Tag Archive: Derek Colanduno


(Submitted by friend of the blog, Skepticality host Derek Colanduno)

So, this past Saturday Swoopy, my wife Susan, and I all jumped in the car to head out to a local restaurant for some dinner. On the way, Swoopy asked if I saw her last Facebook post. It was about the fact that she happened to be watching VH-1 in the background while studying for a test, and one of the videos that came on was by Nitzer Ebb. We both found that funny since we never knew that Nitzer Ebb had a video, let alone one which would make it all the way to VH-1. Heck, Nitzer Ebb wasn’t even popular enough in their ‘hay day’ to end up on TV of any sort. We had to tell my wife who the band was, not surprising since they aren’t much of a household name.

When we got home from dinner I went to check on my desktop computer. I had left it to do a full scan of all of my files so it could find all the ones which I had not looked at, or opened in over a couple years (just doing some digital spring cleaning).

Well, the file at the top of the list, the one which hadn’t been opened or changed the longest? That happened to be the .mp3 file for “Isn’t It Funny How Your Body Works”, the song by Nitzer Ebb. I have about 1.4 terabytes of files, .mp3 files take up about 400GB or so of that space. I had to make Swoopy come over to my screen so she could see what popped up at the top of my scan. She said, “Well, I DID say that the band is one that doesn’t get played much.”

Maybe the cosmos is telling the world to bring back strange 80’s metal-techno…..


Below are the extended notes provided by cognitive psychologist and statistician Barbara Drescher for use in Skepticality Episode 231.  Take a look and leave your comments below. Also, please be sure to listen to the podcast for our own sarcastic and hilarious commentary. Also, visit Barbara’s blog.

What makes this not a big coincidence is something that Derek shared in the story: they were surprised to see Nitzer Ebb because the band was obscure enough to be forgotten. One likely reason he hadn’t played that mp3 recently is that the band was obscure enough to be forgotten. It’s a cute story, but the odds are in the “sane” category. 😉

A Discovery of Friends

(Submitted by friend of the blog, Derek Colanduno)

So, I used to live in Las Vegas when I was a kid. My best friend Tony’s father was a test pilot for the Air Force out of Nellis Air Force Base.

One day, when I was at his house, some important military people showed up at his door to tell the family that his father had died while testing a new fighter jet. Tony later became the lead pilot for the Thunderbirds air squadron.

Fast forward to my life now; I have been good friends with astronomer Phil Plait since about 2005. Phil was able to get a pilot TV Show run on the Discovery Network for his program, “Bad Universe”. I was watching the second episode and in part of the episode Phil went to Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas to be in the passenger seat of a fighter jet to show the effects of G-force on the human body. The video cuts to Phil standing near the fighter jet and I get to see a pilot coming out to greet him on the tarmac.

Across the bottom of the screen, “Tony Mulhare”. So, here is one of my newest good friends getting to meet my oldest friend on national television no less.

And, to make it ‘funny’ it centered around Las Vegas, of all places!

[EDITOR: In case you never saw it, Bad Universe was a killer show with a short run. Think Mythbusters, with an astronomy theme and constant use of the phrase, “Holy Haleakala!”]