This One's For you, Mr. Cohen

In this week's installment of Status Ain't Hood, Tom Breihan gives his regular roundup of American Idol. It's good that he's able to recognize the best performance of this year, which was Castro's version of "Hallelujah."

Everyone's talking about Jeff Buckley's version and tons of people are downloading it, which is great. However, it's Leonard Cohen's original that is the real masterpiece. I also really liked Rufus Wainwright's version too.

I've been listening to a lot of old Cohen stuff, and even though he's being inducted into the Hall of Fame, an imminent tour and there was a doc about him with celebrities galore, Old Man Lenny is still pretty much flying under the radar.

His Cousin is Descartes Nietzsche

Last week a postdoc from Princeton did a talk in the Physics Department at NYU. Some folks are meant for their respective professions: Coco Crisp was meant to play basebell. Doug Gilmour easily a hockey player. Hulk Hogan, wrestler. Aristotle Socrates can be nothing other than a physicist.

MC Nerding it Up

Scientists are a jovial bunch. Despite the common stereotype, most do enjoy a good party. Especially a good drink. At least in my experience, scientist + alcohol + dancefloor = good times (+ embarrassing pictures later).

Some nerds across the pond have taken it one step further, where at a recent party, they were urged to "Dance their PhD". That is, to create an interpretive dance based on their dissertation topic. It was organized by a molecular biology grad student that also moonlights as a club DJ.

You can see interesting video from the scene here. Honestly, most of it isn't that great aside from Simone Recchi's "Dynamical and chemical evolution of blue compact dwarf galaxies." In my mind, the post-doc astronomer from University of Trieste really got it when he performed to Daft Punk's "Around the World".