I am pleased and a bit surprised to learn that a blog post from Bad Astronomy was awarded third place in the 3 Quarks Daily science blog contest! A couple of my posts were submitted, but there were a lot of really good essays entered from other blogs (I spent a couple of hours reading that I should have spent on other things, but man, there was a lot of interesting stuff there) and I didn’t expect to win.
But Steven Pinker chose my Ten Things You Don’t Know About Hubble post as third place, with the first and second place spots going to Bands of Iron at Daylight Atheism (a beautifully-written piece on life and the ancient Earth) and The Ecological Disaster That Is Dolphin Safe Tuna (an interesting take on saving one species versus many) at Southern Fried Science.
As promised when I mentioned this contest a few weeks ago, I am donating the $200 prize money to the James Randi Educational Foundation (of which, in the interest of full disclosure, I am President). Besides being a fine non-profit charity dedicated to bringing the light of science and reason to the world, this also will ease any residual guilt I might have for plugging a contest for which I was a candidate. And, hint hint: the JREF does accept donations through the web.
I hope all my BABloggees out there will go over to 3QD and the other contestants’ sites and add them to your feed reader. There are a vast, vast number of good science blogs out there. Those are great places to start.
My thanks to everyone for this, especially to whoever submitted the Hubble post, and of course to Steven Pinker and 3 Quarks Daily.
A reminder: the Discover Magazine/Celestron "Capture the Universe" astrophotography contest is off to a great start. As I write this almost 100 photos have been submitted (including this one shown here of Mare Crisium on the Moon, selected randomly from the ones online).
I’m judging the contest, and I can already tell picking 10 will be difficult; there are a lot of very cool and very beautiful images up already. But don’t let that stop you! If you have Celestron equipment, haul it out, take some shots, and send them in! I’m looking for beauty, I’m looking for interest, I’m looking for odd, unusual, clever. Surprise me! I’m not saying that’ll win, but I am saying that you’ll want to stand out from the crowd. I expect there will be a lot of really terrific images to choose from.
Fellow skeptic Crispian Jago has a way cool blog called Science, Reason, and Critical Thinking, where he posted this way cool image of a bunch of way cool skeptics (with one exception of course).
What kind of dork wears a hat for a publicity still? Sigh. I’m thinking this may be the banner we use at TAM London. Or at least get it on t-shirts.
On Friday night I was interviewed by the lovely Julia Sherred from Party934.com, and she’s put it up on her site as a podcast. It was a fun interview, with talk about Hubble, NASA, vaccinations, homeopathy, and more. I think it started off a little slow — I decided to talk more slowly and articulate more than usual — but of course I quickly left that all behind and started bubbling over like usual. I really need to settle down during these things, but it’s just too much fun to talk about them… or at least too easy to get inflamed and passionate, like when I get angry at antivaxxers.
Anyway, give it a listen… and you can follow Julia on Twitter to find out who she’ll have on next. Oh– on that same page as the interview she has links to an interview she did with some other blogger too, some guy who still dabbles in writing and I think did some obscure TV show back in the 1990s. Might be worth a listen too.
The other day I mentioned that 3 Quarks Daily is running a contest for the best science blog entry of the past year. I just found out that voting is now open, and there are a LOT of great articles there (here’s a clickable list). I read quite a few when they came out, unsurprisingly; I subscribe to a lot of blogs to try to stay up to speed with science news. What was surprising to me was that there are quite a few blogs I had never even heard of. I don’t have time to keep up anymore, I suppose.
Hey! I think maybe that’s a good thing. When there are too many science blogs to read, then that means more science is getting out there. I know it’s not that simple, but still. Cool.
If you’ve got the time (and it’ll take some) then go through some of those posts listed at 3QD and see what you like. There are a whole bunch in there I need to read, too. Voting ends June 8th.
No, not Kevin Spacey.
1) I’m interviewed on the most recent episode of The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe podcast, one of my faves, about the Star Trek movie, the Million Dollar Challenge failure of Patricia Putt, and a few other things. Here’s the direct link, too.
2) A new Are We Alone podcast is now online.
3) The new Carnival of Space (#105) is up at Space Disco. As always, tons of electronic yumminess there to keep you busy getting updates on space and astronomy.
I’m very excited to announce a new contest: Capture the Universe, an astrophotography contest sponsored by Discover Magazine and Celestron Images!
Entering is pretty easy: all you have to do is read the rules, register, and then upload an astrophoto you took. The picture itself can be anything, from a highly processed deep sky shot taken with fancy-schmancy high-end equipment to a cool picture taken with any piece of Celestron equipment. I also happen to know that the judge likes not just pretty pictures, but ones that are clever and different.
How do I know this? Because I’m the judge! The Hive Overmind Discover Magazine asked me to be the sole arbiter for this contest, and I know what I like. Still, surprise me! Got a gorgeous shot of the Moon rising, the Sun setting, a planetary nebula using three-color narrow-band imaging, a satellite crossing a well-known object, or Saturn with its rings almost perfectly edge-on? Send ‘em in!
You might just win a very nice prize, like a Celestron NexStar 8SE, a sweet 8-inch ’scope worth $US1399! Not to mention fame and glory, and getting name-checked right here on this very blog.
The contest starts today, June 1, and runs through June 30, 2009, so you have one month. Start snapping!
