‘I am sitting in the lobby of the NASA Hilton (that sounds cool) in Houston, Texas, because
1) I am attending the first day of the Lunar and Planetary Science meeting in Houston, and
2) there is free wireless in the lobby.
I was invited down here by a friend at the Lunar and Planetary Institute (Hi Steph!) who organized a teacher workshop on science misconceptions. She invited me to give my Moon Hoax debunking talk (more on a funny coincidence in a sec), and to help facilitate the meeting. My talk went OK, and my facilitating probably impeded progress. But anyway, the attendees had fun, and they seemed to like the ideas about dealing with misconceptions that were discussed.
One of the other speakers turned out to be a bundle of energy named Claudine, who does research into education and misconceptions. I met her in the lobby this morning when we got picked up to go to the meeting. We were discussing Moon Hoax stuff, and she started talking about this one time when she heard a Moon Hoax believer on an NPR radio show. I laughed out loud; I was on that show! It was "The Connection", and it paired noted journalist and space historian James Oberg against noted goofy Moon Hoax believer and cranky guy Ralph Rene.
So we got a laugh out of that. But what struck me as funnier later is that James is at this meeting! I have in fact never met him before, so that was a cool coincidence.
I didn’t think I’d know many people at this meeting, since I do black holes and galaxies and supernovae, and this is a planetary meeting, but in fact I know about a dozen folks here. I was excited to meet another astronomy blogger, Emily Lakdawalla, who writes The Planetary Blog. She is a really good writer, and it turns out she’s quite a trip to hang out with too. I think we got along pretty well; our senses of humor are pretty similar. I hung out with her and some of her friends and we had a most excellent time.
Thus endeth the first day of the meeting. I’m only going to part of the meeting tomorrow since I’m heading home, so I may not get a chance to post anything on Monday.’
March 12th, 2006 at 10:13 pm
Welcome to Houston! Next time come and give a public talk.. puhleeese.
March 12th, 2006 at 11:12 pm
Yeah give a public talk anywhere in Texas and I’m there.
March 13th, 2006 at 4:44 am
Dear Phil, The first semester I taught Astronomy 100 at the American Univerity of Rome (70% study abroad liberal arts majors), my course got sidetracked by the ‘Moon Hoax’. Some students had seen FOX’s program and had many questions, so I spent almost a full lecture addressing each of their points (your web site helped btw, thanks!). I lost time to teach what I had planned on my schedule, even though, in the broad scheme of things, I was still teaching science and how to be critical. The next year when I taught the course I proactively presented a few of the falacies of the ‘Moon Hoax’, in order to not to lose so much time. So you see the ‘Moon Hoax’ reaches far outside of the US borders. I pondered writing a severe letter to FOX, but I decided at the end it would only be a waste of time.
March 13th, 2006 at 5:17 am
Man, isn’t Emily cute…sheesh, I wish I were just a bit younger.
Believe it or not, Oberg can be very cranky too!
Have you Googled today? Google has “customized” it’s logo
(I guess in honor of MRO?) changing the first o to Mars (with canals) and
two little Martians and the g as Earth with a Telescope pointing to Mars.
Kind of neat!
Hey, has anyone seen Comet Pojmanski?
March 13th, 2006 at 7:53 am
Also Google has released a Mars-map for Google-Maps:
http://www.google.com/mars/
very pretty.
March 13th, 2006 at 7:59 am
Re: http://www.google.com/mars/
Oooohhh, and try zooming in on Olympus Mons. The infra-red view is quite nice too.
March 13th, 2006 at 9:14 am
Yepper, I found that Google now has Google Mars too!
March 13th, 2006 at 10:45 am
Stupid off-topic comment of the day:
I guess the BadAstronomer is a clear example of why NASA scientists love to send things off-earth, traveling across the vast distances of space…
I mean, they ALSO spend most of their time traveling around, & surely they feel an itch whenever their ass has been sat on the same chair for 5 minutes… BadAstronomer=GoodTraveler, from convention to convention & back to the hard work!
March 13th, 2006 at 11:15 am
In my area and I missed you.
I’m always a day late and a dollar short…
March 13th, 2006 at 11:39 am
Ms. Emily returns the compliment:
http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00000489/
March 13th, 2006 at 1:02 pm
I wonder if you could see the Mars Rovers. It probably wouldn’t be likely because there are only a few high resoluton areas.
March 13th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
BA,
I’ve read a bit of James Oberg’s work over the years but have never seen a picture of him. Are you sitting down in that photo?
March 13th, 2006 at 1:52 pm
Is it just me, or does that mountain about 20 degrees south of the Daedalia Plenum look like a smirking George Washington?
http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/6089/gwmars2my.jpg
(Sorry – I just couldn’t resist!)
March 13th, 2006 at 2:05 pm
Bad Albert– nope. Jim is very tall. That’s actually how I recognized him at first!
March 13th, 2006 at 2:38 pm
I hope google adds the new images from MGS and MRO (and even Mars Express) on their map site of Mars when they become available, like they do for Earth, it would help the zoom feature.
March 13th, 2006 at 2:49 pm
Phil:
Off the topic, but I volunteer at Chabot Space & Science Center, which you know about. The latest discovery that I share with visitors is to take them to the observation deck and tell them that if they were on Pluto, the sun would be the size of a car on the GG Bridge, and if they were on Jupiter the sun would be the size of a car in Piedmont, both of which you can see from the deck. It never hurts to put forth real examples of astronomical phenomena so that our visitors can get the feeling of space. I always try to provide real world examples for people.
Charles Simkins
cbsimkins@comcast.net
March 13th, 2006 at 5:54 pm
Hey, Phil – take a peek out your hotel window in the general vacinity of San Antonio and wave. You’ll be waving back at me! I’ve been here 18 years and never yet made it to Houston (other than passing through Houston Hobby Airport enroute to somewhere else).
Emily’s blog reminds me, I need to renew my membership to the Planetary Society. I let it lapse a few years ago when money was an issue. (Not that the membership was that much).
jbs
March 14th, 2006 at 5:25 am
The comet….
There’s a great animation of Comet Pojmanski at
http://home.att.net/~dpersyk/new.htm
Dave Mitsky
Pretty decent I think, I will try to get some photos tonight!
Ed
March 14th, 2006 at 2:30 pm
Phil, I guess I missed you. I dropped by the Hilton Monday evening to leave a message and found out you had already left. Oh well.