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.

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

– 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.

–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 …

–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 …

–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.

–-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 …

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.

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 …

“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 …