Blogs / Bad Astronomy

I think this is a bad idea.

But I think this is a far, far worse idea.

After all, what’s better? This:

Or this?

Please join responsibly.

March 4 in Texas is more than just the primary, it’s also the state school board election. Two of the seats up for grabs on the state school board belong to pro-evolution people, but they are both being challenged by creationists (one of whom — Barney Maddox - is, to be delicate, especially icky). Greg Laden has the details.

Live in Texas? Make your voice heard! Talk to your neighbors, talk to your friends, talk to teachers, and above all else, go out and vote.

Hey BABloggees– I will do the next live video chat this weekend at 4:00 p.m. Mountain time (23:00 Universal time) on Sunday, March 2.

You have options on how to do this. I have embedded a viewer below, so just come back to this blog post on Sunday at the right time, and you’ll hear me blabbing away when it starts. A better way, though, is to go directly to my chat page on UStream.tv. If you go there you can also enter the chat room and participate directly!

So everyone is buzzing over the World Wide Telescope, a project from Microsoft that connects telescope across the world and in space, and wraps them up into a very slick interface that lets you tour the Universe.

Roy Gould, an educator at Harvard, gave a presentation about the WWT at TED, the mega-unber-geek conference held in California every year. Here’s the video.

This does look very cool. It’s much like Google Sky, but from Microsoft’s direction. Google tends to build software that allows people to add to it, while Microsoft tends to produce finished products. Both have their advantages, though in this case it’s hard to see which will go where. Right now there isn’t a huge amount of info out on the WWT; everyone’s talking about how cool it is, but at the moment we’re light on specifics. They should come out very soon, by the spring.

Years ago, when I was still in California, there was a small astronomical space observatory mission being proposed to NASA, and my group was the head of the education and outreach part of the proposal. One of our ideas was to include the mission data into a collective database of observatory observations called the National Virtual Observatory. Microsoft genius Jim Gray (the man who, sadly, is presumed lost in his boat of the coast of California last year) was involved with that, and I see his name attached to the WWT as well. I presume there is some connection, so I’m naturally very curious about this project.

As I learn more I’ll be sure to write about it (well, whatever they let me write ).

I was fooling around on the web, and noticed the ad you see on the left. I was so baffled by it I got a screenshot of it. I honestly don’t mean to offend anyone here, but criminy, I have to wonder about this thing. Not about Christians singles wanting to meet like-minded folks; that’s natural and I have no issues with that.

My question is, what does "Certified Christian" mean? That part of the ad is obviously meant to look like some sort of stamp. Does the woman in the picture have that tattooed on her body someplace? Does the dog?

Seriously (OK, not seriously, but still) what can that possibly mean? They call the churches of everyone who signs up to make sure they attend at least twice a month?

I went to their website, and there’s no mention of this in the FAQ or the signup process (which I did not engage in). I went to their terms and Conditions page, and the word Christian is there dozens of times, but every single time it’s part of the website name, and never comes up in the context of "We make sure everyone is certified Christian".

Maybe they mean their own website is certified Christian. But who does that certifying? Is there National Board of Christian Websites, and they stamp you (or send a JPG of a stamp) when you qualify?

Just to be thorough, I checked the online Bible. The only time the word certificate is mentioned is in reference to divorce (seven times!), which I find a shade ironic given the nature of the wesbite as a dating service. Certified shows up in John 3:33 and has nothing to do with this context — "He testifies to what he has seen and heard, but no one accepts his testimony. The man who has accepted it has certified that God is truthful. For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit." — unless you want to interpret that as being about lying in your dating video. Certify is apparently not mentioned at all, which makes me suspicious of the dating service’s motives.

I guess in the end it’s simply a bizarre thing to have on a singles advertisement. If I were single (and I’m not, Scarlett, stop calling me!) I don’t think I’d want to go to a service that certifies anything. I’ve been on teh intertoobs a little while now, and I know the hot young thing I’m talking to in the chat room has a greater than 50/50 chance of being a man my age or older, so I’d know to take steps to certify their honesty.

And if it did turn out to be a woman, and she had a stamp saying Certified Woman anywhere on her, I’m pretty sure I’d still run away.

Well, nuts.

First, the good news: my friend Richard Saunders has put out another Tank vodcast.

The bad news is that Tank reporter Kylie Sturgess went out to a beach in Australia, showed people a picture of James Randi, and asked if they knew him. Most didn’t.

But the really bad news is that she showed folks a picture of Randi, Richard, and me, and no one knew who I was at all.

Go to about 19 minutes in to see that last part. Aussie women in bikinis don’t know who I am! All for the best, I suppose. Fame is fleeting.