Thursday, March 01, 2007

Jim Carrey and Conan O'Brian: quantum mechanics

This video that Kristen Kulinowski sent me is great. metadatta gets major street cred for figuring out which paper this refers to.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Geez, you'd think they could have picked a more recent article. I mean, Gabrielse has had several Science/Nature papers since 1999. Conan would never get NSF funding.

gilroy0 said...

I just might show this clip to my AP Physics students to get them thinking: Imagine if we lived in a world where casual conversation was about quantum physics and not, say, dead celebrities or which faux tribe best exercises skills better suited to hunting mastodons than living in the 21st century...

Anonymous said...

Well, bernard, I think they were sort of making fun of scientists, showing how creepy they can be. Didn't they say in the end "it's kinda lonely here" :)

Even Einstein, with all his scientific brilliance, is seen as a creep, because of his unkempt hair, abnormal manners, abrupt gestures, etc. And people think that all scientists must be like him ..... brilliant but sort of abnormal.

What we need are brilliant scientists that are also good-looking, well-mannered, sophisticated, and in a way, normal :) But I guess the more you get involved in the esoteric scientific knowledge, the more you distance yourself from "normal" people.

Unknown said...

"What we need are brilliant scientists that are also good-looking, well-mannered, sophisticated, and in a way, normal"

Did someone call my name?

NONE said...

DanM - Gabrielse had precisely zero Science/Nature papers since 1999 (or even ever). He prefers to publish in PRL, including his much publisized fine constant measurements.

I wonder if someone on Conan's writing staff is a relative of one of the co-authors of that paper..

Cindy Margott said...

Imagine if we lived in a world where casual conversation was about quantum physics and not, say, dead celebrities or which faux tribe best exercises skills better suited to hunting mastodons than living in the 21st century...