Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Scientists Get Their Groove On On YouTube

Posted by kdawson on from the getting-down dept.

merg717 writes "Six weeks ago, the Gonzo Scientist challenged researchers around the world to interpret their Ph.D. research in dance form, film the dance, and share it with the world on YouTube (Science, 10 October, p. 186). By the 11 p.m. deadline this past Sunday, 36 dances — including solo ballet and circus spectacle — had been submitted online." The vitamin D dance is particularly strange.

9 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. Brings About a Smile by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny
    Beautiful.

    Makes me want to go down to the capital with a sign saying:

    Less Invasions, More Equations

  2. Idle by Clay+Pigeon+-TPF-VS- · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why is an idle story filed under science?

    --
    Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
    1. Re:Idle by danieltdp · · Score: 3, Funny

      I, for one, welcome our new dancing scientists overlords

      --
      -- dnl
  3. Break down the stereotypes! by bossanovalithium · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I find it interesting that science based Phd students are able to be this creative - they are dealing with very intangible things, and correlating them to a form of communication that they are traditionally not known to be able to identify with. I am not sure sure how I would equate dance to my line of work, so more power to them!

    1. Re:Break down the stereotypes! by earlymon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I find it interesting that science based Phd students are able to be this creative - they are dealing with very intangible things, and correlating them to a form of communication that they are traditionally not known to be able to identify with.

      Not known by whom? You? The popular media?

      I'm a graybeard (literally) sick of this stereotype.

      FYI - Dweebs exist in EVERY discipline - and they are better suited as the outlyers, not the norm, for their disciplines. /. is rife with science and engineering types - but just look at the post counts for any topic dealing with: music, DRM, films and YRO. That is more than merely anecdotal, it speaks clearly to the developed mind being whole, ready to embrace all that life offers.

      I've worked in science and engineering most of my life. Creativity is not the exception - it is the norm. Introspection is a strict requirement for the creative mind - it is denigrated as introversion. Excitement and a need to express excitement over complex work is denigrated as yet another computer-wearing-tennis-shoes running his mouth without social skills. I say that the non-receptive audience is the grown-up from not-paying-attention-in-school crowd. My wife is a well-known and accomplished artist - as are her friends. Her friends and mine never have trouble getting along, relating, or enjoying fun things - be it art, dance, music - or high tech toys and scientific concepts. The creative mind seeks its own kind, not its own narrow expression of specialization.

      The mind of a scientific researcher lives in a fine balance - on one side, beyond the fringe thinking, the only true way NEW ideas are born - on the other side, strict conservatism, the only way crackpotism is avoided.

      Mathematics is the language of science. Everyone here with a hard science degree knows that each semester there were fewer and fewer students in the theoretical math classes - the language is not accessible to everyone. JS Bach was quite a mathist - and purposely expressed his music as such. From what I know, Miles Davis was not so - but his music contains math anyway. The point of that? Math is the language of science - and science is the outcome of the mind of humankind trying to understand the universe.

      The stars dance. Molecules dance. Quarks dance. Dogs dance. DNA dances. Why shouldn't the very people who work the hardest to understand those dances not dance themselves?

      --
      Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
  4. Re:Experiment by NotNormallyNormal · · Score: 3, Funny

    If it is going to be peer reviewed, I doubt they'd publish it in Scientific America... Though a quick review for spelling mistakes could get it published there...

  5. There was only one casualty by popmaker · · Score: 5, Funny

    Luckily for eveyone they didn't mention the poor mathematician who tried to reproduce the Banach-Tarski paradox on stage and disintegrated, while "Just the two of us" was playing in the background.

  6. ARG! by db32 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Look at what those Liberal Arts bastards are doing to Science! Shoo Shoo! Out of the lab, all of you, stop sniffing those chemicals, put that down! If one more of you even suggests that gravity is just the man keeping us down I will kill each and every one of you!

    --
    The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
  7. Re:wtf. by popmaker · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Maybe they just wanted to have fun, and didn't think anything more of it. Just a little bit of "hey, let's behave like molecules, it'll be pretty funny".

    I doubt any one of them HAD to do it. And I doubt any one of them was trying to advance their career. Did I miss out on any detail in the article? I honestly think they don't care one way or the other. And I honestly think they got a kick out of it.