I am giving away a copy of the softbound book Beautiful Universe, a wonderfully, um, beautiful book featuring nearly 100 pages of gorgeous pictures of the heavens. It was sent to me by the good folks at Sky and Telescope magazine because I am a contributing feature writer. It’s a great book (see more about it here), but my bookshelf is overflowing with astronomy books, so I figure why not give a BABloggee a chance to own it?

So here’s your chance. All you need to do is go to the Bad Astronomy and Universe Today bulletin board. I’ve created a thread in the Fun-n-Games section called "Beautiful Universe giveaway contest!" If you’re already a registered user, just post something in that thread, like "I wanna win the book!" It doesn’t matter what you post as long as you post. Post ONLY ONCE. If you post more than once I will delete the extra posts.

If you are not already registered at the board, it’s easy and free. We don’t charge anything, and we don’t do anything with your emails or info. I hate spammers more than you do, guaranteed (I get thousands of spams a day– and not just email but also comments on this blog and on the BAUT board!), so I swear that info stays in our database and that’s it.

On Thursday, February 8th at noon Pacific time I will close the thread. I’ll generate a random number, and whoever has that number post wins the book! I’ll send you a private message or email confirmation, and you can send me your snail mail address. The book will wing its way to you the next day. There will be no cost to you at all (the cover price of the book is US$9.99).

Oh– speaking of BAUT, don’t forget about "Q & BA". I’ll be making my video answer this weekend, so get those questions to me!

I am very saddened to hear that Molly Ivins died of breast cancer today. She was a terrific writer, a syndicated columnist. She wrote political essays with great humor and a very skeptical eye, and was a huge influence on me when I was in college. She was from Texas, and didn’t suffer fools gladly, and there were many political figures (including our current President) whom she listed under that category. If you want a taste of who she was read her essay about having breast cancer. It’s stellar Molly.

I met Molly at the Conference on World Affairs in 2003. There were all manners of celebrities there, and she was the only one I was nervous to meet. We were at a bar after the daily panels, and I introduced myself. She shook my hand, and in that big drawling Texas accent, said, "Honey, do you have a cigarette on ya?" Ah, no, I replied. Without hesitation she said, "Then can ya go get me some?"

I told her no, and she laughed.

There was a party every night at the conference, which was attended by writers, actors, philosophers, scientists, heads of State. We all mixed around, just enjoying being with smart people. I was overjoyed to be a part of it. I saw Molly dancing with writer Simon Hoggart, and typical of her she was having a blast:

I remember at that bar, we were talking about the Iraq war, which at the time had just "ended" with the ouster of Saddam. Molly was wondering aloud, "What if we don’t find the WMDs?", and I retorted, "Then we’ll have to make them up." Molly made a face at me, and said "That’s pretty cynical there, boy!"

I was shocked. Molly Ivins telling me I was too cynical! Wow. What an honor!

Good bye, Molly. I know I told you how much I liked your writing, and how much I loved your style. We could use a thousand more of you.

I didn’t know this! From a recent XKCD comic:

This is correct! The value of e^pi - pi is 19.999099979 (plus a trailing infinite list of numbers). I strongly suspect this is just a coincidence — after all, why not pi^e - pi (19.317565) or pi^e - e (19.740875)? If you pick enough numbers, one of them is bound to come out near an integer coincidentally. Hoagland bases his whole "Face on Mars" nonsense on this numerology fallacy.

It’s funny how coincidences seem like more than they are. Our brains are wired for that sort of thing.

Someone put up video of the SeaLaunch rocket explosion from yesterday:

The rocket can be seen to collapse before actually lifting off. The smoke hides everything, but it looks like there was a blowout before the rocket could get off the ground. The pad is almost certainly destroyed, but I have not heard any hard news on that front. The rocket was carrying a Dutch telecommunications satellite.

Tip o’ the nose cone to Jim Oberg for the link.

From Space Politics comes the bad news: NASA will not get any additional money this year. Right now, they (like the rest of the government) are running on the budget from fiscal year 2006. The last Congress did not pass a budget before they fled left, so the new Congress said the government has to run FY07 on the FY06 budget. I already wrote about this.

Well, the House Appropriations Committee just filed a measure (to be voted on Wednesday, and it will probably pass) that will extend the continuing resolution for the rest of 2007. Usually, these CRs are temporary until a new budget can be passed, but the House is a bit of a mess right now, and the Committee decided that until they can get earmarks under control, the government gets to spend the rest of FY07 (which started on October 1, 2006 and ends September 30, 2007) using the FY06 budget.

For NASA overall, this hits hard. There was a 500 million dollar budget increase from 06 to 07. That’s gone now. Poof.

According to the Space Politics article, NASA will not be allowed to shuffle money, either. This is very interesting: the big hit is to the Exploration Division, which is where they are building the new system to take men to the Moon and Mars. I was assuming that science was about to be eviscerated to funnel money back into Exploration. However, NASA is not going to be allowed to do this.

So science just got a reprieve, sortof. Science is still taking a $100 million hit with the CR, so something’s gotta give.

Interestingly, I just got a note that says that NASA will be announcing its 2008 budget on Monday, February 5 (unfortunately, I will be at a scientific conference and may not be able to listen in). I’ll be very curious to see how this all pans out. I am sure they’ll talk about this new budget, what will get hit (I suspect they’ll be evasive on details until they can work on the fallout of the cuts), and how this will affect the Hubble servicing mission. Stay Tuned.

From the Times Online UK:

Dr Abdul Majid Katme, head of the Islamic Medical Association, is telling Muslims that almost all vaccines contain products derived from animal and human tissue, which make them "haram", or unlawful for Muslims to take.Islam permits only the consumption of halal products, where the animal has had its throat cut and bled to death while God’s name is invoked.

Will they invoke God’s name when their child is suffering from measles? How about mumps? In Islam, the men are regarded more highly than women; how would they feel if their borderline-adult son had these symptoms:

Mumps in adolescent and adult males may also result in the development of orchitis, an inflammation of the testicles. Usually one testicle becomes swollen and painful about 7 to 10 days after the parotids swell. This is accompanied by a high fever, shaking chills, headache, nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain that can sometimes be mistaken for appendicitis if the right testicle is affected.

I can imagine yelling lots of blasphemous statements under those conditions.

The Times Online article goes on to say:

His warning has been criticised by the Department of Health and the British Medical Association, who said Katme risked increasing infections ranging from flu and measles to polio and diphtheria in Muslim communities.

I sometimes joke that if creationists don’t want to believe in evolution, then they shouldn’t benefit from it, including vaccinations. However, the ramifications would spread to the larger population which understands just what medical science has done for humanity (as someone who is older than 30 and wears glasses, I am grateful to be alive because of medical science).

There are so many reasons to fight fundamentalist religion. Your very life — and the lives of your kids — should be at the top of that list.

Tip o’ the surgeon’s mask to Respectful Insolence.

Wow, this bites: a Sealaunch rocket that was supposed to carry a communication satellite into orbit blew up on the pad:

Read more about it on space.com.