The Astronaut Farmer should have never taken off: the movie is a dud. Billy Bob Thorton plays the lead character, Charles Farmer, who was once an astronaut-in-training but never left Earth…instead, he was forced to leave his prestigious position after a mental break-down when his father committed suicide.

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Diabetes is a Greek term that means siphon. The first Greek physicians noticed that individuals with this disorder “passed water like a siphon.”

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– By Laura Pelcher

A man whose home is in a suitcase and a woman whose home is in her head are the subjects of the final film- Great Genius and Profound Stupidity. The director, Benita Raphan, takes on these historical eccentrics to demonstrate that genius and stupidity are twin concepts. The woman, Helen Keller, was deaf and blind since before the age of two. Without any visual or audio memories, she is somehow able to lyrically describe her surroundings with rare insight. (more…)

–By Laura Pelcher

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi can’t sleep at night. His anxiety over the world’s problems causes him to have bad dreams. One night, with a bite of a pepper, his anxieties are eased. Paprika, directed by Kati Anguelov, is an animated film with a simplistic art direction that tells the simple yet transformative tale of the little pepper man who whispers the secret of Vitamin C to Gyorgyi. The illnesses plaguing people would finally have a worthy opponent in the powers of the little pepper man and Gyorgyi’s work to isolate Vitamin C. Paprika is a tidy portrayal of a discovery that positively affects humanity throughout time and a scientist who is widely appreciated rests nightmare free.

–By Laura Pelcher

The Visionary, a film about Nikole Tesla, the man behind alternating current energy, tells of ordinary flaws and circumstance that can bring down even the most extraordinary of minds. Tesla is caught in a circus climbing a rope ladder to an uncertain future without a net to catch him. Confidence and funding make up the proverbial net that Tesla lacks. Whether it is his relentless jealousy and mistrust of Thomas Edison, his father’s disappointment in his chosen path, or his fear of public opinion, he is unable to finish his most imaginative and largest project- the Wardenclyff Tower. Though he projected it would revolutionize the way the world communicates, J.P. Morgan is unable to see how he will personally benefit and cuts off funding. (more…)

–By Laura Pelcher

The alluring and intimidating genius figure was exposed, extracted and displayed under a microscope for further investigation on the Imagine Science Film Festival’s Portrait of a Scientist night. The varied results had only one consistent factor: each scientist had an overwhelming desire to discover in hopes that a deeper understanding of this world would lead to more humane conditions. (more…)

–-By Karen A. Frenkel

BLAST!, a new documentary by Paul Devlin, is a jolting, riveting, ride. At its New York premiere last week, audiences witnessed two efforts by astrophysicists to launch their telescope (named Blast) whose mission during its journey via air balloon is to photograph galaxies. At the opening, Devlin cleverly teases us with what seems to be a failed launch and then flashes back 18 months to the scientists’ first attempt to send off the telescope. It is to fly from Sweden to Canada, gathering data about galaxies near and far. (more…)

OK, so when I was about six, I was a really weird kid. I used to make a little mask out of Scotch tape and cover most of my face, save the eyes, nose, and mouth. It was odd, stupid and really fun; that’s all a six year old really cares about.

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Last week, the TalkingScience team trekked out to Staten Island to put on a Science Cabaret for students at I.S. 34. We were accompanied by a bee keeper, a biologist, a 3D artist from Hollywood, a few flamenco dancers, and our L’Oreal-UNESCO award-winning emcee (”Cindy the Scientist”). Cindy is a great story-teller, and while she was researching the history and science behind flamenco dancing, she came across some an interesting bit of information about the Rio Tinto, a river in Spain and a region that was once populated by flamenco-dancing miners.

Life near the Rio Tinto isn’t easy…in fact, it’s nearly non-existent when it comes to human life. The region is an isolated cavity that was abandoned hundreds of years ago. We’re not sure exactly what happened there since Rio Tinto was once the oldest known mining community, rich with legends about the wealthy King Soloman and tales about how Phoenician merchants arrived to set the foundations for the Greeks, Romans, and Carthaginians who would later take over the area. It’s hardly a boom-town today, though.

Humans couldn’t possibly live sustainably in the region, but scientists believe that the conditions could be just right for a Martian since many of the region’s attributes are similar to those found on Mars. The Rio Tinto is located on top of an ancient hydrothermal system formed by sulfide minerals. Mars also has an abundance of sulfur, as well as iron, and these are the ingredients needed to form sulfide minerals. Because Mars also has volcanoes and ground ice, the conditions for a hydrothermal systems could exist….and maybe life could exist too. Not human life, of course– if we do discover life on Mars, it’s more likely to be in the form of extremophile microbes (microbes that can exist in extreme conditions). These microorganisms have already been identified in the Rio Tinto, which has a pH of 2.3 (it’s rare for living creatures to flourish in such acidic water).

In his article NASA Scientists to Drill for New, Exotic Life near Acidic Spanish River, author John Bluck notes that “scientists say evidence suggests the chemistry of the Rio Tinto and its biology may be a result of an underground biologically based chemical reactor fueled by organisms that do not need oxygen gas too survive.” So…alien life forms that don’t require oxygen or light? It sounds very science fiction to me, but you might need to head to the non-fiction area of the library to find out more about it soon. Once again, reality may prove itself stranger than fiction. I wonder if this new life form will be green or gooey, or have any super- powers? To be continued…

“No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.” –Jacob Bronowski

Politics is based on everything that science is not. Years of study are largely unnecessary. Politicians need only the ability to read and write 4 things: Yeah, Nay, their own signature, and the digits on the check they are receiving by lobbyists to alter their votes.

But what about facts?

Most people have never heard of the IPCC report, let alone the opening statement, the entirety of section 2 and much of section 6.1. Apparently, neither has Sarah Palin, possibly our future Vice President.

Sarah Palin isn’t sure of what caused global warming, “I’m not one to attribute every man — activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man’s activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet…. But there are real changes going on in our climate.”

Of course, she knows how to fix it. “What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts? We have got to clean up this planet…We have got to reduce emissions.” She manages to contradict her own statement only a sentence later. I’m still not sure what “positively affecting[ing] the impacts” of climate change is supposed to mean. Is that investing in flood insurance? Maybe buying land in Alaska?

Palin loves to tout the phrase “’drill, baby, drill.’” Not only would that take 10 years to get any benefit, but ironically, would occur after Palin would be out of office, leaving some other poor sap to deal with the issue of increased green house gasses levels.

The real question is not her beliefs. They are fairly obvious. The question is whether she knows about these issues, or if she is simply completely unaware of the realities. Many people have said many things about her qualifications. I’m not going to argue those. My question is about knowledge. Is it ignorance?