Interview with Ian Brooks

A few years ago, I came a across a website called LabLit. I know it well now, and have been featured on their podcast and wrote a review for them, but back in 2006 I had never seen the site before. One of the pieces that caught my eye at the time was The Scientific Chat-up by Ian Brooks. Here’s a part of it:

“I see Mike flush and hang his head. Don’t do it Mike! I’m thinking. But as if on cue, he makes the lemming-like suicidal leap from the precipice of true love and says: “I’m in graduate school. Studying physics.”

A sudden chill descends upon the table. Giggles break out near my left shoulder. All my hard work is slowly coming undone! Why oh why, I think to myself, couldn’t he lie? He’s supposed to say he’s a musician; that’s my line too!”

A few weeks ago I caught up with Ian, and he talked about the secret life of a PhD among musicians, and tried to figure out what’s cooler: drums or neuroscience.

(The audio quality is not that great – I had to split the tracks because I forgot to use headphones on my side, and I had to cut out a large chunk of my part with my first few questions for that same reason, but hopefully it’s still coherent even without my opening questions.)

Cosmic Music

I just moved from Toronto to Cambridge (UK) so unfortunately I can’t go here, but if you are in Toronto, you should check out this talk next Thursday:

Cosmic Music – Astronomy through the eyes of the Billboard 100
Date: Thursday, February 4, 2010
Time: 8:10pm – 10:00pm
Location: Bahen Centre Room 1160 and McLennan Physical Labs 15th/16th Floors, 40 St. George Street, Toronto, ON

The passion for astronomy is universal and even plays itself out in music. In this talk, I (Mubdi) will be looking at tracks from the Billboard Hot 100 and the astronomy concepts they evoke: from general relativity to the birth of stars. Come join us for a whimsical take on North America’s favourite music and Astronomy!

Mubdi Rahman is a PhD student in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto. His primary research interests include understanding the effects of star formation on the environment of the galaxy as a whole. An avid astronomer from even his earliest of years, Mubdi is active not only in research but also in the promotion and outreach of Astronomy and Science as a whole.

Scientists and musicians on Twitter

Not my project, but David Bradley has compiled a Twitter list of scientists who are also musicians (or vice versa). There are now 35 people on the Twitter list, and the first 25 are also on his blog.
A few people on that list I already knew of, or had jotted down their name for my own project, so I’m keeping an eye on this.

(And if you’re feeling really bored, you can also follow me on Twitter. I occasionally get sick of it and delete all my Tweets and stay off it for a few weeks, but I’m using it at the moment. It’s more music than science lately, and a lot of moving woes. I’m moving to the UK in three weeks, to start a new job there, so selling my furniture is my current main project. Anyone want a coffee table?)

Lab Waste screening in New York

My little film about Lab Waste is screening on October 20th as part of the “Quirky Science Shorts” programming at the Imagine Science Film Festival in New York. Yay! Go see it! That evening is all shorts, so you can go home after that with the accomplished feeling of having seen nine movies that day.

I don’t know if I’ll be there myself. I’m already going to New York next week, and the cheap bus tickets seem to only go one way: there but not back.

Interview with Michael Nestor

I’m currently traveling, but right before I left I talked to Michael Nestor over Skype. He is a fellow Nature Network blogger, and a scientist, and he plays with The Seldon Plan. The band is touring the north-eastern part of the US this summer, and in the interview Michael talks about how he has been able to combine music with science.

Interview with David Kroll

I was supposed to interview David Kroll (Abel Pharmboy) back in January, but didn’t get around to it back then, and finally made good on that promise this weekend. Good timing, since he has his first solo gig tonight. This is a 7 minute fragment from a 20 minute conversation. I tried to edit in my questions, but then didn’t have time to do it properly, so this is just a hasty cut of just David talking, but you get the gist of it. It’s a history of what he’s been doing musically, leading up to today, and with some comments about the combination of science/music.

Interview with Cameron Neylon

This is the last of the January interview snippets, which I kept forgetting to upload. It’s Cameron Neylon, talking about how he almost studied music instead of science. I first found out about Cameron’s connection to music to this old blog post of his, but managed to not make the connection when I met him for the first time a few months after that. Much later (after I had run into him twice at science communication events) I found that bookmarked blog post again and put two and two together.

Diane Nalini CD Release

On May 24th, physicist and jazz singer Diane Nalini released her CD “Kiss Me Like That” at Hugh’s Room in Toronto.

The theme of the entire CD is astronomy, and all songs are somehow related to the stars or the moon. But the title track is the geekiest one: To remember the order of stars and brown dwarfs, indicated as OBAFGKMLT, astronomy students often learn a mnemonic “Oh, be a fine girl, kiss me like that”. Diane turned this mnemonic about stars into a song about human relationships. It’s a great tune regardless of the origins of the refrain, but the science background just makes it slightly more awesome…

HotDocs notes

I almost missed HotDocs entirely, because SciBarCamp was on May 9 and the preparations took up all my time, but I managed to catch one screening on May 10. It was a double-feature: Laughology with Amerika Idol.
I didn’t buy tickets beforehand, so I lined up in rush line. I was early enough to be the second in line. Often when I’m at the start of a rush line, I end up getting in for free, and this time I even scored two free tickets: someone gave me her 10-screening pass with one film left, which I could exchange for a ticket once they let us buy them, but just before they started letting the rush line in, the director of Laughology gave his remaining two free tickets to the first two people in line. So, thanks, Albert Nerenberg, for the ticket!

The first screening was Amerika Idol, which was about a statue of Rocky in a small village in Serbia. I was looking mainly at technical things, and noticed that they re-used (and mirrored) some footage over and over again, and had some very low quality clips of news footage in there. No complaining – it made me feel better about having no budget for the science/music project…. The film itself was about 30 minutes long, and went into some history about the original Rocky statue in Philadelphia as well. It was uplifting and cheerful, and went well with the next film:

The second screening was Laughology, which really did make everyone laugh. Especially the clips of the guy with the funniest laugh in the world. Nerenberg put himself in the film, as he went on a quest to get his laugh back. There were some silly re-enactment clips of Neanderthals laughing – a doc technique I’ve seen before, but never done in such a slapstick way. (Usually re-enactments are serious and boring) Another observation: the interviews were often in front of a plain white background. I’m not sure what the goal of this was, but it gave the impression that all these people were in the same location, when I’m pretty sure that they weren’t. (It was shot all over the world!) So it probably contributed to some “we’re all the same” feeling. It might also have had to do with editing: the shots of Nerenberg were probably added later, and by putting him in front of the white background as well, it seemed like it was shot at the same time as the other interviews.
Anyway, the film was overall hilarious: watch the trailer below:

HotDocs

Toronto’s annual documentary film festival, HotDocs, kicks off in two days. Every year I manage to see anywhere between three and ten films there, and two years ago I attended an industry party, but this year I’ll be happy if I make it to two films on rush line. I made a schedule of what I want to see (including lots of films about music or interview-heavy films) on B-side, but if I overlay that with my work schedule, orchestra rehearsals, and SciBarCamp, not much is left…
A HotDocs event (no films, but an industry event) is going on at Hart House when we also have our SciBarCamp opening night, and I fear that might be the closest I’ll come to it this year. Ugh, why is everything always at the same time!