Blogs / Bad Astronomy

Just a reminder: I will be on Coast to Coast AM radio tonight starting at midnight Mountain (US) time, for three hours (I plan on having a nice cup of coffee with dinner).

I’ve put up a preliminary page with some links to the possible topics we’ll be covering, as well as links to the other times I’ve been on the show. I’ll try to update it tomorrow with more links to what we talked about.

The show is syndicated, and quite a few of the stations that carry it stream the show live. Here is a list of affiliates. I personally used to listen to the stream on the Canadian station CFUN. YMMV.

Oh, PZ is having himself a time over Bill Dembski. Y’see, Dembski is a creationist, and a bigwig with the Disco ‘tute, that hotbed of Intelligent Design creationist research which has yet to publish a peer-reviewed paper.

A while back, Dembski stole a slide from a copyrighted work and used it in a talk. Now sometimes, this is totally protected under the Fair Use Act (which I sometimes cower behind myself when giving talks; since critiques, satires, and educational uses are specifically exempted) but it appears that Dembski isn’t covered. When called on it, he said he didn’t know it was copyrighted, but then it was later discovered he full well knew he was breaking the law. I guess, as usual, the Ninth Commandment is optional for creationists.

Anyway, a lawyer (who once defended PZ) has been enjoying this immensely, and PZ has the goods. As you read it, remember, this is one of the leading lights of the ID creationist movement. Enjoy.

The list of places my book has been increases daily!

But I’ve noticed that a lot of the places are tangential at best to astronomy. That’s fine, of course, and it’s great to see it anywhere. But it does make a certain sense that it should be seen in a cosmic setting, don’t you think?

So in comes engineer and amateur astronomer Andrew Cooper. And what does he send me? Awesomeness.

Holy Haleakala!

Hey, wait a second. I use that phrase all the time, but this is the closest it’s ever been to being accurate! That picture shows my book sitting in front of one of the two monster 10-meter Keck telescopes in Hawaii.

Whoooooooaaaaaaa.

It’ll take some doing to top that. So where has your copy been?

So, do you own a copy of the book? Take a picture of yourself holding it in some fun location, send it to me, and I’ll post it here!