Speaking of cool Shuttle video, Nancy Atkinson at Universe Today posted a YouTube video taken from one of the Shuttle’s Solid Rocket Boosters. It’s been put to music, and it’s pretty cool.

Pay particular attention a little after 2:20 into it, then watch to the end, and boggle that we humans can do such things.

This is just a quick followup to the news of the naked-eye GRB from a few days ago. I’ve been getting email and seeing things popping up in other astroblogs, so I figured I’d chime in.

I want to mention that given the distance and brightness of the burst, it is most likely the single most luminous event ever witnessed by humans. I think that’s somethin’ right there.

NASA issued a press release, and pretty quickly, which is good. I’m not surprised: it was written by my old friend Bob Naeye, who works for NASA public outreach at Goddard Space Flight Center. Bob has written and/or edited for every major astronomy magazine in this country, it seems like, and he was my editor for a couple of years with Astronomy magazine. To this day he is one of if not the finest editor I’ve ever had. Plus he’s just a nice guy.

The image above is from Swift: it was taken by the X-Ray Telescope on board the satellite mere minutes after the burst was detected. Having seen a few Swift X-ray images, let me say that that sucker was bright. Very cool.

In news from the ground: Pi of the Sky is a GRB hunting robotic telescope in Poland, and it has great images and animations of the GRB seen as it was on the rise, even as Swift was detecting the gamma rays. This is a very cool idea: telescopes on the ground with very wide fields of view look at the same part of the sky at the same time as Swift. Remember, Swift is a satellite in low Earth orbit, and it sees a large portion of the sky at once. When gamma rays from a GRB are detected by Swift, it immediately (in a few seconds!) sends down the rough coordinates of the burst so other telescopes can observe it as quickly as possible — many GRBs fade to invisibility in seconds. So a telescope looking at the same part of the sky as Swift cuts down even those precious seconds, getting the burst simultaneously in optical light as Swift sees the gamma-rays.

In this case, it paid off incredibly: they caught the burst actually getting brighter, which is rare all by itself. But to have that happen with a burst of this distinction, well, that’s a major coup. Hats off to the astronomy folks in Poland for getting this. Of course, they gave us Copernicus, so they have a long history in ground-breaking astronomy.

Reports are pouring in from all over the world (and I mean all over and above it), and at the moment it’s mostly technical data: brightness, spectra, and so on. I suspect in the next few days a more coherent picture of this burst will emerge, but it will get better when it fades enough to look for the host galaxy — the galaxy in which the burst occurred. Sometimes the galaxy can be seen well enough to show that the burst came from a place in it where stars are actively being born. That implies this was a young supermassive star that exploded, the kind that doesn’t live long enough to wander out from its stellar nursery. Spectra of the galaxy can give an idea of the chemical content of it, how much of elements like iron and calcium can be seen, hinting again at physical conditions in the galaxy.

Like I said last time, we still have big questions about these titanic events, and the more images and spectra we have, and the more brains we have looking at them, the better.

What would we do without headline writers?

Oh, yeah. Have accurate headlines.

I just stumbled on this beauty over at MSNBC.com:

Oddly enough, that headline is completely wrong. Scientists found evidence of ancient salt water oceans on Mars, by seeing chlorides (salts) in the mineralogical maps made by Mars Odyssey. Not life. Salt.

Life != salt.

In general, headlines are not written by the reporters, but by editors who, apparently, either don’t read the articles or don’t understand enough about the topic to make a coherent — or even remotely accurate — headline. That’s no surprise to me, of course, having seen it all before.

But I guess I should be happy; at least they got "Mars" right in the headline.

This post deals with religion, evolution, lies, and Nazis. Because of this, I am warning folks at the start: be very, very careful if and when you leave comments on this post. I will not tolerate flame wars or abuse here. Keep the discussion reasonable, rational, and evidence-based. Emotions are fine — you may notice some in my own post — but keep them controlled. Obviously, Godwin’s law will be temporarily suspended here, since reductio ad Hitlerum is the very topic of this discussion. So have a care.

I was laughing off the whole PZ-expelled-from-Expelled thing, but I’m now seeing a particularly evil side of this, a distortion so horrid I cannot keep quiet about it.

On the official Expelled website is a post that consists of an email from someone who was at the movie when PZ was evicted, and describes the movie itself. Remember, this was posted on the official Expelled site, giving it their tacit approval.

Sitting down? I hope so. The post on the Expelled website says this:

The film can best be described as subtly clever and occasionally funny. Emotions are stirred up especially built around the movies overall theme*, and many scenes especially later in the movie might be difficult to watch based on one’s ethnic and religious background.

and the footnote therein says this:

*SPOILER!! [...]
Many scenes are centered around the Berlin Wall, and Ben Stein being Jewish actually visits many death camps and death showers. In fact, Nazi Germany is the thread that ties everything in the movie together. Evolution leads to atheism leads to eugenics leads to Holocaust and Nazi Germany.

Think on that for a moment. Nazism is what ties all this movie together, meaning it says that evolution leads to the cold and ruthless slaughter of millions of people.

Right from the start, this is an total and abhorrent lie. This false connection between the Holocaust and the teaching of evolution is a gross and profound twisting of reality. Creationist love to say that Hitler used evolution as an excuse for genocide, but actually he makes it clear that religion played a major role in his decisions. For example, in a 1922 speech Hitler said "My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter." Oddly, the creationists never seem to mention that.

Despite whatever reasons Hitler gave for his reasoning — and honestly, how much can we trust him? He was Hitler — that doesn’t mean that evolution leads to atheism leads to Nazis. Evolution, like all of reality, is a fact, and how we use it is independent of that reality itself. I can just as easily point out how many people have been slaughtered in the name of Jesus. Both arguments are grossly unfair when used in this manner. I can use a hammer to build a house, or to beat someone’s brains in. In what way is either the fault of the hammer?

It’s unfair to lay the blame of human faults on religion or the lack thereof. It’s how humans use or abuse these tools that’s important.

For the producers of this movie to continue this Big Lie tying evolution and Nazis together is an irony almost too big to comprehend, given that this is precisely how Nazi propaganda worked. In a rich field of creationist ironies, this may be the elephant in the room. They are projecting onto their enemies the very thing they are guilty of.

For Ben Stein to go to concentration camps and promote creationism is beyond the pale. It’s a lie, it’s ugly, and it should spark universal condemnation from every thinking human on the planet. This movie is founded on falsehoods, the producers lied to get interviews, they’ve used decidedly shady tactics to promote it, and the movie evidently has a huge lie as its very premise –a lie to which the producers themselves have admitted.

We must continue to discuss this, to air it out, to show these people for what they are. Like any noisome and foul thing you find under a rock, exposure to sunlight is the best cure.

I’m not one to celebrate anniversaries and such; to me they seem a little bit arbitrary. But still, they do remind us how far we’ve come, and how far there is left to go, so a moment’s reflection may not be a bad thing.

On March 21, 1993 — fifteen years ago today — I wrote my very first webpage.

I was in graduate school at the University of Virginia, heading into my last year on my PhD research. I had just watched the local news, and they had done a story on kids in an elementary school standing eggs on end on the vernal equinox. I was flabbergasted that any actual journalist could report such a thing so credulously, so the next day I wrote up a few paragraphs and stuck it on my personal web-accessible directory on the astronomy department’s server.

You have to realize, in 1993 there wasn’t a web as such. There were only a few sites out there, and people used Mosiac to browse them. I thought "hyperlinking" was so cool, and being able to put an image on a page… well, wow! Welcome to the future!

That page I wrote still exists, though it has changed almost entirely in the intervening 15 years. It sparked an entire career for me, though at the time it was a frivolous time-waster for me. But it eventually grew into more pages, got plagiarized quoted on "The West Wing", landed me a picture on APOD, led to a book, a blog, a series of TV interviews, another book, and eventually to settle in Boulder, Colorado, where I am far happier than I ever thought I could be, or ever deserved.

Walking this path also led me to encounter an extraordinary number of extraordinary people. Sure, there’s Randi and Penn and others you’ve heard of, and many folks who have honored me with their friendship and who have supported me. But I hear from people every single day, curious people, people who want to know about the Universe, about reality, and somehow they’ve had their minds sparked by something they saw here. That’s you! I cannot express what it means to have so many people reading what I write. It’s any writer’s dream to simply be read, and I thank all of you for taking time to stop by here and fulfill that. That surprises me and astounds me and moves me almost beyond words.

And even then, it gets better. Just yesterday a young woman befriended me on Facebook, and said that due in part to my blog, she decided to go back to school and take astronomy classes. I’ve gotten a few emails like that, and there are no words in the English language to properly describe the emotions that invokes.

Sure, I’ve also made some enemies along the way. People who have their world-views shaken tend not to be appreciative of it, and just as obviously those who prey on the innocent would rather not have someone show everyone the charlatan behind the curtain. But those are enemies I don’t mind having. Anyone who wants the shadow of ignorance to be deeper and darker is someone who is the enemy of us all. It’s our duty to fight them.

Still… Fifteen years. Wow. I never would have suspected back in ’93 that sitting down and venting my spleen would lead to this. It’s been a lot of work, fun work! But the important fact here is that you just don’t know where a hobby, a moment of indulgence, a lark, will lead.

If you get that chance, if you find yourself (or someone you know) facing one of those moments, jump on it! It might be a terrible decision, sure. Being alive at all is a risk, but the best stuff comes when you take a chance. That decision might turn out to change your whole life, and make you very happy, very satisfied, and very, very ready to continue on for another fifteen years. At least.

My friend Dan Durda sent me a link to this very cool footage: it’s from a dashboard-mounted camera inside the Orbiter Endeavour during the launch last week, taking footage starting a few minutes before launch.

You can see three astronauts in their suits preparing for the mission, and it’s really remarkable how they act. They’re clearly excited, but mostly all business. During the actual launch, they seem to be very nonchalant, simply doing what they need to do; it doesn’t look much different then I must look as I fasten my seatbelt, adjust the rear view mirror and pull out of my driveway in my car.

It’s a really odd juxtaposition! All the usual words we hear when we watch a launch are there, but somehow I expected the astronauts to be more animated, more excited. Instead, they mostly just sit there. They look like they’re taking the bus downtown, not a multi-billion dollar rocket into space!

When they are finally into space you can start to see how excited they are; a series of bright flashes from the Orbital Maneuvering System outside the cabin makes them all laugh, and they make several comments about how cool some of the events are.

The whole video is several minutes long, but worth a watch.

… and one of them is expelled. Actually, one was expelled and the other was Expelled.

This has to be read to be believed. Normally I’d add that the manager movie producer obviously had good taste, but there’s no way I can make my usual sarcastic snark about PZ here, because the manager of the theater producer is obviously a total jerk. He’s within his rights, but that doesn’t make him any less of a tool.

A few updates: Here’s a (very NSFW language-ridden) first-hand account of what happened from someone who was right there. You may be amused to hear that the Kevin Miller, who wrote the movie, has a fallacious account of what happened on his blog; the spin is that PZ wasn’t invited, though the truth is you didn’t need an invitation to go. He also links to another account that is at very strict odds against PZ’s own account and that of the other first-hand witness. Oh, those wacky creationists! Is there nothing they can’t lie about?

Another update (March 22): PZ has posted clarifying (to me at least) that it was the producer of the movie who had him thrown out, not the theater manager. I wanted to make sure that this was corrected, because I certainly don’t want innocent people to be falsely accused of anything.