Tonight's the all-ages Red Bull Big Tune Battle at Neumo's. It's a big hiphop competition (twelve producers are picked to compete, whittled down from the eighty who applied from all over the Northwest and even northern California), and the regional showdown for one of the only legit national beat battles. This year's featured guests are Detroit's Black Milk and Elzhi. It's also the surprisingly sold-out Rancid and Less Than Jake show at the Showbox SoDo.......

NOT BURLESQUE: Columbia City Theater is a really great room to watch singer-songwriters do their thing. Tonight, the room will host a CD release party for the exquisitely talented Shenandoah Davis, featuring special guest Molly Rose, and others. Grab a drink and kick back in the old Vaudeville theater for a night of introspective, arty songwriting. 8 p.m. // Columbia City Theater // $10 I FEEL THE NEED, THE NEED FOR SPEED: Pacific Science Center's......

SCIENCE WITH A TWIST: We've always had fun at the Pacific Science Center's monthly events for adults. If you enjoy science and drinking, you can't get much better than this. This month's event is focused around their new exhibit, Speed, and a drink they're calling the "Turbo Charger." Win tickets to the new Batman movie, watch a speed-themed movie on the IMAX screen, and eat and drink to your heart's content. 6 p.m. Happy Hour,......

CHARITABLE INDULGENCES: If you're not too hungover from tonight's couture cocktails with Jack Mackenroth at Product Runway, something beautiful involving imported beer and fine Scotch is happening in Fremont both tonight and tomorrow: the HopScotch Spring Beer and Scotch Festival. The festival's a benefit for NW Folklife, so think of your purchase of extra tequila tastings as an act of springtime charity. 5 p.m.-12 a.m. Friday, 1 p.m.-12 a.m. Saturday // Fremont Studios, 155 N.......

ECO-CHIC: Bike, walk, carpool, or take the bus to Girl Power Hour. This time they're exploring the intersection of sustainability and style. Highlights include Seattle's first green DJ, getting tips on a greener life, a "live" trunk show with sustainable fashions, and refreshments: organic cocktails, wine and food. It all happens at the Sole Repair Shop, a sustainable event space 6:30-9:30 p.m. // Sole Repair Shop, 1001 East Pike Street // $10 at the......

BIRTHDAY: Seattlest contributor and man about town Donte presents the "I Ain't Dead Yet Mutha*%&# Dirty Thirty Extravaganza!" featuring: Truckasaurus, Sleepy Eyes of Death, and Randy Jones. As Donte points out, that's "two of The Stranger's Young Ones, and a veteran producer/DJ--for free. What more could you want?" 8 p.m. doors // Neumos, 925 East Pike Street // NO COVER (21+) BIDNESS: Seattle Tech Startups is having another meet-up to...you know...talk about tech startups.......

MUSIC: Yes, we know, you wanted to catch Vampire Weekend at Neumos but the show's sold out. What we suggest you do instead is walk across the street to the Comet and enjoy Jet Lag Palm, The Antiques, Slow Skate (they're out sick), and Half Light. The bill is half local music, so it doesn't have to travel as far to get to your ears. Save the planet! 8pm doors // Comet Tavern, 922......

POLITICS: Samantha Power (where have we heard that name before?), a professor at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, is in town Friday night to discuss her book, Chasing the Flame. It's about the 2003 death of UN High Commissioner Sergio Vieira de Mello in Iraq, and how we might better deal with the challenges of religious extremism, refugees, terrorism, and ethnic struggle. She also wrote a book on genocide, A Problem from......

"Keep in mind the name Matthew Brzezinski. This book feels like a practice run from a young author destined for big things." So says author Brian Burrough, upon reviewing Brzezinski's Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries that Ignited the Space Age. Brzezinski, says Burrough, is a born storyteller, and his narrative reads like a movie. Brzezinski is also, as you can see, dreamy. The book is about the early days of the space......

Last Friday after work we were at the Eames IMAX at Pacific Science Center not seeing the Transformers movie. Instead we were listening to a tag-team presentation by Chris Mooney, who wrote The Republican War on Science, and professor-blogger Matthew Nisbet, of Framing Science. (That's an earlier video of one of their talks, all 71 minutes of it -- it's a little pixelized at first, but that clears up in a few seconds.) We......

When you call your memoir Avoid Boring People, as Dr. James Watson did, and then go around the country talking about it, you've set yourself up for a rather easy dig. "I took Watson's advice...and walked out!" you can imagine the snarky wit writing. Of course, there's one way around this, and that's to consistently entertain. And Watson, who appeared last night in front of a sold-out crowd at the IMAX theater, surely did. Guided......

James Watson, one of the science heroes of the 20th Century, talks tonight at Pacific Science Center. Watson discovered DNA. But not the way Columbus discovered America (ummmm....the Native Americans sort of already knew about it, pal). Native Americans didn't know about DNA. It was all Watson (and Crick, of course). Watson's written a self-help autobiography, a genre first pioneered by another science hero, Benjamin Franklin. Franklin's main dictum was to achieve moral perfection. Watson......

Seattlest is obviously rather excited about the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows tomorrow night. So excited, in fact, that we thought we'd go to the Google to find out what sorts of happenings are going to, well, happen tomorrow in celebration of the big release. We knew about an event at the University Bookstore and figured something similar would be going down at Elliot Bay Books and maybe one or two local......

MUSIC: Other than at Sasquatch in May, tonight's your only chance to see Smoosh on their current tour, when they open for Bloc Party at the Paramount. Yeah, Bright Eyes are also playing over at the Showbox, but seriously, you'd try to get scalped tickets to go see them over Smoosh? Whatever. 8pm // The Paramount // $25.50 plus fees FOOD & FUNDRAISING: Tarragona Wine and Food on Capitol Hill is hosting a wine tasting/auction......

Because we don't go out on school nights and we need to plan... SATURDAY: Rock out with local kid's band Recess Monkey benefit concert at the EMP. While enjoying the goofy tunes and antics of these three Seattle teachers, you'll be helping out Kyle Roger, a local boy fighting brain cancer. 12pm // Experience Music Project // All Ages // $5 donation SUNDAY: Setting the clocks forward Sunday might get you in a springtime mood,......

Wednesday, November 8 >>>UW Forum for Science and Ethics Policy, 5:30pm. Dr. Dennis Schatz, VP for Education at the Pacific Science Center, cheerleads for “Making Science as Pervasive as Sports in Society.” His ulterior motive? It can only be to pack the Sonics off to Oklahoma and build our very own Exploratorium right here in Seattle, to which we say “Be Aggressive, Be Be Aggressive!” Free. UW Health Sciences Building, T-478. >>>Pacific Science Center......

Wednesday, September 27 >>>Town Hall, 7:30pm. Science and medical writer Thomas Hager tells you all about the drug that you won't hear about on House, M.D.: "The Nazis discovered it. The Allies won the war with it. It conquered disease, changed laws, and single-handedly launched the era of antibiotics." But does it make you feel like hugging strangers? $5 at the door. >>>Bella Cosa Foods, 4:00-6:00pm: Federico Bibi lets you taste two organic olive......

If you are anything like some us at Seattlest, you've wasted months, if not years, of your life playing video games. Oh, for all of those hours. The things we could have done. What better way to celebrate that time well spent than by visiting the Pacific Science Center's Game On! exhibit? It runs through August 31st and "gets you up close and personal with the games, how they're made, where they came from, and......

The weather can't make up its mind, but at Seattlest, we can. We're going to rain down our weekend plans on you. Recognize. For David S. this weekend is all about numb3rs. For most of the weekend he will be watching the twelve reamining college basketball teams be reduced to four. On Saturday night he will head to the Paramount, where to his surprise, he will realize that the seemingly two person group of Belle......

If, like Seattlest, you're a dead-tree-media reading tool of a dying paradigm, you might have read Elizabeth Kolbert's three-part series "The Climate of Man" last spring when it was published in The New Yorker. If you prefer your dead-tree media in hardcover, however, you're in luck -- Kolbert's new book Field Notes from a Catastrophe collects all three parts in handy pulped-plant form. Seattlest read the series last spring, and it's a lucid, compelling, and......

Seattlest has been completely remiss in not mentioning (till now) the astronomy edutainment extraordinaire known as Starball. We were in attendance at the Smith Planetarium a few weeks ago for the show's return engagement here in Seattle, where it was originally developed before heading to such exotic locales as Valencia, Spain and Philadelphia, PA. Going into the event, we weren't exactly sure what to expect, given what we had already read: Starball makes our......

If you are at all like us, your formative years were spent watching the 'Transformers' and 'Thundercats.' Sure, sure our mom said we should have been 'reading' or 'doing something productive' but we said to that 'Mom, we are learning. We are learning about lasers. Oh, and about talking cats, too.'. You can only imagine how excited we are about the musical laser light show at the Pacific Science Center's Seattle Laser Dome. Grizzly Bear,......

Ladies and Gentlemen, Sleater-Kinney has officially made it. This evening at the Pacific Science Center, their newest album will be immortalized in the most rock of mediums, the laser light show. We're planning on going not only because we love Sleater-Kinney, but what we have heard of their new album is really good. It's 5 bucks. Not a bad deal on a visual stimuli per dollar ratio. The show starts at 9pm which we will......