Thanks to a link from the most excellent Tara at Aetiology, I found out that Science magazine gave me some props. Cool!
Update: Woops! I should have said, Tara got the news from Orac.
About Bad Astronomy
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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.
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April 1st, 2006 at 3:02 am
Well done, Phil. The good news about Bad Astronomy is spreading far and wide
April 1st, 2006 at 3:29 am
It is spreading also fast I think. I found out about it only yesterday and – of course – immediately registerd it to my news reader. I was looking at the video when you were on tv with the eggs. Oh it looked so great. This morning I tried it out myself and – it worked! But maybe it’s just because mars is at a good position and the moon was bright tonight.
April 1st, 2006 at 1:12 pm
Rock on, Professor BA!
April 2nd, 2006 at 4:48 am
Props indeed! It’s always good to get some positive acknowledgment.
April 2nd, 2006 at 3:41 pm
Cool. : ) Hey have you ever thought of highlighting recent posts on your sidebar, I think it would be helpful.
April 2nd, 2006 at 6:23 pm
Cool.
That’s gotta be neat. Blogs blogged about by other bloggers on blogs that kick blog butt!
April 2nd, 2006 at 6:24 pm
Oh. Horay for sience too… I suppose. And GO PHIL!!!
April 2nd, 2006 at 7:09 pm
off-topic: thought y’all might find this intersting: http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0327/p02s01-ussc.html
“Georgia would become the first to require its Department of Education to put in place a curriculum to teach the history and literature of the Bible.”
April 3rd, 2006 at 4:28 am
As mentioned previously, I would like the Great BA to be as precise with his words as with his great work when it comes to astronomy. There is no such verb as “to heart s.o.” in the english language and it makes me sad that it’s becoming more and more common to abuse the english language in such a way. Call me a nitpick, but I guess that the correct use of tools for verbal communication is of similar importance as sticking to certain patterns of analysis in science!
Other than that, glad to see that people become more and more aware of the BA, he and his site deserve all of the attention! Keep up the great work!
PS: non-native speaker, all typos and grammar mistakes belong to me
April 3rd, 2006 at 9:50 am
Sure, “heart” can be a verb in the English language. Any word can become a verb in English (though verbing articles like a and the is an advanced exercise best left to the masters). Process, access, interface and many others started off as nouns and are now universally accepted as verbs.
As Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes once said, “Verbing weirds language.”
It is also possible to read the BA’s subject line as a representation of a phrasing one would normally render with graphics. The fact that the BA wrote “(hearts)” with parentheses suggests that he intends the reader to mentally replace that word with a Valentine heart. Ever see the T-shirts that say “I”, followed by a heart symbol and then “NY”? Well, what better way to write that in flat text than “I (heart) NY”?
April 4th, 2006 at 12:42 am
@Blake Stacey
glad to see someone with a sense of humour in here. Of course we all know where words such as process, access and interface are coming from, since they have been our fellow companions for more than two millenia now, both in forms on nouns and verbs, but of course not neccassarily in the english language.
I love the quote, used to read Calvin and Hobbes until the magazines fell apart!
I am well aware of what the BA was trying to achieve when writing (hearts) in the subject line, however, I suggest to either use the noun “(heart)” as the correct representation of the symbol, or as alternatives the verb “(loves)” or maybe the ASCII representation of a heart symbol which could be something like this:
April 4th, 2006 at 12:44 am
(remind me not to use “greater than” or “less than” symbols in here)
<3 (in case this does contain more than two letters, it’s the HTML entity of the “less than” character followed be the number three, which is/was commonly used to represent a heart in ASCII)
To use the noun “heart” in verbal form, simply because the “heart” symbol, representing the verb “loves” or “love” by the way, appears in that sentence is a disgrace to people who (heart) their (second) language. (Hey, I used the noun form here! LOL) I don’t thing the BA would appreciate if someone would refer to the Big-Bang as the first Supernova or similar, either.
And yes, I am also aware of a process of evolution in languages. That doesn’t mean that we can just go ahead and claim that every spelling mistake or bad writing habbit is a step on the evolutionairy ladder, please. Oservise Ai coold djast vrite anee vay Ai laik, raight?
– Again: since english isn’t my first language, all spelling mistakes and grammatical errors are subject to copyright –
April 4th, 2006 at 9:19 am
But languages don’t evolve — they, more than anything, are the products of intelligent design.
Sorry, had to do it…
Congratulations on the acknowledgement and notoriety, Phil! Nah only kidding about the notoriety, since it is only ill-fame from the point-of-view of the jealous ones that you so frequently debunk…
Hey (hearts) & Blake: Despite the fact that I speak some French, Latin, Punjabi (Hindi/Urdu), and a tiny bit of Fijiian, Cantonese, Japanese, Greek, Macedonian, German, Italian, Russian, Arabic, Polish, Portuguese, et al, and even a smattering of Klingon, there is no better, more precise and expressive language than English. I’m just grateful that I grew up with it rather than having to LEARN it. English is not a language of “rules” so much as it is a language of “exceptions” (’i’ before ‘e’ EXCEPT after ‘c’, or whenever the word is “weird”). Don’t be too hard on this (literal) bastard child of French and German (Normans & Gauls, if you prefer), for that is what gave us the rich tapestry, along with the willingness to borrow freely from all other languages.
Why, if it wasn’t for the Icelandic people, we wouldn’t have the unique word “window” (finestra, fenster, fenêtre or some variation in most languages).
Let English grow! Dont’ let it become pedantic, dull, boring, common, pedestrian, ordinary, regular, everyday, banal, jejune, unremarkable and paralysed under a weight of rules for the sake of rules. As long as the extrapolation is progressive and builds upon previous growth, let it be.
For the record, I hate NE=any, gr8=great, ur for “your” or “you are”, and anything that is directly attributable to sheer laziness. © by the Department of Redundancy Department
April 5th, 2006 at 1:20 am
I strongly disagree – in my opinion languages do evolve and are NOT the products of ID at all. Take shifts in meanings of words, such as “cool” or “gay” propagating through social groups until they become a member of the common language, look at the different styles of the english language spoken in different countries. It’s not the product of a single being or institution specifying a set of rules, a set of meanings and fixed combinations of things we call letters.
And yes, the languages have seen other examples of symbols being used as words in a language, lets just think of one that we all know from school: Addition – represented by the symbol (+) in mathematics became something so common, that we now tend to say things like “One plus one equals two”. But the word “plus” refers to the symbol, we have not seen anybody changing it to a verb-form [I have to admit, that a.) this is the first example that popped up in my head, and b.) I didn't spend much time looking for examples proofing the opposite, oh and c.) I have no idea what the verb-form of "plus" would look like - plusses? pluses? pluss?]
Anyway, why not use the word that was intentionally replaced by the heart symbol in the first place? If you don’t have a heart symbol at hand, why not say “love” or “loves”? Is it bad? Uncool? Too emotional for a rational scienctist? Is it because the definition of love does not withstand the strict expectations of the scientific community? I don’t understand! Somebody please explain!
Thanks for the great discussion – I enjoy making use of the english language this way and even more I enjoy defending it – even though it seems as if it’s a lost battle!
– Again: since english isn’t my first language, all spelling mistakes and grammatical errors are subject to copyright –
April 5th, 2006 at 8:22 am
To tell the truth, it was irresitible to me to say that because someone recently pointed out that (in TEXAS, very, very south) at the Alamo Historical Site, there is a display talking about the “evolution” of the Bowie Knife…which is clearly the product of Intelligent Design (albeit by Man, not some diety)
As to some Ultimate Authority over English, surely you’re familiar with the OED, the Oxford English Dictionary (and attendant professional lexicographers) that do indeed set the standard for English all over the world. The BBC won’t even SAY a word on the newscast that isn’t extant and existent in the OED!
And I agree completely about meanings evolving… I mean take the word Chauvinist for example… What a tremendous change that has gone through! Originally it was coined by opponents of Nicholas Chauvin (a French Soldier under Napolean) as a name for people that shared his mindless patriotism. Now look at its accepted meaning: Someone who has misogenistic tendencies (hates women). In fact, it is practically synonymous with misoginist, thereby depriving English of a perfectly good word that once described fanatical devotion to a cause.
Sometimes we lose GOOD words in the struggle; sometimes we acquire stupid ones (”ain’t” and “irregardless” come to mind).
April 7th, 2006 at 1:00 am
To be honest, I have learned english in school for 9 years from grade 5 on and our teachers tried to teach us Oxford English indeed. I never did well in those years – actually my english grades were more than once the reason for a few nervous breakdowns in the family, but I somehow managed to survive it. As you can also tell from my previous posts, my english isn’t anywhere near Oxford English at the moment. Oh, and if you could hear me speak, I sound like a mix between an aussie bloke and a dutch bartender in Amsterdam after few too many Heineken, rather than a posh, english gentleman – and I havn’t even touched the grammar subject yet.
So, yes, I have heard of the OED, seen it, read bits and pieces, I even remember looking words up in the OED when surfing the more explicit sites on the internet at younger age – but not anymore. I’m no knight in shiny armor, on a mission to defend the english language, not suffering some kind of conservative notion to protect the innermost beauty of this form of verbal and written communication.
The standard set by the OED and the people working on it is however only a guideline and you might have noticed, that in 99.9% of all cases, the standard adapts to the language spoken in the real world rather than the other way round. So, in other words, the Oxford English standard is merely a snapshot of what the language was like at some stage, brushed up and polished to look like what some people want the language to be – and like some scientific theories it leaves us with a framework that we can agree and build on, but it’s something that describes reality, it does not represent reality. Nobody sane in his or her mind does speak Oxford English (sorry, all you posh, english gentlemen).
Now, to finaliz(s)e all this, I am only complaining about the translation of written english into a symbolic language and vice versa. If you have to do it, do it propertly. If you’re thinking of a headline like “Science mag loves me too” and you feel that since you’re posting it on the web, you have to remove the word “love” and use a symbol instead for whatever reasons, then use a damned symbol, or, instead, write the proper english|french|german name of that symbol – in brackets, if you have to. Write (heart)|(cÅ“ur)|(herz)! Don’t use non-existent words or make up new words!
But maybe I am too late – maybe the verb-form of “heart” has become reality already, has already found its way up, has already become a part of everyday english – maybe I missed it. Maybe I’m just overreacting as I am afraid that the (non OED-conform) word “hearts” is being used on purpose to avoid the usage of the word “love” – in the same way as the “black sheep” song isn’t PC anymore in britain and they’re now singing about “rainbow sheep”.
Big up! What about “misunderestimate”, I liked that one, by the way. Really.
April 7th, 2006 at 8:23 am
(hearts) Said:
>And yes, the languages have seen other examples of symbols being used as words in a language, lets just think of one that we all know from school: Addition – represented by the symbol (+) in mathematics became something so common, that we now tend to say things like “One plus one equals twoâ€. But the word “plus†refers to the symbol,….
Hey, (hearts), Wikipedia says plus is a Latin word meaning “more”. The word is much older than the symbol, which wasn’t used until the late 15th Century. The + sign is a simplification of “et”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plus
Do you have some justification for the statement that the word “plus” is the name of the symbol and not a word in itself?
>Anyway, why not use the word that was intentionally replaced by the heart symbol in the first place? If you don’t have a heart symbol at hand, why not say “love†or “loves�
I can only guess at Phil’s motivation, but my guess is that he was trying for the cutesy gimmick. It’s sort of like word-play, making puns and the like. Similarly, as you say, the heart symbol represents the word “love” – it was just such a word-play game. Graphically present the word with a symbol we associate with the word. So the natural next step in the word-play game is to replace the word for the symbol into the statement, rather than the word that the symbol represented. Basically, he did it because it’s funny*.
Also, for someone who has such an obsession over correcting this “misuse”, it seems rather ironic that you choose as your identifier the “incorrect” use. Shouldn’t you call yourself “(heart)”, to emphasize the “correct” form?
*YMMV. Funny is subjective. Hi, Mom!
SFwriter Said:
>… there is a display talking about the “evolution†of the Bowie Knife…which is clearly the product of Intelligent Design (albeit by Man, not some diety)
Amusing observation, but not particularly a valid criticism. The word “evolve” in a generic sense means develop or improve over time. It got applied to the biological case as the appropriate word to describe the observation that life forms don’t look static, but rather change over time. Cast in light of the 19th Century mindset, “develop or improve over time” seemed a fairly appropriate description. Modern biological Evolution doesn’t convey the same sense of “getting better”, but it does carry the concept of development or change over time. However, the words “evolve” and “evolution” are not strictly limited to the biological theory use. In a practical sense, the design of a knife did evolve, through human innovation and design. That is applicable to just about any tool. The difference is that the tools aren’t reproducing themselves.
April 7th, 2006 at 2:00 pm
The story of plus and + reminds me. . . .
Today, the letter X is a signifier for the unknown. We have the TV show called The X-Files, which was steeped in credulity but basically ran off an enthusiasm for the unseen. “X-factor” is another way of saying “wild card”, and so forth. Wilhelm Roentgen named the mysterious radiation coming out of his tubes “X” rays to indicate that he had no real idea what the radiation was.
Roentgen’s sense of the letter X came from algebra, where it was the symbol for an unknown quantity, then as now. In the early days of mathematics, people didn’t have modern symbols to play with; instead, they worked with diagrams and “word problems”. Before it became abstracted and modernized, right up through the 1850s, algebra was all about finding the unknown quantity, what we today would call “solving for X“. Not having the modern conventional symbols, mathematicians of the Renaissance described algebra as “seeking the unknown thing”.
In Italian, the language of mathematical pioneers like Tartaglia, “thing” is cosa, and the Italian mathematicians’ word for themselves comes into English as “Cossists — thing-people! Almost Cossacks. . . .
April 10th, 2006 at 7:56 am
@Irishman:
I’m loving it. I have been seriously loosing big time on the ‘+’-issue, I have to admit that I kinda pulled it out of my .. as it came in handy. Good job!
@everyone:
Go ahead, write whatever u like! The author of this reply (smileys) @ it & will try 2 bite his tongue, well, fingers off b4 making further comments regarding the ‘(hearts)’ issue here.
I think the whole subject went a bit too far, from hearts to bowie knives, cossaks and the x-files. I think I’ve made my point relatively clear and feel better now