I did an interview with journalist Brian Truitt for USA Weekend, the supplement magazine of USA Today, about my book Death from the Skies! The article is now online, and basically gives you your odds of being killed in various nasty ways by astronomical overload. I haven’t seen the print version yet, but the paper is sending me one, so I’ll find out if the online version is any different.
And if you don’t have the book yet, what’s wrong with you? You wanna live forever?
That’s a rhetorical question. If you read the last chapter of Death!, trust me, immortality will lose a lot of its appeal.
December 1st, 2009 at 10:26 am
You wrote a book???
Oh, wait. Yes, you did, and I just got it!!
December 1st, 2009 at 10:33 am
Du har skrevet en bog?
December 1st, 2009 at 10:43 am
“But before you start making your “The end is near!” signs, we’re really pretty safe. Plait says there are only two stars that may become gamma-ray bursts, and both of them are 8,000 light-years away. ”
Somehow I think there are more than just 2 stars that could GRB. I know it’s just missing a qualifier (nearby, known, etc) but a little bit of editorial sense would have been nice there.
December 1st, 2009 at 10:44 am
I saw it in this weekend’s “USA Weekend” insert in our local paper. Are they sending you the entire insert, or just the article with your interview?
And, as for GRB’s, why no mention of the recently-recorded one so powerful it was “visible” from over 13 billion light years away?
December 1st, 2009 at 11:17 am
I ran out of books to read, which can only mean one thing: It’s time for the 2nd reading of DEATH FROM THE SKIES! Yay!
December 1st, 2009 at 11:58 am
I just bought a copy for my Mom for Christmas!
December 1st, 2009 at 2:28 pm
“The end is near!*”
* For some values of near.
December 1st, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Har du skrevet en bog? (VSO is common for interogatives.)
You should have a chat with Dan Savage:
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2009/12/01/the-death-of-an-american-city
December 1st, 2009 at 4:17 pm
That was really good. On Sunday, while looking through my newspaper, I stumbled upon the issue and flipped through. I saw the headline “The End of the World!” and I was crossing my fingers, hoping (if that stuff actually worked
) that there wouldn’t be loads of misinformation, crying out Doomsday in 2012 or something, but when I saw “Phil Plait”, I knew that there wouldn’t be misinformation… because they got someone to interview that, ya’know, actually knows what they’re talking about.
December 1st, 2009 at 4:20 pm
כתבת ספר?
December 1st, 2009 at 10:36 pm
If you don’t get a print copy soon, I can send you one (as I get two Sunday papers).
December 2nd, 2009 at 2:16 pm
[...] more here: USA Weekend of DEATH | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine Rate this topic: (No Ratings Yet) Loading … Popularity: 1 views Tagged with: [ book, [...]
December 2nd, 2009 at 7:38 pm
Two days ago I saw a copy of DFTS for the first time (Abbey’s bookshop in Sydney).
So I bought it.
Now all I have to do is get Phil to sign it (upside down, as he did for his first book).
(And for those of you who might be heading there now, it was the only copy on the shelf.)