As a special holiday gift to you (and because I’m feeling lazy after spending hours compiling next week’s Fictional Femmes of 2011 extravaganza), I’d like to share a a special Christmas story that we originally ran four years ago.
Full Story »Ask an Amateur Scienist: Global Warming
By Brian Thompson – So it’s the middle of October. A dark and gloomy night. I’ve been up past one in the morning browsing the internet for information, pornography, and information about pornography. (Findings: It’s sexy.) I thought my office would be celebrating Christopher Columbus’ bludgeoning of little brown people by allowing everyone to stay home and catch up on their stories, otherwise I would have bumped up my porno schedule. Turns out I was wrong about the office holiday. Apparently my bosses are Leif Ericson fans. And worse, my dog woke me up to take her outside at 4:30am.
Full Story »An Amateur Scientist Recession Special
Brian Thompson, the Amateur Scientist in: How to Get a Deal on a New Car! – This column’s going to be a little different than usual. Instead of telling you why you shouldn’t believe in something and occasionally dropping a joke about genitals and/or Babylon 5, I’m going to tell you how not believing in something got me a deal on a new car. And here you were thinking skepticism was about as useful as a penis on a Vree.
Full Story »Ask an Amateur Scientist: The Ghost Cat
By Brian Thompson I. The Setup – I don’t have anything against cats. It’s just that I’m deathly allergic to them. And I hate their guts. But I completely understand why they’ve become the unofficial pet of all the Internet. Sure, the web has opened up to most of us in the developed world by now. Any moron with a few hundred bucks and tiny, inbred fingers can trot down to Best Buy and pick up a netbook.
Full Story »Ask an Amateur Scientist: Indigo Children
By Brian Thompson – Back in 2006, comic actress and former professional nude person Jenny McCarthy started a website called IndigoMoms.com. It was meant to be a gathering place for mothers of so-called “indigo children”, where they could talk amongst themselves and help each other cope with the day-to-day problems and pleasures of rearing the next stage of human evolution. Also, they could buy crystal healing necklaces.
Full Story »Ask an Amateur Scientist : Warp Speed
By Brian Thompson – J.J. Abrams’ new Star Trek hopes to bring in a new crowd. There are muscles and budgets and acting and lead performers who aren’t AARP members. Exciting! So it’s for these people, the slackjawed masses, that I present to you the current scientific thinking on faster-than-light travel. Sorry about the slackjawed masses comment, by the way. Like any true Trekkie, I disdain you only because I covet your love.
Full Story »Interview: RH Stavis
By Rachel Pandich – Any fangirl (or fanboy) that has been to a “nerd” convention of any kind knows how testosterone driven they can be. The male to female ratio tends to be 10:1, or at least sometimes it feels that way. That gender gap grows when you look at just the artists, writers and creators at the booths and panels. This is why it was so refreshing when a friend pointed out a writer/creator coming up in the geek culture ranks who is a female.
Full Story »Ask an Amateur Scientist: The Zombie Cabbie
By Brian Thompson – I. The Setup: What defines a zombie? If there’s anything we learned from the Dawn of the Dead remake (other than the facts that Zack Snyder can work a camera and Sarah Polley is the hotness), it’s that no two zombies are alike. Some amble, others run. Some retain a bit of their pre-zombie personality, others are mindless droolers.
Full Story »Ask an Amateur Scientist: The Illuminati
By Brian Thompson
I. The Setup
So, there’s this guy called Alex Jones whom you may have seen stinking up the Internet over the last several years. He’s a radio host based out of Austin, Texas, and his show’s mix of blustery, spittle-charged ranting and isolationist paranoia has really served to carve a unique and successful space in fringe culture. The guy’s so popular, he even scored a couple cameos in Richard Linklater flicks. (He was the guy driving around town yelling into a bullhorn in Waking Life.)
Full Story »Ask an Amateur Scientist : Ear Candling
There are a few buzzwords that should clue you in that something is probably pseudoscientific crap. “Energy”, “natural”, “holistic”, “Oprah”. And you can add “toxins” to that list as well.
Full Story »Ask an Amateur Scientist : Cupping
By Brian Thompson
I. The Setup
“Actress” Gwyneth Paltrow recently turned up to a movie premiere in a dress with a low cut back. That seems innocent enough, right? I mean, she’s a celebrity, so her back muscles and back skin are necessarily more beautiful and luminescent than a mere mortal’s. Why not show off a little spinal cleavage? But for maybe the first time in her life, her physical appearance elicited the same kind of reaction normally reserved only for her performances. Namely: “What the…? Who hired this person?”
Full Story »Ask an Amateur Scientist : The Snuggie
By Brian Thompson
I. The Setup
See, the thing about the Snuggie is that it really does address a common issue. Most “as seen on TV” products spend the better part of their advertising convincing you an activity that never bothered you before is now somehow a plague on your life. Sick and tired of straining to reach a light switch? Why not try the Clapper? Fed up with the hassle of deciding in advance that you’d like to go fishing, then subsequently bringing your fishing pole to a body of water? Have a Pocket Fisherman!
Full Story »Ask an Amateur Scientist: Unicorns
By Brian Thompson
I. The Setup
Look, I know that no one believes unicorns are real.
Okay, very few people believe unicorns are real. And at renaissance fairs, those percentages probably skew a little higher.
Full Story »Ask an Amateur Scientist : Herbal Supplements
By Brian Thompson
I. The Setup
First things first: don’t take anything I write in this column as absolute fact. Well, if I said Heroes is an inexplicably overrated show, you can take that as an absolute fact. I’ve proven it with computers.
Full Story »Ask an Amateur Scientist: Christmas
By Brian Thompson
I. The Setup
This time last year, I told you all about the time my father packed up my little brother and me and sold us to hobos because he couldn’t afford to give us a decent Christmas. I made that story up, of course. No one would let a man sell his children to a pack of hobos for “meat or pleasure”. Obviously, he sold us to Cher’s backup dancers.
Full Story »Ask an Amateur Scientist : Dowsing
By Brian Thompson
I. The Setup
I don’t know when they came on or which channel showed them, but somehow as a kid I watched almost every Looney Tunes short in existence. (I could say a similar phenomenon occurred between me and Saved by the Bell, but I’m pretty sure the fact that I’ve seen every episode of that show has something to do with its endless after school repeats on America’s “superstations” and my complete lack of friends.)
Full Story »Ask an Amateur Scientist: Orgone
By Brian Thompson
I. The Setup
History is littered with the memories of those who made the unenviable journey from high respectability to high insanity. Consider Prince, for example. In the ‘80s, he had us all by the dancing shoes. Sure, the purple thing was a little over the top, but that’s what being a rock star is all about. We can forgive a little eccentricity in our entertainers. To a large extent, we can even embrace it. This is why I have an undying love of the former part-time Guns ‘N Roses guitarist Buckethead. He’s a fine enough axeman, but he earns his reverence by refusing to take off that bucket and by demanding record companies build a full-sized chicken coop inside every studio they expect him to use.
Full Story »Ask an Amateur Scientist: Sleep Paralysis
By Brian Thompson
I. The Setup
I’ve taken a couple of weeks off from writing this column, which was weird for me. I’m not normally one to go on vacation. I get a little antsy when I’m not doing something productive like sitting on the living room sofa, watching old episodes of Doctor Who, playing Xbox with homophobic middle schoolers, sleeping, and not working.
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