Popular Culture
sb admin | September 17, 2007 We want your opinion!
This survey attempts to access the opinions of bloggers, blog-readers, and non-blog folk in regards to the impact of blogs on the outside world. The authors of the survey (from ScienceBlogs.com) are completing an academic manuscript on the impact of science blogging and this survey will provide invaluable data to answer the following questions:
Who reads or writes blogs?
What are the perceptions of blogging, and what are the views of those who read blogs?
How do academics and others perceive science blogging?
What, if any, influence does science blogging have on…
omnibrain | September 14, 2007In what sounds like a whole lot of hand waving (but hey! I study vision what do I know!), scientists have 'discovered' that creepy old men running after their daughters friends has led to an increase in life expectancy for human kind. Just think that people like Woody Allen, Jerry Seinfeld, David Letterman, and Michael Jackson have led to your grandma living a much longer life. Ok.. maybe not M.J. since he likes little boys and they don't have babies but Woody Allen - totally!
Basically...
Human ability to scale the so-called "wall of death"--surviving beyond the reproductive years--has…
omnibrain | September 7, 2007A boingboing reader visited Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus recently and discovered some absolutely crazy dessert delivery devices... Clown and Horse Brains!
If anyone happens to take their kids to Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus we here at Omni Brain would be eternally grateful if you'd buy us one of the clown heads! (You don't have to send along the accompanying snow cone - the FBI or whoever might think it's some sort of terror device)
omnibrain | August 13, 2007From the creator of Women in Art comes Women in Film. Can you pick out all the stars?
-via Neatorama-
sb admin | July 12, 2007A music video, a crowdsourced homecast cultural expression ... Brain Tamer by Peter Johnson.
Brain Tamer
omnibrain | July 9, 2007This weeks Pseudoscience of the past is brought to you once again by the New York Times from November 21, 1851. In this episode we demonstrate how you can tell nearly everything about a person from...wait for it.... wait..... yes! Their Hat!
Now this isn't something you can tell from how fashionable the hat is - but instead, people's hats conform to the shape of their skulls. So basically if you have a sloping head of a certain shape you are a revolutionary and all that one would need to do to determine if you have a treasonous head is to do a little hat measuring!
I'm seeing it now...
"…
omnibrain | June 30, 2007Today starts a new series that I perhaps blatantly stole from Shelley over at Retrospectacle, but it's such a darn great idea! From the mouth of Shelley:Pretty much I'm just going to dig back into the forgotten and moldering annuls of scientific publications to find weird and interesting studies that very likely would never be published or done today (and perhaps never should have.)
Clearly I'm not doing the same thing, but her idea gave me one of my own. We here at Omni Brain will be digging into classic media coverage of all things science (usually brain related - clearly). I have a…
oracknows | June 30, 2007In keeping my (temporary), retreat from medical blogging for the weekend, I thought you might enjoy as much as I did this list of the 100 Worst Cover Songs.
I do have a few objections, though. For one thing, I kind of like Marilyn Manson's cover of Personal Jesus, which clocks in at #90. I don't know why; I just do. It's also just a travesty that the Lemonheads' cover of Mrs. Robinson and Ugly Kid Joe's cover of Cat's in the Cradle are on the list. And how on earth could they put William Shatner's cover or Rocket Man on the list? It was sheer genius! Just look:
I know I've posted this…
omnibrain | June 29, 2007Are you a politician or currently considering a run for office?
Do you agree with Richard Nixon that drugs are "public enemy number one in the United States"?
Are you worried that smoking marijuana makes you insane, turns you into a violent criminal or causes death?
Do you worry daily about why prohibition failed?
Do you think the War on Drugs is a great idea?
Are you stressed out about these things and need an easy way out? Incarcerex may be for you!
Take a look at this great spoof from drugpolicy.org!
Does your politician suffer from Chronic Re-Election Paranoia (CREEP)? Do you think our…
oracknows | June 11, 2007After having been pointed yesterday to a video of an old Betty Boop short that strongly suggests that Boop may have been a homeopath, I couldn't resist clicking on the links to a couple of other old Betty Boop cartoons. One of them reminded me of just how different our culture was 72 years ago when this cartoon was released. What's astonishing to me, from the vantage of 2007, is the casual racism, done without a care in the world that it would offend anyone and done with the grossest racial stereotypes played for cheap laughs:
We can be grateful that such stereotypes are no longer…
oracknows | June 10, 2007While reading through a mailing list I belong to, I came across a link that demonstrates that alternative medicine has been ingrained in popular culture since at least the 1920's and 1930's. Indeed, I never realized that that icon of flappers, Betty Boop, practiced homeopathy. Don't believe me? Well, here's incontrovertible evidence in the form of a short called Betty Boop, M.D. released in 1932 and perhaps the most bizarre Boop short I've ever seen (particularly the last shot, which makes me wonder if acid had actually been invented six years before it was supposedly discovered). Basically,…
omnibrain | May 25, 2007Enjoy this great video where Dwight from The Office is trained with Pavlovian Classical Conditioning!
Wasn't that great?!
oracknows | May 23, 2007Ask yourself this: What do the convicted do, either in prison or when facing prison?
They find Jesus, of course:
It's inevitable any time anyone's going to jail, it seems. My prediction for Paris' next stop: Kabbalah! It would, however, be even more amusing if she were to convert to Islam while in prison.
omnibrain | March 28, 2007The new Mini-AIR brought this wonderful article to my attention: James K. Beggan, Scott T. Allison (2005) Tough Women in the Unlikeliest of Places: The Unexpected Toughness of the Playboy Playmate
The Journal of Popular Culture 38 (5), 796-818. Here's an excerpt:
The contradiction created by the juxtaposition of the nude imagery and "tough" background is the basis for the present article. Our analysis of centerfold pictorials for the past two decades suggests that it is a mistake to view Playboy Playmates exclusively through a lens of sexuality. Although our culture most often conceptualizes…
oracknows | September 8, 2006Continuing on the nerd/geek theme, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that today is the 40th anniversary of the debut of the original Star Trek series. Forty years, hundreds of TV episodes and books, and several movies later, the franchise is completely ingrained in American culture, so much so that catch phrases like "Beam me up!" are recognized by pretty much everyone.
One thing I'm not so sure I'm all that enthusiastic about is the CBS Paramount project to remaster all of the original 79 episodes, replacing many of the special effects with state-of-the art digital recreations of the…
oracknows | September 4, 2006
Holy crap.
I get up on this holiday morning, and what is the first thing that I see when I check out the ScienceBlogs most recent posts, but a bunch of posts on Pharyngula, Pure Pedantry, Dr. Joan Bushwell's Chimpanzee Refuge, and Evolving Thoughts, The Scientific Indian, and Afarensis?
Steve Irwin (a.k.a. the Crocodile Hunter) is dead:
BRISBANE, Australia Sep 4, 2006 (AP)-- Steve Irwin, the hugely popular Australian television personality and environmentalist known as the "Crocodile Hunter," was killed Monday by a stingray during a diving expedition. He was 44.
Irwin was filming an…
oracknows | July 16, 2006Four words: David Hasselhoff music video.
Oh, the pain, the pain.
Of course, even Hassel the Hoff may not be able to "top" this YouTube video from hell:
oracknows | July 15, 2006Last weekend, I posted a YouTube video of William Shatner singing Elton John's Rocket Man in his--shall we say?--unique fashion. A fellow ScienceBlogger commented and asked if there was a video of Shatner singing Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. I'm not sure that this quite qualifies as what he had in mind, but it's the best (if you could call it that) I could come up with...
LIke, wow, man.
oracknows | February 26, 2006Sent via e-mail:
Paris Hilton prepares for Mother Theresa role.
I almost choked on my ice tea when I read that. Please tell me this is a sick joke. It sure sounds like one, and certainly the source doesn't look particularly reliable. Even so...
(OK, OK, I know. Enough with the fluff. I'll start posting more about medicine--surgery, actually-- tomorrow and science after that.)
oracknows | February 26, 2006I've always kind of liked Spongebob Squarepants, although I had always wondered about his relationship with Patrick Star. Here's evidence that my suspicions may have been correct.