We liked #SciWars so much in 2014 that we did it again in 2015. This time, we actually did it on May 4* (aka, May the Fourth Be With You). Check out the Storify of the tweeted goodness/nerdiness.
*This was not really our fault.
Tag: SCInema
#GradhogDay
Monday was Groundhog Day, which inspired one of the great films, Groundhog Day from the late, great Harold Ramis. It, consequently, inspired #GradhogDay, the revision of classic lines to have a science-y spin (and vent a little graduate school blues).
You can read all the tweets in the #GradhogDay Storify or contribute your own. So far, my favorite has been this offering:
A Lab of Their Own
The sciencing of A League of Their Own (#ALabofTheirOwn) reminded me a bit of the sciencing of Conan the Barbarian (#ConanthePostDoc). Both films have great scripts, with great lines; but most people only remember one or two. People other than me do not have the scripts burnt into their souls.
That is ok. In fact, it is better than ok. As Jimmy Dugan says to Dottie Hinson:
It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard… is what makes it great.
It was not easy, but I think we found a few gems that speak honestly to the practice of science now.
Some of the lines were so relevant that observers mistook them for actually commentary.
One would hope that a movie about women playing baseball in the 1940s would not be relevant to science today.
The #ALabofTheirOwn storify makes up for its lack of quantity with some real quality, but I’m biased.
“What is your quest?”
That thing where you indavertantly facilitate a polite-ish discussion between Michael Eisen and Ewan Birney about ENCODE’s claims regarding “biochemical function” in the genome using modified Monty Python and the Holy Grail* quotes:
With a “wafer thin” side of Open Access:
You can check out the Storify of the #MontyPythonidae edition of #SCInema here.
*An apropos and overused scientific metaphor itself.
Science a Movie Title – #ScienceaMovieTitle
Starting with #SciWars, we’ve been in the semi-regular habit of dedication Fridays to sciencing quotes from a particular movie, with one brief (or not so brief) foray into Shakespeare (#ShakesPeerReview). Often, the biggest challenge is not picking a great movie to do, but figuring out a good, science-y hashtag* (see #GhostBusterSci for an example of such difficulties). So, I thought we could crowdsource some ideas. We got more than a few (as of this writing, there had been about 1000 #ScienceaMovieTitle tweets).
Today, we kicked off #ScienceaMovieTitle with:
Haven’t run the numbers on it, but I can be pretty sure using a tortilla chip and guacomole to simulate the Philae landings is now the second best thing I’ve done on the Internet.
Click the image below for a progressively more complete Storify collection of the #ScienceaMovieTitle tweets. UPDATE: Your #ScienceaMovieTitle tweets required not one, not two, but three Storifys to contain them. We have a trilogy. Just as your favorite deity or deity replacement intended.
*I also have a backlog of scienced movie titles that amuse me, but aren’t associated with enough great lines to be good fodder for script rewrites (see #ConanthePostDoc for an example where folks only know one line – though there are SO many really).
The Finch and Pea 