So, you may recall that President Bush says that we should teach egregiously false information to our students alongside of proven science.

Then, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist jumps in, courageously stomping to death any remaining credibility he has as a man with a science background, by saying that

I think today a pluralistic society should have access to a broad range of fact, of science, including faith…

His quotation is wonderful, in a way. Who could disagree with what he said? Except that he is arguing that we should teach Intelligent Design in schools. Of course, to his credit, he didn’ t include in his statement “grotesquely wrong ideas that will set our children so far behind in education versus other countries that we might as well just make a giant bonfire in the middle of the country — say, in Kansas — and throw all our science textbooks in it.”

But he could have. It’s what he means. And it’s what’ll happen if this goes on.

And then, out of the darkness, a voice of rationality, of reason. And it came from Howard Dean (also a doctor, but in this case one who embraces the science behind the profession). Dean came right out and accused Bush (and tangentially, Frist) of being “antiscience” (where have I heard that word before…?), saying specifically,

The president has been anti-science for a long time. This is the most antiscientific regime that I’ve seen in America in my lifetime. I’m a trained physician, as you’re aware. I’m insulted by that. It’s going to harm America. What serious business is going to invest in America if a scientific education is influenced by politics? Science ought to be taught as science. If you want to teach religion, that’s a separate debate. But science should be taught as science.

I don’t care what party you belong to, what wing you call yourself, for whom you voted, what your religion is, or even if you have one or not. Intelligent Design is not science; it’s not even religion. It’s just wrong. Purveyors of ID are stifling our children, killing their future, and literally destroying the chances our country has in being a player in the biotechnical industry that will become the biggest business of the 21st century. If this goes on, we’ll be firmly planted in the 15th century. Science is about looking ahead. ID is about sticking its head in the ground.

James Randi, aka The Amazing One, will be holding the fourth annual Amazing Meeting in Las Vegas in January 2006. I’ll be there, and I promise I’ll blog extensively about it later.

But I have to tell you this now! Randi’s foundation is auctioning on eBay a dinner with him and several high-powered guests (including the incredibly super-wonderful Julia Sweeney).

THIS FIRST AUCTION ENDS AT 12:13 (Pacific time) ON MONDAY! As far as I can tell, there will be more, so you’ll get more chances. If I find out how many more I’ll add it here.

So bid now, bid early, bid often. It’s going to a great cause, and I can guarantee that’ll be a wonderful dinner.

P.S. Randi writes a commentary every Friday on skeptical issues. By his request (and when he asks me to do something, I do it!) I sent him a response I wrote to an article about Intelligent Design. He put it in his commentary this week. I’m busting here!

You may have heard of the Mercury 13, women who were trained for space flight back in the heyday of the Space Race, and then largely forgotten.

But did you know of the forgotten — some say suppressed — black astronaut program? You may want to watch the brilliant video The Old Negro Space Program. Listening once again to the adventures of Loopy Louie and Wallace "Suitcase" Jefferson brought me right back to the high adventure of the race to the Moon. Warning: movie contains adult language. Also requires senses of humor and social irony.

Speaking of which, you may not know the tale of the astronaut accidentally left on the Moon, stranded by a locked latch on the Lunar Module. Here are his tales. Warning: adult themes, some childish humor (which cracked me up), and lots of “bleeps”.

Finally, I was on Slacker Astronomy once again, because, evidently, repeated blows to their heads have permanently damaged Pamela’s, Travis’s's, and Aaron’s cognitive abilities. Here’s the interview, where I am even crueler to Tom Cruise than I am in my War of the Worlds review. Warning: outrageous and inappropriate (and gratuitous) sexual innuendo abounds in the interview.

Note: this entry is based on a post I made on James Randi’s bulletin board. The idea has been expanded here.

Have you heard of the “Bright” movement? It’s an idea dreamed up by some skeptics. The basic thought is that most people don’t really understand what it means to be a skeptic. They think it means someone who denies everything, a nay-sayer, a cynic. It brings to mind a curmudgeon, someone who is, well, a jerk.

But in reality, it means someone who demands evidence for a claim. That’s all. That’s not so terrible, is it? But the word is so twisted by others, the real connotation lost, that a lot of skeptics don’t like to use the word anymore. So some folks tried to think up a new word. Lots were tried, but none stuck.

Then came the term “Brights”. They felt that this connoted a cheery mien, and took it to mean someone who has a naturalistic view of the world, unfettered by superstition.

I find this ironic, since the people who dreamed it up are pretty smart, and the people who signed onto it are pretty smart as well. Yet, somehow, they missed the idea that this word is really pretty awful.

I laughed the first time I heard it. I knew right away it was a terrible choice. For one thing, the word already has a meaning in the context of thought. It means someone who is smart, someone who is clever. If you’re not bright, then, well… you’re dim. Dumb. Doofus.

So it’s a pretty bad idea to give yourself a name that implies pretty strongly that anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot. It’s divisive. Skepticism thrives on debate, and it doesn’t help to say that your opponent is stupid.

It also comes across as arrogant. Sure, you’re not supposed to say “I’m bright,” but instead say “I’m a Bright,” but that very subtle difference is understandably lost on most people. Skeptics face an uphill battle against a lot of folks who already find them arrogant (and many skeptics are notably anti-religious, making debate a whole lot harder too). This name ain’t helping.

Skeptics want people to think critically. An “us versus them” term is not inclusive. It may be great for rallying the troops, but it’s not so hot for convincing others. Why would any fence-sitter want to be in a group that sounds elitist?

But there’s a final irony that I find humorous. The term was dreamed up as an alternative to the word “skeptic”, which has bad connotations to people outside of the skeptics’ circles. So someone came up with an even worse term, which is more divisive. The irony is that “Bright” was the best thing they could come up with. The others were a lot worse (read Michael Shermer’s book “Science Friction” for the list, and more background on this topic).

The solution is rather simple, and right in front of us. What we need to do is take back the word “skeptic”. Gays have done it for the word, well, “gay”, as well as “queer”. Certainly they are a group that’s suffered at least as much as skeptics.

When I give talks, I use the word, and define it clearly for everyone: I am a skeptic, which means I take nothing on faith. You want me to take your idea seriously? Back it up with facts. That’s the difference between science and fantasy.

I’m a skeptic. What are you?

The Milky Way Galaxy is a collection of gas, dust, and about 200 or so billion stars. It’s got three main parts: the central bulge (sometimes called the “hub”), the disk, and a spherical halo of stars. Our Galaxy is a spiral, because the disk appears to have great sweeping spiral arms.

Surprisingly, we know a lot about the disk. It’s hard to map it out because we’re in it; imagine being deep in the woods and trying to figure out what shape the forest boundary is. Still, using various different methods, astronomers have been pretty successful getting a feel for it.

The inner part is different, though. There’s 25,000 light years worth of dust, gas, stars, and assorted junk between us and it, so even seeing those stars gets to be pretty hard.

Enter the Spitzer Space Telescope. This is an observatory designed to see infrared light, invisible to the eye. You can think of the light as being redder than red, if that helps. While thick clouds of gas and dust block our view of the Galaxy’s core in visible light, infrared can pass through. So stars near the center can be seen by Spitzer.

We’ve known for a long time that our Galaxy has a bar in the center, a rectangular collection of stars. What’s different now is that this new data from Spitzer clearly show the bar, and also show it to be about 27,000 light years long, which is pretty big. It’s also very well-defined. They put together an artist’s illustration:

But what forms the bar? As the stars orbit the center, they feel a pull from the rest of the Galaxy. This can distort their orbits from a circle into truly weird shapes, including ellipses, curved diamonds (like a kite outline), and other odd paths. This effect gets amplified, and the gravitational physics works out to produce this long rectangular feature.

Most spiral galaxies have one, though it’s more pronounced in some galaxies than others. I suppose, if you care to phrase it this way, that if galaxies are cities in space, than ours just so happens to have a pretty good bar downtown.

Back in 1999, when I first started writing my book (ah, how smooth a shill I am), I decided to take on what was then a pretty quiet conspiracy theory that the Apollo Moon landings were faked. Coincidentally, it wasn’t long after that when the Fox TV show came out, and the rest is history (oh, how I wish that were true).

An unexpected benefit of my research was that I became a PAN– a Pro Apollo Nut. I find the missions fascinating. There is a rich, deep history there, filled with danger, excitement, adventure, and oh, what was it was just thinking… oh yeah– guys walking on the Moon.

NASA wants to go back. I want us to go back. I want, somehow, some way, to get the public excited about a return to the Moon. I think that people will get excited, when they see what’s in store.

So in my own subtle way, I will be dropping the occasional pro-Moon stuff in this blog. This entry is the first of those. So much for subtlety.

Anyway, one way to get excited is to see what it was like to be there. Looking at images can be great fun, but let’s face it, somewhat limiting. So Danish photographer Hans Nyberg did a very cool thing: he stitched together several Apollo images to create a panoramic view of the Moon. And using the cool tech of VR, you can see what it’s like to be there, on the Moon.

This is very cool, and Herr Nyberg did a fantastic job. Go ahead! Take a look around– literally. And remember, someone you know might wind up seeing this view for real in the not-too-distant future.

The mission for Discovery last week was varied, but to me the most interesting aspect was the amount of inspection — and introspection — done, both on the ground and on orbit. The Shuttle was examined like never before, every square centimeter gazed at, pored over, and, uh, scrutinized under.

I doubt there was much different with the Shuttle on this mission, physically, than with any other mission, but this time we could see what happened. There’s nothing like a good look to let you know what’s going on.

So this look in the mirror, so to speak, taught NASA a lot about what the Shuttle goes through during launch. I also strongly suspect that NASA itself will be looking in the mirror very closely for a while, at least. The new Administrator, Mike Griffin, has an engineering background, has a history of telling it like it is, and he has my very favorite trait of all: he admits it when he doesn’t know something. If only all politicians were so forthright.

So to start off this week, I give you not just a metaphorical gaze in the mirror, but an actual one: this image of astronaut Steve Robinson, who performed a spacewalk on STS 114. While outside the Shuttle, he turned the camera around and snapped this image of himself, with everything dizzyingly reflected in his visor. Click the image to go to the NASA gallery, where you can download a ginormous version of this image (3000 x 2000 pixels).