Area man interviewed, quoted

The European spacecraft Rosetta will pass by asteroid Steins today, giving us our first close-up views of this mountain-sized rock. But far and away the most important part about this is that I am interviewed (along with my old friend Joel Parker) in The Daily Camera, Boulder’s local paper. The headline should read "asteroid", not "comet", but that’s generally written by an editor, and is an understandable error. Sometimes, even experts can’t tell the difference.

September 5th, 2008 10:00 AM by Phil Plait in About this blog, Astronomy, Science | 7 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >

7 Responses to “Area man interviewed, quoted”

1. Carey Says:
September 5th, 2008 at 10:18 am

Awww, and here I thought you’d been parodied in The Onion. Have you talked to Scott Dikkers since TAM V? I think that was his name.
2. llewelly Says:
September 5th, 2008 at 11:26 am

Damn. For a moment there I was hoping ‘Area man interviewed’ meant they were interviewing one of the aliens living on the asteroid.
3. madge Says:
September 5th, 2008 at 11:52 am

According to Rosetta Blog (thanks for the link BA)
“everything is looking nominal, and some of the final fly-by commands are being uploaded now.” REALLY excited!
4. Todd W. Says:
September 5th, 2008 at 11:58 am

Interviewing a local area man. Sheesh. We all know that their comments don’t amount to much of anything. They see UFOs and bigfoot. They can’t add anything useful to the discus…huh? The area man is Phil? Ohhhhh….
5. Ken B Says:
September 5th, 2008 at 12:05 pm

So, if an editor wrote the headline

Spacecraft flies by comet

then who wrote the subhead, immediately below it?

Rosetta reaches asteroid target with Boulder-made instrument

Well, at least they spelled your name correctly, unlike those “Talking Head” people.
6. Gavin Flower Says:
September 5th, 2008 at 2:13 pm

I flew in a Comet when I was about 7, it was the first commercial jet airliner – British designed and built, flown by Olympic Airways!
7. mandydax Says:
September 5th, 2008 at 3:19 pm

The Rosetta spacecraft will come within about 500 miles of the asteroid Steins…
What are these miles you speak of? Did you mean “about 800 KILometers”? ~_^ At least they’re getting coverage, and the comments section has someone pointing out that the article contradicts the headline.

About Bad Astronomy

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's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.

The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking, movie reviews, and all that) can be found here.

Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com




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