Monday - December 01, 2008

I think Steamboat has traveled to the other side of the Looking Glass

I’m happy to report that Steamboat McGoo’s Aardvarks and Asshats blog is coming back to life, with a whole new collection of bright and shiny teeth.

Sure, he says he spent the summer building a giant garage on his property. He’s even provided pictures. But I suspect faux-tography. I think Steamy has traveled to the dark side of old Alice’s looking glass, and has been creating some of the stories where hard science bumps uglies with the truly absurd, often involving democrats. How else can you explain this then? Not even cosmic string theory can explain Hillary as Secretary of State, and this one is far beyond that. So far beyond it, that not even Science Daily, where all tautologies are true for an absolute value of true, ran this one. Not even Pravda, the ultimate bastion of integrity for those folks who ride a bus so short it only has one seat, usually held together with duct tape. So that leaves just one suspect. You. Know. Who.

Will So You Think You Can PHD? be a new reality show, soon to compete with Dancing With The Nerds? If this latest craze gains any more popularity it soon will be!

Thirty-six different videos on YouTube prove that wrong, as researchers translate their doctoral dissertations into interpretive dances, both solo and ensemble.

Four women in black cavort to ‘80s new-wave dance tunes to explain the evolution of smell in mammals.

Three MIT grad students boogie to Curtis Mayfield’s “Move On Up” to represent nitrous oxide contribution to global warming.

Two lobsters gyrate with hula hoops to the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” as a passing seal senses their movements with his whiskers.

It’s all part of the second “Dance Your PhD” contest organized by John Bohannon, the “Gonzo Scientist” columnist at the esteemed research journal Science. [note: NOT Science Daily. Not even Science Monthly. Science. Period.]

In early October, he threw down a challenge to researchers in all fields in three categories—grad student, post-doctoral and professorial.

Each dance had to feature the author of the dissertation in a main role, and each clip had to be uploaded to YouTube by the deadline.

By 11 p.m. EST on Nov. 16, three dozen entries had come in, though it must be noted that at least five were filmed in the same room during an academic retreat at Harvard’s forest-research facility in rural Massachusetts that weekend.

Female researchers seem to have an affinity for Latin and swing dancing, while two different guys who’d studied at Berkeley chose hip-hop to explain polymerizing proteins and increasing rates of climate change respectively.

A panel of nine judges--the three winners of the first “Dance Your Ph.D.” contest, three scientists from Harvard University, and three artistic directors of the dance company Pilobolus--scored the dances on their ability to bridge the art and science worlds. Today, Science announces the winners of the 2009 AAAS Science Dance Contest in four categories: Graduate Students, Postdocs, Professors, and Popular Choice.

The winners? Endocrinologist Sue Lynn Lau of the University of Sydney, Australia, topped the grad-student category with a light-hearted ensemble examination of, as her dissertation title put it, “The Role of Vitamin D in Beta-Cell Function.”

The winner of the Popular Choice category was ... Markita Landry. Landry used a tango to convey her thesis, “Single Molecule Measurements of Protelomerase TelK-DNA Complexes.” Now, if that subject doesn’t make you get out your dancing shoes, nothing will!

You can find all the entrants here. My personal favorite is “Precipitation Initiation in Warm Clouds”, not only because it makes sense, but because I can actually pronounce the title. And because watching a 14 person tango is oddly enjoyable.

Posted by Drew458     on 12/01/2008 at 10:40 PM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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