Well, wow. This is an honor: reddit.com put up a quote of mine on their science section:

Right there in the middle is a quotation from me: "Teach a man to reason, and he’ll think for a lifetime." That was from my speech The Goals of Skepticism (commonly referred to as my Don’t Be A Dick speech), which I gave at TAM a couple of years ago.

There it is, highlighted. I’m really happy to see that. I liked the phrase when I came up with it, and it’s popped up here and there (like on a mug, and in a Symphony of Science).

The only thing that bugs me about the phrase is the use of the masculine gender. I struggled to make the phrase more neutral, but since it’s based on an existing aphorism — "Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime" — I couldn’t phrase it that way without removing it too much from the original, and thus losing the hook. Oh well.

Anyway, I still like the sentiment. We tend to spend a lot of time arguing specific examples of bad thinking — antivax, global warming denial, and so on — but not as much on having the tools necessary to prevent ourselves from having our thinking go astray. Happily, there are places on the web you can go, like Tim Farley’s Skeptools site, the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe podcast (which commonly uses examples of bad thinking to make a bigger picture of how to think), and of course Carl Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit from his masterpiece book, The Demon Haunted World.

Heck, stop reading this and go buy that book right now if you haven’t already. It is the basic tome that will have you thinking for a lifetime.

Tip o’ the fishing pole to Starstuff_3 on Twitter.

Just a reminder: On Saturday, May 12, I’m giving a FREE public talk in Boulder, Colorado at Boulder high School starting at 7:00 p.m.

The talk is "10 Amazing Facts About Our Solar System", and I have all the details in an earlier post. After the talk there will be a star party (if it’s clear, which is likely) where we’ll look at Saturn, Mars (and hopefully Venus will still be up), and other objects through telescopes. I’ll be hanging out to answer questions and enjoying the starry sky, too.

Come join the fun!

Like space? Like astronomy? Wanna meet some astronauts, astronomers, space artists, and hang out with like-minded space enthusiasts?

Then you want to come to Space Fest IV, a convention for people with their feet on the ground but their heads in the clouds.

SpaceFest IV will be from May 30 to June 2, 2012 in Tucson, Arizona. The speakers there are top-notch, including my friends Andy Chaikin, Dan Durda, Emily Lakdawalla, and Seth Shostak. Also in attendance will be a slew of astronauts, including quite a few who walked on the Moon! It’s also a gathering of fantastic space artists, and the art on display is always pretty amazing.

I went to the first and second SpaceFests and had a great time, and that’s why I’ll be back at SpaceFest IV! I’m speaking at 09:00 Saturday morning, and generally hanging out and soaking up the awesome. Admission for all three days starts at $105, and there are lots of special packages.

I hope to see y’all there!

Posted almost without comment:

From here via here. Rumor has it this was done by Gary Lyons, but I cannot seem to confirm this or find an email address for him. In my defense, though, I didn’t try very hard. I leave it to my devoted minions if the interest motivates you. My friend Fred Bremmer tells me that Gary Lyons did indeed make this. The original is on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150651175025753&set=a.476615725752.248737.562230752&type=1.

Also? Neil would win. He’s like 15 cm taller and has 20 kilos on me.

[Edited to add: Hmmm. When that picture was taken I was holding, and using, a 1/2 Watt green laser that was powerful enough to ignite a pack of matches and pop balloons. That might even the odds.]

I just got a press release that the folks behind the TED conference have partnered with Netflix, and many of the TED talks will now be available through the online video server. That’s pretty cool!

Even cooler: my own TED talk, "How to Defend Earth from Asteroids" is one of their initial offerings! They packaged a few space talks, including mine, along with talks by Brian Cox, Carolyn Porco (that one is a must-see), Jill Tarter, and many others. There are also packages about health, biology, computers, and more.

If you are a Netflix subscriber these talks are free. I’ll note they’re all online at the TED site as well, but this may open up the talks to a bigger audience, which I think is just fine. I have Netflix, and found them easily by searching on "TED" (duh).

Not only that, but TED has a new initiative for education called TED-Ed: Lessons Worth Sharing. These are short, great educational lessons that fit well inside established classroom curricula. There are lots of such things available, of course, but these are hand-picked and will augment a teacher’s lessons. I think this is a cool idea, since TED already has a trusted brand and a wide audience. Just to be clear, there lessons are online, not on Netflix like the big talks.

If you don’t have Netflix, well, like I said you can find these talks on the TED website. And because why not, here’s mine. Enjoy:

[You may need to refresh the page to get the video to load.]

I could’ve sworn I already posted this, but it seems to have slipped into an alternate dimension: I was interviewed by The Browser, a fine site promoting "Writing Worth Reading". They have a series called FiveBooks where they ask people what pentaverate of tomes they recommend in their field, and I gave them my list.

No, I won’t tell you here. Go over there and see. It was a fun interview, and it made me rethink my usual list of books. I like things that make me re-examine my stance, so that’s cool too.

Last week, I was interviewed by my friend Ken Plume for his "A Bit of a Chat" series (which has a pretty stellar list of geeky guests, I must say). That interview is online for your earball pleasure. We talked Dragon*Con, quiz shows, being a little dirty, Bill Corbett (hi Bill!), and then NASA. Oh boy, and then NASA. I spouted off pretty good on that particular topic.

And if hearing me blather for way over an hour isn’t enough, you can also listen to the time he interviewed me back in May 2010.