, the stories held up surprisingly well and foretold many trends we see today (including being surrounded by televisions in public we cannot turn off or escape from).  The first episode deals with the newtork’s attempt to stop channel surfing during commercials, closely mirroring modern advertisers attempts to figure out how to create a commercial that will generate interest even when we fast forward through it with out DVRs.  Another episode dealt with a terrorist organization staging bombings on live television.  Hacking, piracy, body banks that harvest organs, and designer babies are among other topics the show took on which are just as timely today as they were over 20 years ago.

It comes out officially on Tuesday…I have my pre-order in on Amazon already and am watching the mailbox!

Phil Plait’s Bad Universe

My old friend Phil Plait has kept tweeting and talking about a Sooper Sekrit Project he has been working on for a while.  I kind of figured it was probably a television project for the Discovery Channel and it has finally been revealed: Phil Plait’s Bad Universe.  A trailer has been released.

Show air dates are not on there yet, but I will be sure to update this when I find out.  If you don’t have his books Bad Astronomy or Death from the Skies, check them out.  Both are geared toward a general audience and a very entertaining reads.

I have known Phil for years and worked with him on education programs for the Swift satellite and the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope (formerly known as GLAST).

Congratulations, Phil.  Just remember, although you may be becoming a television star, I still have a lower Bacon Number than you!

A Disappering Number

Thursday morning, NPR had a story about a play called A Disappearing Number now playing at the Lincoln Center Theater Festival.  Since I am bringing it up here, you can bet that there are plenty of science connections in this show.

A Disappearing number weaves a number of stories and themes together, some based in history and some original.  One of the threads involved a young Indian mathematician named Srinivasa Ramanujan who goes to Cambridge to study with G.H. Hardy during WWI.  Together, they worked on formulas which now have applications in string theory.  Hardy is famous for writing A Mathematicians Apology, one of the books to read if you want to know how a mathematician thinks.  The story is interwoven with that of modern day Ruth (a math professor) and her husband Al, a futures trader (which has plenty of math in its own right).

I love seeing science make its way onto the stage through shows such as Copenhagen, Proof, Next to Normal, Arcadia, the Farnsworth Invention and Hapgood to name a few.

I haven’t seen the show and it only runs for five days (two of which are gone) so unless you have tickets, you probably won’t see it live this time.  Fortunately, it is being recorded for a broadcast to movie theaters in October.  I just signed up for their twitter feed so I will not miss it!