On a Lighter Note

[kidsmoke]

From the satire site Clickhole, this insight into the intersection of science and music.

 

http://www.clickhole.com/theysaidwhat/find-out-what-jeff-tweedy-kendrick-lamar-and-emma--2199?utm_campaign=default&utm_medium=ShareTools&utm_source=facebook

[i'm only sleeping]

^ speaking of which....A rapper publishing a scientific paper in Evolution, the most prestigious journal in the field.

 

Abstract

Using hip-hop music and performance to communicate the science of evolutionary biology is a dubious-sounding notion; I’ll be the first to admit. Although I currently make my living as a rap artist and science communicator, performing for thousands of people around the world every year, I can’t take credit for the key idea that led me to this strange vocation. My original idea was to use rap to communicate arcane literature, starting with Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. In a previous phase of my life I was a graduate student in medieval literature and an avid hip-hop head, and after completing my masters I embarked on a world tour with my one-man show “The Rap Canterbury Tales.” It was on tour in the UK a few years later that I encountered Dr. Mark Pallen, bacterial genomics professor and author of The Rough Guide to Evolution (Pallen 2009). Mark is a hip-hop fan and Darwin expert, and he challenged me to write a “Rap Guide to Evolution” to accompany the publication of his Rough Guide in 2009.

 

Complete paper (pdf format, free access) here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/evo.12657/pdf

 

 

(disclaimer: as Jerry Garcia, I also consider rap as no-music, but still...)