Blogs / Bad Astronomy

This picture (click to embiggen) is a still from the video of my presentation at TAM 6 in las Vegas in June. I was pretty excited during my talk — I usually get fairly fired up when I talk — but I don’t remember what I was talking about at this exact moment.

Wanna venture a guess? Enter your caption in the comments below! The winner receives… nothing. Accolades of other BABloggees, I suppose, which is priceless. Literally.

And please, keep it clean.

I appreciate the email I get. Seriously, I do. I appreciate it even more when folks tell me about bits of news, or fun stuff, or pictures I might be able to use on the blog.

Honestly, it’s wonderful, and saves me a lot of time and effort. FSM knows I can’t even keep up with all the pareidolia out there. So thanks!

However, every day for weeks now I have been getting about a dozen or more emails, Facebook messages, tweets, smoke signals, and psychic flashes about the LHC rap. The same LHC rap I posted about over a month ago.

I know, it was a minor link in a minor sort of post, so most BABloggees might have missed it. So to be more clear: Thanks to everyone for sending me the email about the rap. I saw it. If you want to see it too, it’s on YouTube.

I should probably mention that I also saw the website(s) that post the status of the planet after the LHC turns on. That’s got it’s own post too.

So please continue to send me stuff, as I love it and might use it. But the rap? I’ve seen it, and now it gets it’s own post and everything. You can stop telling me about it now. So the next person to send me that link gets their email address posted publicly on the biggest woowoo site I can find, where I will tell them it’s from a CIA spook who faked the Moon landings and is hiding the evidence of Nibiru and has the second bullet and has been conducting mind-control experiments and has Big Pharma in their pocket and alien corpses in their basement and is, in fact, Bigfoot.

And that’s a wrap.

Let me get this out of the way before 80 bazillion people email it to me. Yes, I saw today’s xkcd strip. Yes, I agree with the final panel… kinda. But I won’t say more now because I won’t spoil it. Go read it. I’ll post more later, but I have other things to post here first. Be patient.

The European spacecraft Rosetta will pass by asteroid Steins today, giving us our first close-up views of this mountain-sized rock. But far and away the most important part about this is that I am interviewed (along with my old friend Joel Parker) in The Daily Camera, Boulder’s local paper. The headline should read "asteroid", not "comet", but that’s generally written by an editor, and is an understandable error. Sometimes, even experts can’t tell the difference.

So at DragonCon I see my old friends Evo Terra and his phenomenal wife Sheila (pssst: don’t tell anyone, but I might have a HUGE crush on her). Evo is a master podcaster (he wrote Podcasting for Dummies), and I met them at DC 2006 at the podcasting track.

So it was very cool to see them. We chatted for a few, and then they invited me to their podcasting party. Yay! A con party! Drinks and dance and people in costumes and fun fun fun.

So I go about my day, and then evening rolls around, and then suddenly I have about 12 people with me who want to go to the party. Hmmm. I call Evo, and what does he say? "If you have 90 people we’ll fit ‘em in!"

I love that Evo Terra.

So we traipse over to the Hyatt, wait like 20 minutes for the elevator (they are always packed; we saw — truthfully — one that got overpacked and they had to call in a squad to pry open the doors because the car got stuck between floors), and then finally arrive at the party. It’s a suite, with a bar in a vestibule in the back, balconies, music, people milling… but what the heck are they wearing?

Oh, no. With horror, I realize what I’m seeing. It’s a theme costume party.

And the theme? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Pimps and hos.

Evo? Do you read my blog? Do ya? If so, then maybe next time you could TELL ME THIS KIND OF STUFF BEFORE I SHOW UP.

OK, fine, we roll with it. My friends disperse, and I make my way back to the bar. I’m standing there talking with a friend when a guy comes up in full regalia. Glittery silver hat, cape, walking stick (with skull cap), beads, and a fur-lined jacket. He gets in my face, all up in my grille, and says — in high-pitched pimp-speak — "You Phil Plait? You Phil Plait! I’m Thoupbone. Thoupbone wantth to talk which you, so you thtay right where you at while Thoupbone getth a drink."

OK, fine. I have no clue who this guy is, but I’m in a party mood, and the way he talked cracked me up, so I have to give him cred. But after a minute or two, I realize I’m in the way of people trying to get to the bar. So I move over a bit, maybe six feet. After another minute, Soupbone comes out of the bar. He sees I’ve moved. He beelines it over to me, starts sticking his finger in my chest.

"Thoupbone tole Phil Plait not to move. When Thoupbone tellth you not to move, you do not move. Doeth Phil Plait unnerthtand that?" This went on for about three or four minutes, nonstop — I don’t think he was even breathing — and again, wow, I have to say it was impressive.

Finally, in the middle of a sentence, he suddenly stops. He leans over, puts his mouth near my ear, and says…

"Phil, I’m Scott Sigler; we did a panel together a few years ago on podcasting."

And I erupt into laughter. As I recall, I shouted "Awesome!!" about ten times.

Sigler is a pretty famous guy. A few years back, he wrote a scifi novel called Earthcore that nobody would publish (well, the story is more complicated, but I simplify for brevity). He thought it was pretty good, so he decided to audiocast it; he read a chapter at a time and podcast it. He got a bazillion downloads (10,000 subscribers, back in 2004!), and became wildly popular. He was the first person ever to podcast a novel, and the fans worship him.

And at that moment, so did I. I first met him around the time his fame was taking off, but I hadn’t heard of him back then. We chatted for a while on that panel, and it wasn’t until months later I realized the chance I missed by not hanging with him (I just reread my post about this from back then, and it’s pretty funny in hindsight).

We made up for it that night. I got to hang with him all night, as did my friends. I only wish he had had the chance to meet my dear friend A. She would have liked him, I think.

The party was tremendous. I have pictures on Flickr, if you dare.

And that is how I re-met Scott Sigler. I’m following him on Twitter, too.

And hey, Scott: if you see your cousin Soupbone, tell him that I thaid hi and to be good to hith bad thelf.

DragonCon.

Yowza. Where to start?

Another typical day at DragonCon.

OK, for those not in the know, DragonCon is one of the premier scifi/fantasy conventions in the country. It’s big, like 40k people big. A lot of stuff goes on: talks, movies, singing, panels on various topics, places where celebrities sign stuff, and so on. I mostly attended and participated in panels, sitting with skeptics and podcasters and scientists and educators. For example, the first panel I was on was Skepticism 101, an intro to critical thinking. We had Randi, Michael Shermer, DJ Grothe, Jeff Wagg, Richard Saunders, and Ben Radford.

It was a lot of fun. The place was packed (I counted about 150 people IIRC), and we had lots of audience participation. In fact, I’d call that the theme of all the panels; fun, audience questions/comments, and lots of smart people. That last bit is pretty important; I heard a lot of folks saying how much fun it is to hang with smart people.

I love smart people.

And the friends! Richard, A, Evo and Sheila, Derek and Swoopy, Maria, Christian, Carrie, Tim, the other Tim, Mykel, George Hrab, Soccergirl, and many many more. These cons are a chance for us to renew our friendships and have a good time.

Also, to ogle the costumes. That’s a definite plus. I took a bazillion photos, and posted quite a few on Flickr.

This one was particularly cool. I saw the yip yip yip costume, and had to get a picture. A couple of years ago at DragonCon 2006, my bud Mykel and I went around and took pictures of costumed revelers holding my book, Bad Astronomy. This year I did it again, but this time with the proof copy of Death from the Skies! So I go up to the yipyipyip guy and ask him if I can get a shot of him holding my book. Mind you, I walked up to him randomly; I could have been anybody. He says (muffled behind the mask), "Sure, on one condition. You put the picture up on your blog."

Awesome! I was recognized. Turns out, he has his own blog and talks about this very incident.

The costumes went on and on. next year, for sure, I’ll come up with something. I felt a little stiff walking around in a polo shirt and long pants — I had no go-go boots, or vinyl, or tape over my chest, or helmet, or antennae, or chain mail, or stormtrooper outfit, or gladiator cape, or zombie wounds. Sigh.

I have some individual stories to tell over the next few days, and I’ll drop them in among the regular posts. Promise. Until then, you can read Maria’s thoughts, and stories from Carr2d2, and A, and Kylie. Other blogs abound, too.

I plan on attending next year, schedule permitting. I love me some scifi cons, and I always have (I went to Disclave and Balticon back in the early 80s, so my geek cred is established). I suspect I always will, too.

Yesterday I did an interview over the phone for Talking Head TV, and it’s already online! We talked about JREF, the book (due out in less than two months!), and the blog. Justin Young and the THTV crew created a video from the call, and put it up in three parts on YouTube. Here’s Part 1, and the other two are linked from there (but are here and here to make it easier on you). You can also grab it from iTunes, too.

Someone tell Wil about the shirt I’m wearing in the first part of the first video…