About the Loh Down

Caltech is a world-leading scientific institution, whose distinguished faculty and alumni have won more than 30 Nobel Prizes.

But is that all Caltech is about? Genius admired from afar? Discoveries so complex they can't be imagined? Theories understood, quite frankly, by very few?

What about us average humans--you might continue to ask rhetorically--the Nobel Prize-impaired, who can't expect to reach Stockholm without buying our own SAS coach ticket? Who shamefully earned a C in high school trigonometry, or worse? Who have such numeral-phobia we open the morning paper, see the Sudoku number puzzle (level Gentle), and burst into tears?

Never fear, ordinary citizens, Caltech feels your pain. We believe even the intellectually nervous deserve to explore the wonders of science and technology in all their infinite variety. But not too infinite. To fit today's busy multi-tasking schedules, like some strange new franken-vitamin (which we know all about), "The Loh Down on Science" is a convenient, easily-digestible. . . one minute a day.

That said, we should warn you that, as though in a lab, odd things started to happen as we began perfecting our one-minute formula. Fact by fact, science's past, present and future teem with things like hurricanes named after politicians, artificial meat grown in petri dishes, hairs from bugs' behinds which can be used to help people hear. . . With such surreal juxtapositions, the pressure to complete a joke became actually unendurable. Suddenly one would hear oneself screaming, a la Charlton Heston, "Soylent green--it's people!" As a result, the science-mad talents we've culled have written for outlets ranging from Nature, Science and Discover magazines to, yes, Bob Hope. Recently, a Caltech alumnus/software engineer gained international fame for winning the Bulwer-Lytton Prize for worst opening paragraph for a novel in the English language. We called him immediately--somehow, that felt exactly right.

Because in our world, science and humor seem to reside in the same part of the cerebral cortex. As now we had a lot to pack into a minute, we chose as host Sandra Tsing Loh, whose natural tendency, as amazed listeners have noted, is to actually speak faster than the speed of sound.

But wait. "The Loh Down on Science" is not just for novices. If you are already in the sciences or work in a technological field, we invite you to enjoy heady feelings of superiority at being among the select few who actually understand the formulas, acronyms, and multisyllabic words we let occasionally slip by. And if you happen to be a Nobel laureate? We know, from experience, that even Nobelists--particularly Caltech ones--enjoy a hearty scientific chuckle, preferably at the expense of MIT Harvard Princeton Yale THEIR ESTEEMED COLLEAGUES.

In short, cosmic travelers of multiple chromosomal combinations, welcome!