Category Archives: music

Ph. Diva and the Mystery Band

So, there are a LOT of lab-life-themed music videos out there. Mostly, they are amateur things put together by groups of under-worked grad students, where they change the lyrics to some popular song, or “pop” song, as the kids say.

This is a whole different thing, with significant production value, which is what happens when a biotech company gets in the game.

It lacks some of the charm and energy of dorky grad students singing Lady Gaga off key. On the other hand, it lacks all of the dorky-grad-students-singing-Lady-Gaga-off-key-ness of dorky grad students singing Lady Gaga off key.

This is actually the second video in a series. The next two will be out later in the year. You can see the prequel here.

Candy Candy will put you in a diabetic coma

So, here’s a little something from Japan. In order to facilitate your close reading of the lyrics, I’ve provided a transcription of the Chorus:

candy candy candy candy candy
sweetie sweetie girls love
chewing chewing chewing chewing chewing
cutie cutie XXX chewing love

candy candy candy candy candy
sweetie sweetie girls love
chewing chewing chewing chewing chewing
cutie cutie so candy love

Happy Pi Day

So, how are you celebrating Pi Day?  If you’re like most Americans, it’s by beginning the three-day process of deluding yourself into believing that you have some non-negligible Irish ancestry.

Here’s what you should be doing instead:

Note: this song appears in many, many versions on the web, and, to be honest, I don’t know what the appropriate attribution is. I picked this one because I like the video.  If you know where origination credit should go, let me know in the comments.

The most astounding thing about the universe

So, Neil deGrasse Tyson is awesome, with a capital AWE. Here’s one reason why. This is a video of Tyson describing the single most astounding fact about the universe. His answer is from a 2008 interview, which has recently been set to music and accompanied by an excellent video by Max Schlickenmeyer.

via io9.

Of course, the other thing that I love so much about him is the way that when you look at him, his eyes are like “I would like to make sweet, sweet love to you,” but then his clothes are all, “but I am physically incapable of doing so.”

Just look:

I mean, seriously, how can you not love this guy?

Clarification re: "Hot like Mexico"

So, I just got back from the Colorado School of Mines (And boy are my picks tired!!!), where I was speaking about the Ronin Institute. One of many wonderful things about the trip was the opportunity to meet Alejandro Weinstein, who has been featured twice on Guillaume’s Mailbag over at Darwin Eats Cake. Following a conversation with him, I wanted to clarify something regarding the following strip:

Best URL for sharing: http://www.darwineatscake.com/?id=43
Permanent image URL for hotlinking or embedding: http://www.darwineatscake.com/img/comic/43.jpg

Alejandro apparently took the third frame of the comic to mean that Guillaume thought that he was from Mexico. I asked Guillaume about this, and he said no, that with a name like “Alejandro Weinstein,” he had assumed that Alejandro was from Argentina. It turns out that Alejandro actually hails from Chile, which is sort of the Argentina of the west coast of South America, so, he wasn’t too far off, really.

Guillaume went on to explain that, actually, “hot like Mexico” and “cool the bad” are references to the lyrics of the Lady Gaga song “Alejandro.” Guillaume had assumed that this was common knowledge, at least until I pointed out to him that the set of people with a high degree of fluency in Lady Gaga lyrics probably shares little overlap with the set of people who read Darwin Eats Cake.
Anyway, Guillaume felt bad about the misunderstanding, and asked me to address it here.
On a related note, Guillaume’s Mailbag is still accepting submissions. Send in any biological trait of any species, and Guillaume will provide an adaptationist explanation for its evolutionary origin. You can reach him at guillaume@darwineatscake.com

The Day the LOLCats Died

So, you’ve probably heard about, or may already be experiencing the partial internet blackout to draw attention to and protest SOPA/PIPA, the MPAA/RIAA lobbyist written and funded sibling bills that aim to fuck up the internet for everyone by basically handing censorship authority over to corporations in the name of protecting intellectual property.

Enjoy this. Then call your damn Senators!

Read more from the Electronic Frontier Foundation here.

William Shatner goes Space Truckin’

So, if you slept through October, you might have missed the release of William Shatner’s latest “music” album Seeking Major Tom. It features some very, very Shatner covers a bunch of space-themed songs, like “Rocket Man,” along with a bunch of stuff-that’s-sort-of-vaguely-related-to-space-themed songs, like “She Blinded Me with Science.”

Of the few that I have listened to, my favorite is this cover of Deep Purple’s “Space Truckin,” here set to some awesome space-themed choreography by intrepid YouTuber zanderkaneusa: