Blogs / Bad Astronomy

Happily, my brother-in-law reminded me that the premier of Dancing with the Stars was on Monday night, so I caught the stylings of skeptic, magician, loudmouth, and (literal) giant among men Penn Jillette.

His partner is Kym Johnson, who is not 17 feet tall as I had hoped. She was wearing very tall heels, and was still like six meters shorter than Penn.

I have to admit, he did better than I thought he would, and he actually did a move where he dove between Ms. Johnson’s legs which was pretty bold. Actually, right at the start I thought he might snap her leg off, but she appeared to survive that as well (one of the judges noticed this as well).

See for yourself:

The judges were snarky, of course, and gave him a low score, lower than I thought he deserved. I guess they don’t handicap. I’ll note that, as usual, Penn does all the talking while his partner does all the work.

I can’t imagine how this will be handled at TAM 6. We’ll have to show some clips, I think…

I will be upgrading (actually, reinstalling) WordPress on this new server to hopefully get rid of a few extremely irritating little bugs pestering me. You may be able to read the blog but not comment for a while, and then it’ll be offline for just a few minutes. In that case, why am I writing this? I dunno; I guess I like the sound of my keyboard.

Update: I have reinstalled WordPress, and though I’m having some issues with administration, everything should be working for you, my BABlogees. Use the comment section below to report any problems. Thanks!

I am incredibly saddened to hear that Arthur C. Clarke has died. He had been ill for sometime, and finally succumbed earlier today.

It is no exaggeration at all to say we owe the world to Clarke. He is most famous for having written the book and movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, of course. But he also was the first person to conceive of a geostationary orbit; one in which a satellite orbits the Earth once every 24 hours, giving it a view that always shows the same face of the Earth. This is (mostly) where we put weather and communication satellites today.

His science fiction and fact books inspired a generation of rocket scientists, engineers, astronomers, and more. His fiction in the 1950s is a blueprint for how to explore space, and had the US government listened I might have been writing these words from my cabin on a lunar base.

I personally had some tangential contact with him. We sent him a copy of my first book to get a blurb from him; he sent one back too late to use on the book, but I have the letter still and I treasure it. I also met a good friend of ACC’s, Fred Durant, at James Randi’s first Amazing Meeting. We chatted for a while, and he asked me if I had ever read Clarke’s The Coming of the Space Age. I said sure, back in high school. He asked if I’d like a copy, and I again said sure! He then got a little wistful, and said that he bought the last remaining first edition hardcovers years back, and Clarke was ticked because he had wanted them. Then Fred smiled, and said Clarke was even more ticked when Fred made him sign all the copies.

It took a moment for me to realize that Fred was offering to send me a signed, first-edition hardcover of Clarke’s book. I couldn’t believe it.

That book sits on my shelf, not one meter to my left. It’s one of my most prized possessions.

Clarke inspired me when I was in high school. His stories of lunar colonization were (and still are) wonderful reading, cleverly plotted and well-written. I’m very sad he’s gone, but I am so very very happy he was alive. His name will be remembered as long as we ply the lanes of space.

I really enjoy skeptic conferences. There’s something wonderful about being surrounded with other people who want to see the world for what it really is, and who actively want to get others to as well.

Not all of these meetings are big, like Randi’s Amazing Meeting. Some are cozier, intimate, but they are just as innovative and inspiring. Skepticamp is a subset of the BarCamps, meetings where people meet and share ideas on a given topic. Skepticamps are held all over the world, but the next one will be in Castle Rock Colorado on March 22, in just a few days.

People who attend generally (but are not required to) give a short presentation, and the idea is to share ways of spreading critical thinking to others. I would hesitate to call it skeptical evangelism, but you get the idea. Randi’s organization has donated food and swag, so that’s an added incentive. If you’re in the Castle Rock area you really should go. And you should join the list of Denver Skeptics, too!

BA Bloggee Mikhail Bragoria sent me this picture he took of the BA Book sitting at the feet of a statue of Queen Victoria in Brisbane, Australia. As he points out, the statue was erected to commemorate the founding of the Torchwood Institute.

So, in this case, we are amused.

I know coincidences happen; I certainly see no evidence for any sort of universal harmony aligning the stars or anything like that. Any stellar alignment is a matter of our own brains interpreting data.

Literally.

Such is the case, I assume, when two separate BABlogees independently send me links to the same site for two different reasons. The site in question is Strange Maps, which is about, well strange maps.

Case 1: Dan Fingerman sent me to a Strange Maps page about a Dutch map showing what Mars would look like if it had water on its surface. This is an interesting idea, and of course with modern technology (specifically, laser ranging topographical maps of Mars taken using orbiting satellites) we have much better such things, but I’m fond of the old style of map-making. This one has that Percival Lowell feel to it that makes it cool. Why it has south facing up I’ll never know.

Case 2: dj empirical told me about a Strange Maps page with a fairly unusual map of the sky, with star names and constellations re-imagined by an eccentric (read: whacko) Brit who thought our starry vault needed more Hitler and Mussolini. You can’t make this stuff up. Well, that guy did, but you know what I mean.

Strange Maps looks like a fun blog, and I’ve added it to my feed reader. I’ve always enjoyed looking over maps, and this appeals to my odd sense of humor.

Note: a version of this blog entry was posted right before I moved to the new server, and was lost in the ether.

I have been getting quite a bit of email about the movie "Expelled", a propaganda piece sponsored by the Disco ‘tute and, from all accounts, full of the usual lies about evolution, science, and creationism. The host is Ben Stein, who has been particularly egregious about his promotion of the movie, sidling up to the likes of Ken Ham, for example.

I need not go into any details here, since Jon Voisey at The Angry Astronomer has many, many grim details on how the producers of this movie have been really slimy about it, including lying outrageously to scientists to get interviews with them. As usual, it seems that for most fundamentalists the Ninth Commandment is optional.