Blogs / Bad Astronomy

The discussion on a previous post about whether the Earth is flat or not gives me an excuse to post one of my favorite quotations from writer Isaac Asimov.

…when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.

Creationists and their ilk should take that to heart: just because you say something is wrong doesn’t make you right. Life, the world, the whole Universe… they’re complicated, with an infinite number of shades of gray. If someone thinks the world is black and white, then their own mind is too small to be able to hold more than one bit of information.

So today is Talk Like A Pirate Day. Since I’m writing all the time, becoming a shut-in, and hardly get out of the house anymore, I don’t have too many folks to whom I can talk like a pirate. I mean, yarrr, um, my hearties.

And I only know one pirate. I never know what to make of her blog, but it makes me laugh (in a NSFW or school kinda way), so there ye go.

Yarrr.

Of course, my other favorite pirate is Steve.

Tonight (check your local listings), PBS will run a documentary called "Seeing in the Dark", about amateur astronomers and their contribution to the science. It’s based on a book of the same name by Timothy Ferris, a writer and astronomer who used to live down the road from me a little ways before I moved to Boulder.
I have not read the book (I can’t keep up!) but I have heard the book and the show are quite good. The PBS site has an extensive series of pages supporting the show, and any educators who read this blog should check iot out; I’m sure there is plenty there that will be useful in the classroom!

The saga continues…