Here Comes Science!

I got a letter from John F — you know, John Flansburgh, of They Might Be Giants — and he says, “We’ve got this new album coming out that you might like, want me to send you a copy?”, and so I nonchalantly type back, “Sure, here’s my address,” which was really hard to do when you understand that I was dancing jigglety-pigglety in my chair, pumping my fists in the air, and shouting “WOO-HOO!” at the same time. It would have been impossible except for my blogging superpowers. (Oh, yeah…I’m a TMBG fanboi.)

I got the album Here Comes Science the other day, and it is fabulous. It’s kids’ music, so it’s catchy and a teeny-tiny bit didactic, but don’t let that put you off — I’ve loaded it onto my iPod and am enjoying it all the time. It’s also contains a CD and a DVD: each song also has an animated cartoon to go with it. They’re great and enthusiastic songs — my favorites so far are “I am a paleontologist” and “Science is real”.

You should buy it. It’ll be available next week, or you can always stop by my house and I’ll put the DVD up on the big screen and we can all rock out in my living room — I’ll push all the furniture to the side so we can all dance. Or if you’re cheap and don’t like me, you can subscribe to the TMBG podcast on iTunes: they’re going to release a song a week.

Can’t wait? You can get a look at “Science is Real” right now.

I should warn you, though, it’s controversial. Yeah, right. Look at the comments on Amazon. The song “Science is Real” contains these lyrics:

I like the stories
About angels, unicorns and elves
Now I like the stories
As much as anybody else
But when I’m seeking knowledge
Either simple or abstract
The facts are with science
The facts are with science

This has prompted a few comments.

I love TMBG more than anybody, but was it really necessary to take a pot-shot at religion?

This guy must be one of those thin-skinned elf worshippers.

As a Christian I’m offended by comparing unicorns, elves with angels. Unicorns and Elves are fiction, and angels are biblical. End of story.

(Shhh. Don’t tell him about Numbers 23:22 and 24:8, Deuteronomy 33:17, Job 39:9,10, Psalms 22:21 and 29:6 and
92:10 or Isaiah 34:7. Unicorns are biblical, too.)

This is why the accommodationist strategy is doomed to failure. There is no gentle demurral from religion that will not offend someone — even fun songs about science are expected to pretend that angels are real.

Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus!

Whew, dodged a mistake — the movie is on RIGHT NOW! An alert reader caught me in time and let me know I live in the Central Time Zone. I haven’t even touched the hooch yet.

It starts with Deborah Gibson, Submarine Pilot, dodging angry whales, and…breaking a giant octopus out of a block of ice? And it then destroys an oil drilling platform? I’m confused. That means I have to take a sip. (No, not a drink. I plan to survive this event.

A shark just leapt up and ate a jetliner? What the hell? OK, big drink. Never mind survival.

I may not make it through this abomination. It’s not just the drinking and the bad movie, it’s the commercials every 5 minutes.

I don’t understand. Suddenly the navy is involved in giant shark hunting? Firing a battleship’s cannon at it? And it survives?

It just ate a battleship. I didn’t buy enough hootch for this thing.

A plan! Corral each monster in a bay: Tokyo Bay and San Francisco Bay. Yeah, I can tell this plan will work just great.

Why do the fake scientists in this movie keep peering into microscopes and pouring colored fluids back and forth? They’re studying something the size of a freight train!

Debbie and Asian scientist she just met get lusty over death talk, have sex, and get inspired to use pheromones to draw monsters into bays. Pheromones are made suddenly in lab, and are fluorescent green. Weird.

Asian scientist talks about it’s fate that he and Debbie will be together. Prediction: he’ll be eaten soon.

The octopus just ate a jet fighter. Tally so far:

Octopus: One oil platform, one small jet fighter.

Shark: One jetliner, one battleship.

PZ: One glass of wine.

For some reason, placing the tiny beaker of pheromone bait requires Debbie to drive a submersible to place it in just the right spot. It’s supposed to attract a monster across half the width of the Pacific Ocean!

The submersible claw gets jammed, of course. And here comes the shark. At 500 knots! Don’t worry, the submersible outruns it.

Shark just ate another battleship and the Golden Gate bridge.

The octopus is not getting enough screen time here. If I wanted all sharks all the time, I’d be watching the Discovery Channel.

Octopus was apparently wreaking havoc offscreen. Debbie Gibson’s lover reports that they shot it with artillery and just made it mad.

Since big guns did nothing, they’re obviously going to have to nuke it.

Until Debbie has a brilliant idea: have the two fight each other to the death. Saw that one coming from a mile away.

The only way to get the two monsters to fight is deliver another tiny container of pheromone from a submarine piloted by Debbie. Of course. This is insane.

Debbie is now lustfully hoping for a bloodbath. What happened to the earlier insistence on catching them alive?

Shark has eaten an oil tanker now, and is chasing Debbie Gibson’s sub. At 500 knots, probably. Debbie shoots it with torpedos that miss, until the entire US submarine fleet shows up to shoot at it, too.

And then the octopus shows up to eat 5 submarines! Yay octopus!

Shark and octopus finally meet: octopus is winning with nice strangle hold, until shark bites off one of his arms. Dirty fighter! They separate so SyFy can squeeze in another commercial.

The shark is trying to eat Debbie’s submarine. Just ate it in half, but Debbie is getting away in a submersible.

The octopus just destroyed the submarine containing Debbie’s sensitive Japanese lover. She’s going to rescue him, apparently.

SHARK/OCTOPUS FIGHT!

They wrestle around for a bit, then…both dead? Just like that/ How anticlimactic.

Final tally:

Shark: One jetliner, two battleships, an oil tanker, and the Golden Gate Bridge.

Octopus: An oil platform, one small jet fighter, and six submarines.

PZ: Two glasses of wine.

I think the octopus was robbed. Maybe if his diet had been as robust as the shark’s, he would have won at the end.

Signs of progress

This is one of the best ideas around for promoting better science communication: The Science and Entertainment Exchange forges an alliance between scientists and the popular media. This interview with Jennifer Ouellette shows that she’s doing it just right, since it isn’t one of these things where surly scientists are invited in to criticize, but where entertainers can tap into the imaginations and weird, twisty brains of scientists to get cool ideas that they can use.

What is the point of this poll?

Some polls you know are just set up to try and get affirmations of what the pollster believes. Others are more inscrutable. Why would CNN even bother to ask this?

Do you believe the Apollo moon landings were faked?

Yes 14%
No 86%

It’s meta-meaninglessness. I was tempted to vote yes, not because I think the moon landings were faked (shee-ya, you’d have to be a raving moron to think that), but because the poll question was so freakishly crazy.

But then, I guess that’s what the modern media does. It doesn’t evaluate; its job is just to treat every point of view as if they were equally sensible.

Looking for some godless hymns?

Eric Jayne has put together a list of his top 30 atheist songs. It seems like it ought to be longer — to my mind, if it isn’t praising Jesus or any other supernatural entity, it’s an atheist song…which means just about every decent piece of music there is. (That is not to say, of course, that there aren’t any good religious songs — I’ve got a small collection of gospel music on my iPod that’s pretty darned lively).

A tale from the trenches of science journalism

I get called fairly often for quick fact checks by science journalists, which is a good thing. I’ve also written a fair number of science pieces for publication, which get improved by good editors, which is also a good thing. But there are also ugly tales of bad editing and the difficult realities of getting science stories published, and I got one this morning that I post with the author’s permission.

I just read your post on journalist integrity, which reminded me to thank you again for your help with my article on zebrafish hair cells. I’m a recent graduate of an institutional science writing program and have been struggling to land freelance jobs as a science writer. My day job is in genetics research. One of my first real writing assignments was that article where I asked for your advice. Of course, I also interviewed the author of the study discussed in my piece. He corrected me when I asked if the inner ear in humans is similar to a fish’s lateral line. When I submitted the article, just shy of the 800 words I was asked to write, the editor said that the published piece had to be shortened a little. A few weeks later I checked the publication and found my article reduced to 360 words. I wasn’t happy, of course, but every journalist has dealt with this. However, when I began to read the piece I didn’t recognize it as anything I had written. I became worried so I did a sentence by sentence comparison. To my complete horror, out of 360 words there was only one sentence in the published piece and 3 or 4 fragments of sentences I had actually written; and the article was published with my name on it! I cannot in good faith use this article in my portfolio. Even more distressing, there in the published piece was the incorrect statement about likening the inner ear in humans to the lateral line in fish. The editor wrote it in without checking with me. Removed was any mention of neuromasts. The researcher I interviewed and I are colleagues, so what will he think when he reads this piece? I’m new at this, so whatever credibility I might have had is now lost. I don’t want to burn bridges with the editor since this is all I have going for me, but I need my name removed from that article. The entire thing should be withdrawn. It’s inaccurate and unethical.

I’ve heard a lot of stories like this. I’ve also talked to a fair number of science students who want to do science journalism, and they are typically idealistic and want to do right by the science…but what’s the point when media priorities are all focused on short-term profit, and when the management can willfully mangle your story?