Going through my YouTube subscriptions today I stumbled on a video that’s pretty interesting: a guy rapping about astrobiology.
I am not an aficionado of rap — I don’t think ABBA ever did it, did they? — but I kinda like this one despite the sometimes awkward lyrics (his accent is cool, too). His use of the sounds of moving across the radio dial is clever, and how many rap songs do you know that reference Frank Drake and Carl Sagan?
If you went to BadAstronomy.com and found yourself here, never fear: the BA Blog has moved to its new home at Discover Blogs. The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking and all that) is still online, too.
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com
|
| Bad Astronomy is a Wikio Top Blog! Clearly, Wikio has excellent taste. | |
 | ||
 | Bad Astronomy was chosen as one of Time.com's Best Blogs of 2009. |
 |
"Reading this book is like getting punched in the face by Carl Sagan. Frightening, but oddly exhilarating."
-- Daniel H. Wilson, author of How to Survive a Robot Uprising
DISCOVERmagazine.com: Latest Articles on Space DISCOVER Blogs: The Loom
January 18th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Was the rapper’s name Oort Kuiper? Hilarious!
I did like this despite my general dislike of the genre (like you). I even like it better than the LHC rap (though I didn’t hate that rap the way you did).
Nice find!
January 18th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Plus scenes from Cosmos and Contact as well.
January 18th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
11/10 really complete rap!
BTW, does your “afficionado” refer to the spanish word? If so, the actual word is “aficionado”
January 18th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
I hadn’t put together Sagan’s “Cosmos” beach image in the “stars as sand” sequence with the “Contact” beach scene. I’d have to look at the “Cosmos” episode again, but I don’t think the beach scene from “Contact” is shown – they just look the same. If that’s the case, this would be a fun discovery of a “Contact” visual tribute to the TV series.
January 18th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Oh that’s odd. I had originally misspelled aficionado, and corrected it with the spellchecker. I’m not sure how that got messed up! I must have re-un-spelled it.
January 18th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Oort Kuiper? Mwahahahaha!
Man! This guy is a major space buff (or should I say “nerd”?), rapper or not. And he definitely has chosen astronomy as his angle. Good for him.
And, er… Phil… ABBA?!?! Jeez. THAT’S embarrassing!…
January 18th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
This is pretty darned cool… gotta save the link to that one!
January 18th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Please note that Merriam-Webster lists “afficionado” as an acceptable alternate spelling in English.
January 18th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Check out the background story at:
http://www.astrobio.net/amee/summer_2008/Retrospections/JohnRapBio.php
January 18th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
That’s the Brits for you. Even their rappers are well educated. O.o
Quite infotaining!
January 18th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
[...] Going through my YouTube subscriptions today I stumbled on a video … Go to Source [...]
January 18th, 2009 at 6:50 pm
My favorite is still ‘The Galaxy Song’ even though the quoted speed of light is off by a huge amount.
January 18th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
He even references the famous “Wow!” signal…nicely played.
January 18th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
This isn’t “rap” this is Hip-Hop. The rhyming itself is called rap.
This is good stuff! Better than most of the “nerd-core” out there.
January 19th, 2009 at 6:20 am
Hip-hop is what you are; rap is what you do.
Or whatever. I’m not and I don’t, but there’s too many definitions out there to really get pedantic about it. The terms get used, somewhat, interchangeably in both common parlance and in an awful lot of media.
Modest Mouse’s 3rd Planet has managed to find it’s way into fairly heavy rotation in on of my Pandora stations. I’m fond of it.
Nice catch BA. It’s always great to start off the work week with a good distraction.
January 19th, 2009 at 6:26 am
@MadScientist:
Depends on what you consider ‘way off’. It says
“Twelve million miles a minute, and that’s the fastest speed there is.”
It’s closer to elven million, admittedly.
January 19th, 2009 at 9:52 am
[...] Magazine European Edition – Astrobiology Rap / via Phil Plait – Rapping about astrobiology [↩] « Bloggen für die Bilateralen Dieser Eintrag wurde von Benjamin B. [...]
January 19th, 2009 at 9:54 am
english rap is gonna take over the world
really it is becomming much better than the tired old hip hop from the us
still prob be diffrent when eminem comes back AGAIN
January 19th, 2009 at 11:03 am
I think he stole(borrowed) the radio dial mixing from the Grateful Dead movie(1970s).
Another indication that as societies mature, some members get smarter,,, Perhaps the good old USA is finally approaching maturity. I guess we’ll know for sure when OUR rappers have as good a grasp of science as this fellow.
Gary 7
January 19th, 2009 at 11:11 am
ABBA??!?!?!!!??!??!!!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!??!!!!!!
You can dance, you can jive, and have the time of your life, but major respect loss, there, Phil. Sorry.
And double curses for now putting “Dancing Queen” in my head for probably the rest of my day.
January 19th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Thats the problem with rap as an art form, it has a bad name because most of the artists choose mundane and base subject matter. It turns off so many people, they you get comments like ‘I am not an aficionado of rap’
It is maturing into a diverse art form with real creativity. Unfortunately, it is still burdened with the majority of the rappers talking about their cribs, hoes, and dollaz.
As an aficionado of music with meaning, thanks for digging this up.
January 20th, 2009 at 12:14 am
It’s like a modern day “Schoolhouse Rock”. An updated Inter-planet Janet.
January 20th, 2009 at 5:38 am
I made it to 1:47. I just couldn’t take the background music anymore. It was the same 6 notes over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. Kind of like actual rap. And hip-hop. Hence why I like VERY few songs from either genre. You can have the greatest lyrics, stage presence, message, and everything else, but if your background music is monotonous and/or annoying, you’ve lost me.
January 20th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Thanks for digging this up. It’s hilarious. And I thought one of the beach clips was from Contact too.
Hey, I liked the LHC rap! But I actually listen to ‘nerdcore’, so my taste in music is tainted. With that in mind, I like ABBA too.
…crud. Now I’ve got Dancing Queen and the LHC rap stuck in my head simultaneously.
Science is slowly making it’s way into mainstream music… I think. I was in a store in the mall yesterday and I heard Pluto by Claire and the Reasons. I don’t know if that’s mainstream or not, but it does explain why Pluto lost it’s planet status.
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:03 pm
[...] Bad Astronomy No TweetBacks yet. (Be the first to Tweet this [...]
April 16th, 2009 at 5:55 am
[...] Rapping about astrobiology (blogs.discovermagazine.com) [...]