Archive for the 'Science' Category

With his hair helmet shining, noted mentalist and super cool guy, Sam Eaton took the stage and announced: “TONIGHT THERE WILL BE NO SECRETS!” I winced as I couldn’t help but wonder if he was going to tell the audience that I wasn’t toilet trained till first grade (he didn’t).

In truth I had no clear idea as to what a mentalist was or what they did and I was a little apprehensive. I needn’t have worried. Sam Eaton was more than a mentalist; this man was a master performer.

EVERY feat of mystery he performed he used a volunteer from the Petri dish that was the audience. The night I went the soup included: smarmy suburban 10-year-old boys, the Scottish, guys in ties, blue hairs and me!

And all of us fell in love with the man as over the course of 90 painfully short minutes he won our hearts. He commanded all of our attention, weaving a rich tapestry of bad jokes and mysterious feats of mental agility.

He had the kind of charisma that people said David Koresh or Hitler used to possess, only you know in a non-genocidal Christ complex having kind of way.

Now, I’m not saying I have a “mancrush” on the dude, but, well, my girlfriend said it best when she told me she found him, “kinda dreamy in a Gabe Kaplan/ Egon Spangler kind of way.”(I love my girlfriend.)

I won’t tell you exactly what his act consisted of, first off because it would rob you of the wonderment of the experience. But also because I don’t think I’m a good enough writer to capture the uniqueness of the evening.

I will however tell you that he completely blew my fragile lil’ mind by just knowing things that he couldn’t possibly know. In closing: this was one of the few experiences in my life that I was glad I was sober for. See it, trust me.

DIG IT!

• The Jewel Box Theater is on the 10th floor of a building whose ONLY elevator fits 7 people at a time: arrive early
• For future show times and general informational type shit click here!
• Sam produces a show called, “Paul Carpenter’s: The Psychic”
• Paul is a super cool guy who holds a world record for the fastest escape from a straight jacket

• The Jewel Box Theater is also the home of the Guilty Pleasures Burlesque and Vaudeville Show.

If you dig astrology; or gazing up at the night sky; or just like catching an early evening buzz and staring at big, bright, shiny shit, then you need to check out Tuesday nights at the Hayden Planetarium. Just about every Tuesday night at 6:30 pm the good folks at the planetarium put on an hour long lecture and star show under the dome and it only costs $12 (or $10 if your a member, a student or a senior citizen.)

Me, my girlfriend and a fifth of Jack went on the last Tuesday of the month when they host “Celestial Highlights”, a nifty overview of what’s going on in the sky for the upcoming four weeks. Turns out March is a pretty happenin’ month, astrologically speaking. We sat with about two dozen other people in the dark as the lucid tones of Professor Steve Beyer took us on a tour of the night sky starting with the planet Venus coming into view just west of the setting sun on the 1st.

The Hayden possesses the world’s largest cosmic atlas and they use their unique Zeiss Mark IX Universarium Star Projector(say that ten times fast) to paint the heavens in all their hyper detailed glory. Under the dome the sky blazes with a majesty that just can’t be observed with the naked eye in the big city. It was breathtaking and a little overwhelming.

All during the lecture and the show there’s a digital clock on one wall with the date on it. As the lecture continues and the stars move across the sky, the date on the clock progresses through the month to parallell when it is we are seeing and hearing about. It was just another little touch that added to our immersion in the subject.

The star show and lecture gave me a new appreciation for a skyscape that I take for granted as a constant everyday fixture in my life. The whole adventure was a wonderful experience, and like almost all the thiings you’ll find on this website, the planetarium is a treasure that far too few New Yorkers take advantage of. So, I implore all of you to take an hour and go. You’ll have a blasty blast. If nothing else, it’s a cool way to pre- party before hitting the bars. And who knows- you might just learn something. In the words of Professor Steve Beyer, “Just get out and LOOK!”

UPCOMING COOLNESS

• Tuesday March 6- Depths of Sky

• Tuesday March 13- The Search For Life on Exoplanets

• Tuesday March 27- Spring Has Sprung

To get updates on upcoming sky phenomena and Hayden events send a blank e- mail to

star-struck-join@lists.amnh.org

Science geeks of the world rejoice! We have a new, sexy leader to rally behind. He has the jivin’ -jiggly hips of James Brown, the pimped out pompadour of Prince and a trimmed up 80’s Daddy-O mustache not unlike a Nubian Cap’n Crunch.

His name is Neil DeGrasse Tyson and he’s the closest thing to a rock star astrophysicist the world has seen since Sir Iaasic Newton. Tyson is the director of the Rose Science Center (formerly the Hayden Planetarium, the old home of Laser Floyd).

He is a lively, wonderfully laid back, genuinely likeable genius. In the words of Ben Oppenheimer, the man who introduced him at a lecture the other night, Tyson is, “dynamic, but kind of a slacker”.

He was at the Museum of Natural History speaking about his new book “Death by Black Hole”. The book is a series of essays he wrote dating back to 1995 when he was a columnist for Natural History Magazine. Here’s what he had to say about the experience:

“Writing an essay every month is like giving birth. I can see the women in the audience are giving me a dirty look, but still…it was like my flesh was being hewn from my body each month. But it was one of the greatest experiences of my life.”

For over an hour Tyson wrapped us all around his pinky finger spinning anecdotes, history, astrophysics and cocktail party stories into a monologue worthy of Johnny Carson or P.T. Barnum. At one point he was explaining how as humans our five senses are completely inadequate for truly “making sense” of the universe around us, when out of nowhere he interrupted himself…

“Oh, if we have time later, remind me to tell you of the asteroid coming our way that will make the western part of the U.S. unlivable. But only if we have time.”

Spoiler alert: He never got around to it again, so I guess we’re pretty much fucked.

The man has done his math and is smart enough to know he knows nothing! He offers no answers but points out that the human condition brings with it constant discovery and accumulated knowledge over the generations and that there is salvation in knowing what we don’t know. “We are participants in the cosmos, vulnerable,” to its whims.

He implored us all to lose our intellectual egos. “We are not the top of anything!” Quite the opposite, we are merely a step in the evolutionary process of the cosmos. Consider this: The most common elements in the universe: hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, are also the most common elements in the human body. With Yoda like wiseness he summed it up: “Not only are we in the universe, the universe is in us.”

Lessons Learned:

• Genetically speaking chimpanzees are 99.99% identical to you
• Spacettification: verb- meaning- to die while going through a black hole
• Words O Wisdom: “Black holes, we really want to avoid them”
• Buy “Death by Black Hole”- it’s the best book by an astrophysicist with a Cap’n Crunch mustache that you will ever read!

Young and old, hipsters and UNCOOLKIDS all gathered in the basement of Union Hall on Wednesday September 6th for the first meeting of the Secret Science Club. Eugene Kaplan read from his book Sensuous Seas: Tales of a Marine Biologist about the mating habits of nurse sharks, Octopussy and her pets, and the use of stingray spines in the Mayan practice of penile bloodletting.

This was not your average science lecture.

Union Hall may be best known for it’s bocce ball court upstairs, but what often goes unmentioned is the unusual decor of the bar. Walking in feels like you’ve stumbled upon the library in an old mansion; dark wood paneling lines the entire place and behind the bar downstairs is a stuffed pheasant and monkey skull. Although it’s usually a music venue, it is the perfect location for a Science Club; you feel that Darwin and Huxley could possibly be behind the next corner discussing evolution.

The forty chairs downstairs filled up fast and the rest of the crowd was left standing around the walls, leaning in the catch a glimpse. I would definitely recommend going early to the next one, just to make sure you get a seat. It only lasted about an hour, although many of the attendees stuck around afterward to discuss what they had just learned. It wasn’t ‘funny’ or ‘ironic’ in any way. This was a collection of people who think science is awesome and wanted to learn more about it.

The Secret Science Club will meet on the first Wednesday of every month, and is always free. In October Lee Silver, author of Remaking Eden: How Genetic Engineering and Cloning Will Transform the American Family will be discussing Stem Cell research, and future events will have ’science-themed’ bands and even experiments.

When you’re looking for Bodies . . . The Exhibition at the South Street Seaport, don’t get confused and wander into the Gap and stare at mannequins. You actually want to go next door. You’ll know you’re in the right building when the smell hits you. It’s like you’re in 7th grade science class, about to dissect a frog. Don’t let that scare you off though; you get used to it.

In fact the same could be said for the whole exhibit: You get used to it. The first room shocks and maybe terrifies you, but by the fifth room all you can think is, “I’m getting kind of hungry”.

That sounds like I didn’t enjoy myself, but actually I loved it. I think Bodies is fascinating, educational and beautiful. It’s the perfect combination of science and art, mixed with gore, to get your adrenaline flowing.

The bodies in question are the result of plastination, a process in which tissue is replaced with liquid silicone rubber. The final product is a human body that looks exactly as if it has been skinned, but will not decompose. Besides the 22 bodies on display there are also 260 individual organs (some of which you can hold!) There is also a room filled entirely with veins. It’s pitch black and filled with display cases of arms, legs, a head; with everything removed, except for the bright red veins. That room alone is worth the price of admission.

However, before you go, there is an ethical matter to address: the way in which the bodies were obtained. They corpses were all unclaimed or unidentified, and while it is common practice for these bodies to be used in medical research, critics are questioning if this counts . . .and how ethical it is to display them in such a way without consent.

Bodies . . . The Exhibition is at the South Street Seaport on the corner of Fulton and Front Street. Tickets are not cheap at $26.50, but if you go before January 30th you can use this 15% off discount.

UNCOOLKIDS normally only reports on events going on New York. But in light of yesterday’s events, I am outraged and scared and think everyone’s time would be best spent learning how to protect themselves from Big Brother.

Cryptography. The art of secret messages. Most of us have only ever encountered it when we were little and used secret decoder rings. But it’s something we should know how to do, even if we don’t think we have to. I’m gonna lay out a basic technique you can use in case of emergency (I’m preparing for the worst here).

Read the rest of this entry »

The Interactive Telecommunications Program is having their winter show on Sunday and Monday. Prepare to be inspired. One of the projects that’s not to be missed:

“Smoke is a window display where a sensor detects cigarette smoke and transforms a recorded video of a solo dance piece. Designed to be installed in a window outside a dance studio or performance space, Smoke is motivated by and reflects upon the prevalence of smoking in the dance community.”

“Smoke is made up of a custom smoke sensor housed in a small device attached to the outside of a display window. The device senses a variety of gases, including cigarette smoke, and communicates the presence of the gas to a second sensor inside the window. A PC inside the window runs a custom application that alters the appearance of a dance video piece as more or less gas is detected.”

Smoke will be on display on the corner of Waverly and Broadway on Sunday from 2-6 and Monday from 5-9.