Blogs / Bad Astronomy

That’s it. I’m done.

And may I add: ewwwwww.

Oh, who am I kidding? I’ll be on the next one just like always.

A Breaking news for sky afficianados post made me sit back and gape for a moment: "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact" came out this summer 10 years ago. Wow. I’ve been mocking the former and hyping the latter for a decade now. Cool.

I use both movies in a general public talk I give about astronomy, showing brief clips that go over mistakes made as well as some rare accuracies as well. I still think "Armageddon" is one of the worst movies ever made, ever, and "Deep Impact", though flawed, is far superior.

But wow, 10 years? BNfSA has some thoughts on this as well, seeing as how the two together have grossed nearly a billion dollars since their release.

It’s enough to make Ben Affleck cry.

On May 25th of this year, the Mars probe Phoenix will land on the red planet. This interplanetary lab may not rove about the surface like Spirit and Opportunity, but it is loaded with experiments to test the polar region of Mars to see if life ever arose there.

The landing site was chosen to be as boring as possible; they want the thing to land safely, and that means a wide, flat area. The chosen site really is dull, but happily Emily found something interesting to say about it: it sports dust devils. And she has a very cool image to back it up.

I’ll be writing more about Phoenix as landing time approaches. Stay Tuned, but check with Emily’s blog to get details more often. This is her territory more than mine.

How awesome would it be to see a scifi movie about secret Nazi bases on the Moon?

Pretty freakin’ awesome, that how awesome. And now we get to see it!

Cooooool. "Iron Sky". Love the title.

Now, I have to make some points. I’m me, after all.

1) There is no dark side of the Moon, at least no permanent one.

2) Tires made of rubber and holding air won’t work too well. That’s why the rovers had mesh tires.

3) The dust billows when the saucers land, but there’s no air on the Moon for the dust to billow, um, in. It would fly up and back down on little ballistic parabolic arcs.

4) Nazi flying saucers! Sweet!

Now, I have to add that this looks like it’s based on really silly conspiracy theories from the 1970s and 80s; I read a (really bad) novel about it based on those same CTs and it had all the same trappings: Antarctic Nazi base, flying saucers, etc. But "Iron Sky" looks pretty cool. They have a website for the movie, and it has a bulletin board for community input. I may drop in some suggestions for them…

P.S. No one tell Ben Stein about this movie. Nazi scientists! His head would explode.

Tip o’ the pith helmet to Timo Poikola for letting me know about this.

I wrote about Senator Clinton’s campaign the other day, showing how I think she’s jumped the shark. Well, author and blogger (and cool guy) John Scalzi hits the nail in the head, and that nail should be the last one in the coffin of Clinton’s campaign. I fear it won’t be, though; as I said she is running on nothing else but ego now, and I’m worried that even if the DNC tries to move her, she still won’t budge. After all, she’s still claiming she has momentum or come-up-from-behindedness or some other manufactured spin.

Sigh. What happened to the strong candidate who had such great things to say about science? Let’s hope that Obama picks up that mantle, if need be.

P.S. After writing this, I found out that Lawrence O’Donnell at HuffPo talked to a senior Clinton campaign official who hinted she’ll drop out in a month or so. Interesting. Money quote: "Nothing [the official] said indicated that he actually expected the superdelegates to move to Hillary in the week after the final election. The Clinton campaign has not lost its grip on reality. Yes, Clinton spokespersons publicly seem to be lost on gravity-free planet Clinton, but privately they know the end is near."

Hey, for you folks in and around the Boulder area, there is a Drinking Skeptically tonight at 6:00 at Old Chicago on the Pearl Street Mall. DS is a series of social events for skeptics, and they are held all over the place usually once per month.

DS in Boulder is new, and this’ll be my first time there. I hope to see some of you there!

With apologies to Dogma.

OK, yes, it’s a cross in a potato. I’ve seen stuff like this a zillion times, though I’ll admit not one that looks quite so much like a cross with a glow behind it (or perhaps some sort of bacterial bloom). Still.

It’s a potato.

Yet, we get this:

“Everyone was deeply stirred,” [Birgül] Balta [the potato's owner] told the paper. “Some of them even began to weep and to pray.”

Yes. They prayed over a tuber. Seriously, if God wanted to appear to people, would He really pick a starchy root for His sign?

On the other hand, you might think, it worked. People are really excited by this. But I suspect that to the last one, these are people who already believe. If you’re sitting on the fence, theologically speaking, would a potato be what pushed you over the edge?

Now, a sweet potato might be more convincing. After all, like He Himself said, "I yam that I yam".

Tip o’ the shroud to Sandra Prow for sending me the news item.