(no subject)
Last weekend to went to Manchester, and if I'm ever going to write it up it needs to be before this weekend... I went partly to see E, and indeed we had a good time catching up, eating dim sum (veggie choice looked fine on the regular menu but hardly any on the carts- still, what there was was nice), shouting ourselves hoarse to be heard in a student bar, and going round Afflecks, a large many-independent-shops emporium. But the proximate reason was Uncaged Monkeys- Robin Ince and Brian Cox presenting Science, with funny in it. The Apollo was sold out with as geeky an audience as I've ever had the pleasure of being in, and it was excellent. (A couple of short podcasts from Oxford and Glasgow here if you want a taster.)
Let's see, who was there. Ben Goldacre, talking about not accepting authority and the problems of not publishing negative results; responded to the round of applause as he came on with "it's the tank top, isn't it?" (Robin pointed out that he looked like he was auditioning for the 12th Doctor.)
Matt Parker, a mathematician (or number ninja) brought in number theory sneakily by trying to work out a barcode's check digit in his head, and suggested a fun thing to do with Sudoku.
Brian ("I've played the Apollo before, in 1989, I was on the keyboards standing about... here") Cox: Robin brought him on with a George Formby impression, and he responded that he now finds it hard to say the word "universe" any more- "I just hear Robin's stupid southern voice trying to impersonate me". He did a quick spin through astophysics, CERN ("it's next to the runway at Geneva airport to make it easy to give scale on the photos") and the deep field photo- "If you're playing the Wonders of the Universe drinking game, you'll be rat-arsed by now"- and talked about the gravity probe B results from earlier in the week, which confirmed Einstein and as a result are very very wierd- I'm sure they're lots of places online.
They asked for questions to be tweeted in over the interval and answered them afterwards. (Quite a lot of them were to Brian saying "Why don't you come back to your job here, then?") Let's see, there was one about gravity slingshots, one about "are numbers real" which ended with Brian saying admiringly to Matt "You've just said that reality is a subset of your discipline", and one about apocalypses after 2012, which went very off-topic as a result of Matt bringing in that Mayans used base 20 and Ben saying that he couldn't see how you can count on your toes.
Then! There was Helen Keen doing some stand-up about the US space programme (and stamps with space-cats on them). I think I've loved every act I've seen with a Venn diagram in it, and hers was an excellent example. (What overlap links the Apollo programme with Raiders of the Lost Ark?)
Helen Arney, on ukulele, with a song about sex in the animal kingdom and one about Countdown.
Finally, Simon Singh, with a nice bit about perception and playing songs backwards. He then demonstrated that light is a wave using a ruler and a laser pointer, and electrocuted a gherkin to show that elements emit different wavelengths of light, and zoomed through deducing that the universe is expanding, ending up with the Katie Melua song 12 Million Light Years.
It was all finished off with the "pale blue dot" bit from Sagan's Cosmos. It worked really well as an evening, excellent fun. ( I believe there are still tickets to the last date of the tour, the Hammersmith Apollo on Tuesday. Go go!)
Let's see, who was there. Ben Goldacre, talking about not accepting authority and the problems of not publishing negative results; responded to the round of applause as he came on with "it's the tank top, isn't it?" (Robin pointed out that he looked like he was auditioning for the 12th Doctor.)
Matt Parker, a mathematician (or number ninja) brought in number theory sneakily by trying to work out a barcode's check digit in his head, and suggested a fun thing to do with Sudoku.
Brian ("I've played the Apollo before, in 1989, I was on the keyboards standing about... here") Cox: Robin brought him on with a George Formby impression, and he responded that he now finds it hard to say the word "universe" any more- "I just hear Robin's stupid southern voice trying to impersonate me". He did a quick spin through astophysics, CERN ("it's next to the runway at Geneva airport to make it easy to give scale on the photos") and the deep field photo- "If you're playing the Wonders of the Universe drinking game, you'll be rat-arsed by now"- and talked about the gravity probe B results from earlier in the week, which confirmed Einstein and as a result are very very wierd- I'm sure they're lots of places online.
They asked for questions to be tweeted in over the interval and answered them afterwards. (Quite a lot of them were to Brian saying "Why don't you come back to your job here, then?") Let's see, there was one about gravity slingshots, one about "are numbers real" which ended with Brian saying admiringly to Matt "You've just said that reality is a subset of your discipline", and one about apocalypses after 2012, which went very off-topic as a result of Matt bringing in that Mayans used base 20 and Ben saying that he couldn't see how you can count on your toes.
Then! There was Helen Keen doing some stand-up about the US space programme (and stamps with space-cats on them). I think I've loved every act I've seen with a Venn diagram in it, and hers was an excellent example. (What overlap links the Apollo programme with Raiders of the Lost Ark?)
Helen Arney, on ukulele, with a song about sex in the animal kingdom and one about Countdown.
Finally, Simon Singh, with a nice bit about perception and playing songs backwards. He then demonstrated that light is a wave using a ruler and a laser pointer, and electrocuted a gherkin to show that elements emit different wavelengths of light, and zoomed through deducing that the universe is expanding, ending up with the Katie Melua song 12 Million Light Years.
It was all finished off with the "pale blue dot" bit from Sagan's Cosmos. It worked really well as an evening, excellent fun. ( I believe there are still tickets to the last date of the tour, the Hammersmith Apollo on Tuesday. Go go!)