While you’re waiting on tenterhooks to hear about my tattoo, why not check out the 120th Carnival of Space? After all, you can find out about the whole Universe, which is nearly as important as me being inked.
-
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
Bad Astronomy was chosen as one of Time.com's Best Blogs of 2009. Science Getaways
Subscribe to BA
Death from the Skies!
Order a copy of Death from the Skies! from Amazon, or Barnes and Noble.
"If things worked the way I wanted them to, any reporter about to do another 'sensational' story on deadly meteors would consult this volume, and bang! common sense would find its way into the news. How strange would that world be?"
-- Adam Savage, Mythbusters
"Reading this book is like getting punched in the face by Carl Sagan. Frightening, but oddly exhilarating."
-- Daniel H. Wilson, author of How to Survive a Robot UprisingSocial/Networking/Cool Stuff
DISCOVERmagazine.com: Latest Articles on Space- DISCOVER Blogs: The Loom
- A Planet of Viruses: Autographed Book Sale
- Animal Friendships: My cover story for Time magazine
- The Future of E-books–podcast of my interview on Wisconsin Public Radio
- Thursday, February 16: Science and social media panel in New York
- A Scientific Jonah: My profile of Joy Reidenberg in tomorrow’s New York Times
Copyright © 2012, Kalmbach Publishing Co.
Privacy - Terms - Reader Services - Subscribe Today - Advertise - About Us
September 14th, 2009 at 10:10 am
Um, shouldn’t that be “#CXX?”
September 14th, 2009 at 10:27 am
You used “on tenterhooks” correctly! (avoiding the common “on tetherhooks” trap)
Are you sure you’re not a secret English major?
September 14th, 2009 at 10:58 am
Can anything else be anywhere near as important as you?
September 14th, 2009 at 11:02 am
Yes it should be #CXX. #CCXX would come out to 220.
September 14th, 2009 at 11:23 am
@ 3. Kim Says:
Can anything else be anywhere near as important as you?
Yes. Me.
September 14th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
It’s from all the fretting over the tattoo that he screwed up basic math.
September 14th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
One hundred and twenty. Isn’t that the order of magnitude the cosmological constant is wrong?
September 14th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
[...] Carnival of Space #CCXX | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine [...]
September 14th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Really? I thought it was “tenderhooks”. So what’s the etymology of tenterhooks, then?
September 14th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
CCXX is 220. It should have been CXX. Still, we dont live in Rome so its not a major issue. These carnavals of space look interesting, I should pay more attention to them.
September 14th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
C.A. it’s definitely tenterhooks. It’s from a wool stretching frame. This page (http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ont1.htm) explains it in greater detail.
September 14th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
I hope Phil isn’t getting Roman Numerals tattooed then.
Apparently a tenter is a wooden frame for stretching cloth. A tenterhook holds the cloth in place so obviously on tenterhooks means being held painfully suspended. Gotta love English.