For your weekend pleasure, I’ll point you BABLoggers to an interview I did with Rick Wood on Audio Martini, sponsored by BadPsychics.com. We talked about the Moon Hoax, Mars nonsense, and the philosophy of Bad Science — and why people are still bamboozled by it even though we are solidly into the 21st Century. Here’s a direct link to the mp3 file.
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About Bad Astronomy
If you went to BadAstronomy.com and found yourself here, never fear: the BA Blog has moved to its new home at Discover Blogs. The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking and all that) is still online, too.
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
Bad Astronomy was chosen as one of Time.com's Best Blogs of 2009. 
Open Lab 2008 is a collection of the best blog posts of the year, all in one place. Are you a science junkie? Yeah, you want it. -
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Social/Networking/Cool Stuff
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October 28th, 2005 at 7:35 am
It was a pleasure to have you on the show, I though Rick Woods interview with you Phil was great.
Thanks again
October 28th, 2005 at 8:59 am
Phil,
You are one cool cat. Great interview!
I’m so pleased that there are those among us like you and Randi that take a stand against garbage dispensers like Hoaglund.
Are we still going to do STE at TAM4?
October 28th, 2005 at 10:26 am
Are you ever going to come across to the UK?
Maybe you could nip across the other side of the Pennines from me to visit Jodrel Bank.
October 28th, 2005 at 11:42 am
Well spoken. You are indeed as good a speaker as you are a scientist. We’re lucky to have you!
October 28th, 2005 at 12:35 pm
Missed your recent visit in Australia (or rather you missed us in Perth :-).
But since I then have moved to UK, so I’ll join Sticks: Are you ever going to come across to the UK?
October 28th, 2005 at 6:47 pm
Get rid of the ID folks…There won’t be enough elbow space during the Rapture, otherwise.
October 29th, 2005 at 10:56 am
Phil, In response to your comment on my quickie assessment of your interview, two things stand out in my mind:
1. My mini-review was nearly incoherent because I was listening to the interview at the same time. In fact, I was listening for the second time through. I’m pretty sure that that’s a positive indication on the quality of the talk.
2. Your ability to describe the issues involved in these hoaxes, your Halloween telescope vists and general philosophy of science and Realism (with an intentional Big R) in a few clear sentences is quite an accomplishment. I think that this is one of the most important skills that will be used in the winning of the on-going scuffle with irrationality.
A synthesis of some of what you said is the ideal out-reach message for, for example, anyone who feels deeply religious, is worried about “godless” science and is still a sensible person willing to listen to well-reasoned discussion: “If you want to believe in a supreme being, go ahead! We have no evidence either way so that is a perfect application of ‘faith.’ However, if you want to believe that said being created us all at some time previous, with each species rising out of the dust fully formed, that’s false. You might WANT to believe that but it is, in fact, incorrect.”
Said another way, your discussion is a good example of how the sciences are NOT the forces of militant atheism.
Once THAT discussion is past, we can move onto the education issues. Summary: “Science is COOL. It is ALWAYS cool. Sometimes there’s a lot of math required to become an expert but ANYONE can look through a telescope. If we science-advocates just spread the ‘cool science’ meme to our immediate friends, that will be huge.”
… Okay, I’m going to stop the fanboy typing now. …
In sum, well done.
October 29th, 2005 at 3:10 pm
Phil,
Thanks for making the .MP3 file available. I wasn’t able to find a link to the file (for free) at the website.
Ben
Manattan, NY
http://novahunter.blogspot.com
October 29th, 2005 at 3:22 pm
Ben,
The show is available for free on the website. Just go to the”right click target” link under the description of Phil. Sorry for the confusion.
October 30th, 2005 at 7:31 pm
sorry, off-topic: what happened to the slacker astronomy site? http://slackerastronomy.org/
October 31st, 2005 at 2:57 pm
It’s http://www.slackerastronomy.org. If you leave off the “www” you get a different site. Weird.
October 31st, 2005 at 4:56 pm
I really enjoyed the interview. Some the Moon hoax stuff I have not heard before. BTW have you heard of Dr Karl that does science stuff over here in OZ. Like you he is interested in making science fun and exciting and does a pretty good job of it. I listen now to his podcasts from JJJ on the ABC.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/
November 1st, 2005 at 2:16 pm
Great interview, terrific show — keep up the good work (both of you)!
November 2nd, 2005 at 4:13 pm
Folks, just wanted to let you know we had to pull Phil’s interview to make room for our new show. If anyone still wants to hear it, email me at rickwood@audiomartini.com and we will find a way to get it to you. Thanks,
Rick