Blogs / Bad Astronomy

Welcome to all the REDDITers! Someone asked if this will be broadcast on TV: not TV as such, but we’re talking about recording it or possibly streaming it live! Stay Tuned.

I just found out that there will be a LIVE test for James Randi’s $1,000,000 Challenge at TAM 5.5!

This is very cool: Chris Cordero is a gentleman who claims that he can psychically project images into someone else’s mind. Something like this is pretty easy to test, obviously, and can be done in a statistical sense as well. For example, he can try to make someone see a specific playing card, and this can be done, say, 100 times. Statistical tests can be applied to see if the person was correct the number of times you’d expect from random guessing, or if there really is something going on.

Randi has one million bucks set aside for anyone who can prove they have some sort of paranormal power. The person has to go through a preliminary test first before getting the real test for the money. Mr. Cordero has agreed to do the prelim test live at TAM 5.5.

I’m excited by this; I’ve never participated in anything like this before, and I get to MC it! W00t!

You can find out more on the JREF forum.

It’s not too late to attend! Sign up now!

Please read this all the way through. I’ve got my wind up here, and want you all to listen.

Anyone who reads this blog knows my feeling that critical thinking is one of the most important aspects of humanity that we possess. Our ability to discern truth from fallacy is more than important. It’s literally critical.

I also understand that my fighting antiscience in the rather narrow field of astronomy isn’t apt to save lives. But I do know with 100% certainty that bad thinking elsewhere can certainly take them. And in too many cases, it’s our innocents who pay the price of our simple inability to think.

Bad thinking kills when it comes to health. The reasons are legion, but one stands out in particular: the anti-vaccination crowd.

You may not be aware that there is an organized effort to undermine the influenza vaccination program (also for many other diseases as well). People place all sorts of blame on it, including (and probably most vociferously) how they think the MMR shot causes autism. There is no evidence to support this claim other than anecdotes and our very strong urge to link something that happens to something that came before (post hoc ergo propter hoc is the Latin for this logical fallacy). Just because a child gets a shot and then develops autism does not mean that the autism was caused by the shot.

Many of these folks claim that the national vaccination program is a conspiracy to somehow keep the population under control. They use the same faulty evidence, bad thinking, and misleading methods that the Moon Hoax purveyors, the Mars Facers, the UFO proponents, and cosmic doomcriers use. They may very well be honest people who are just seriously misguided, but when it comes to vaccination we all suffer under their skewed view: if enough people don’t get vaccinated, a disease can still run rampant. You need a minimum number of vaccinated people so that herd immunity can take place, where enough people can slow or even stop the spread of the disease.

If these people prevail, we are all at risk. If you’re under the age of, say, 40 do you personally remember anyone getting smallpox, or polio?

No? Guess why.

That’ll all end if the antivax people have their way. They must be stopped, and being vocal about critical thinking is the only way to do it. The blog ERV has been fighting this fight — this incredibly important fight — for a while now, and has some actual good news on that front: celebrities are coming out and speaking their minds about the antivax crowd. Like it or not, famous faces get attention, and in this case it’s Jennifer Garner and Dean Cain. Both have been vocal about getting flu shots this season, and both seem to be saying it for the right reasons, too. You can tell by their words: it’s not lip service. They mean it.

And when it comes to the important stuff, the really important stuff, I’ll take all the help I can get to make sure the word gets out.

As for me: I haven’t had my flu shot this season. I’m going to take care of that as soon as I can.

Who’s with me?

Via Astropixie comes this item of win:

But it doesn’t say how I can get one!

And how would 1984 open? “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking 9 + root(9) + 9/9.” Not quite the same ring to it.

Big news! I will be attending The Amaz!ng Meeting 5.5 on January 25-27 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida… as the MC!

James Randi’s skeptical conferences are a mainstay in the rationalist community, and I have proudly attended every one. However, this year wasn’t working out well for various reasons, and I didn’t think I could attend. But then I got word from Randi’s organization that they wanted me to be the Master of Ceremonies, and, well, I have a hard time turning Randi down.

This conference is shorter than usual, really just a single day of speakers and panels (as opposed to a full blown TAM with three days). The list of speakers is pretty cool, including Skepchick Rebecca Watson, Robert Lancaster from Stop Sylvia Brown, author Mike Stackpole, and many others.

There is a workshop the day before on How To Be Heard Online, which should be interesting, and an open house at the James Randi Educational Foundation the day after. I’ve been there, and it’s a fun place, loaded with gizmos and pieces of magical, skeptical, and scientific history.

Bottom line: if you can go, go. I hope to see you there!

There are rumors going around that the asteroid that may (but probably won’t; the odds recently dropped slightly) smack into Mars on January 30 might be the lost Mars Observer, a NASA probe that malfunctioned just as it was to enter Mars orbit. I strongly doubt this to be the case; the orbit is wrong for a Mars probe; tracing backwards, the orbit hasn’t come close to Earth for many decades.

It’s tempting, though; the size of an object is judged by how bright it is, how far it is, and an assumed reflectivity. A rock is dark, while ice is bright; so for an object at a certain distance and brightness, it would be bigger if it were made of rock than if it were made of ice (you need more surface area of rock to make it as bright as a smaller object made of ice).

Metal is shiny, so a smallish spacecraft would look like a much bigger rock when observed from Earth. Still, I really think we have just a rock here. And I really don’t think it’ll hit.

But if it does…