Blogs / Bad Astronomy

A couple of weeks ago, I posted an entry here about how science is all about imagination. It got some attention, which is always nice when I think science is being denigrated in some way; I see a whole lot of that, and I’m glad to be able to push back at the forces of darkness, even if just a little.

I got a request from Krzysztof Achinger, a skeptic in Poland who wanted to translate the article into Polish and post it on the rationalist site Racjonalista. The Hive Overmind granted permission, and the article is now up on their site.

It’s very gratifying to see something like this; it’s not easy keeping up with the skeptical movement in the US, let alone around the world! Antiscience is everywhere, and it’s wonderful to know that there are people around the planet who have formed groups and are fighting the good fight.

One of the funny happenstances of running a skeptical website that uses Google ads is that I sometimes get ads for services that are not, um, precisely aligned with my goals as a critical thinker. On my site I’ve seen ads for 2012, for psychics, for all kinds of nonsense (there was even a pro-Moon hoax ad on my page debunking the Moon Hoax!).

I’ve long held that this is not necessarily such a terrible thing; I think most people on the web are savvy enough to understand that I don’t endorse that nonsense. If the ad is particularly atrocious I’ll block it, but there are a thousand more elbowing each other out of the way to take its place. It’s a losing fight sometimes.

And there are other considerations too… but instead of explaining them here, I’ll let Tim Farley of the Skeptical Software Tools website take care of it. He makes a pretty good case that not only are these ads not bad, but they can actually do some good. [Note added after I initially wrote this post: Fraser at Universe Today has more to say on this.]

He’s right… but I do have to say that those ads can be downright ookie and skeevy, and I sometimes wish they weren’t there at all. When one pops up here, I let the Hive Overmind know and they block it. If you do see an overly egregious one here, let em know. I need to know the URL to which it links (just saying it’s an ad for, say, a creationist camp won’t help; I need the web address to block it), and then we can block it.

So in my mind the question is still up in the air: are contextual ads evil or not? Food for thought, to get comments rolling: the ad might be for something which is not nonsense, but may be for something I don’t care about… like say a particular movie I haven’t seen. People wouldn’t complain about that ad’s content, I suspect. So what to do?

Over the years I’ve needed to make simple illustrations for my blog posts, but I’ve been stymied by drawing simple circles. Looking up tutorials on how to do this in PhotoShop led me to confusing, weird, or just plain incorrect methods. However, I recently wanted to draw a circle for my post on the distance to the horizon, and decided to ask an expert: The Little Astronomer, who showed me how to do it in about 20 seconds. I wrote down what she said, and what the heck: if I post it here on the blog it’s there for me to reference, and maybe it’ll help you too.

For the record, I currently use Photoshop CS3 version 8 on a Mac running OS X 10.4. I don’t think that matters much though. If it does, leave a comment! And hey, comment if you know another method too. The more the merrier.

So:

0) Do the usual thing of opening an image or creating a new one.

1) Click on the pen tool in the toolbar.

2) On the new toolbar displayed at the top, click the button with the ellipse in it.

3) Draw the circle by dragging the cursor while holding down the Shift key (otherwise you get an ellipse). What you get is not an actual drawing of a circle, but what’s called a "path". Bear with me here. Adjust the size as needed. Note: where you initially click the pen marks the center of the circle, so you might want to note the coordinates (x and y) of the center if you plan on fiddling with the circle later.

4) Go to pencil tool. Select the thickness you want (you can do this before drawing the circle too). Make sure you have the color you want selected!

5) Go back to pen tool.

Oooooo, Ahhhhhh

6) Right click somewhere in the image. Select "Stroke Path". Options are listed. Select "Pencil" from the drop down menu.

7) Now you have the actual circle drawn. But you’ll see the dotted line still in there, which is the path from before. To delete it, right click again. Click "delete path". That gets rid of original circle path, and leaves you with a nice circle with the thickness you desire.

This may sound complicated to a newbie (like me), but it’s actually not hard at all, and you’ll see that there are lots of variations (you can make a fuzzy circle by picking the brush tool instead of the pencil, for example).

And I’m glad, because now I can make even more silly images to go with my posts. Huzzah!

Folks, I got word from Brandon Haught at Florida Citizens for Science that maybe I wasn’t perfectly clear when I announced the Stick Figure Science contest. It’s not meant to bash religion, but to point out a single flaw in some antiscience argument about evolution and illustrate it with stick figures. My example was from something I had already drawn last year, and happened to have a little bit more of a religious bent in the way I drew it. I should’ve chosen a clearer example, because they don’t want something that simply attacks religion. That’s not the point!

Just to be certain, here is Brandon’s blog post on this. I just want to make sure we’re all on the same page here. Thanks.

Last month, I hinted that I have a secret. The time has come to reveal it.

First, the punch line: I’m getting a tattoo.

Second, one step back: it’s because of you, me droogs.

Third, the beginning:

A few months ago, when I had newly joined the Hive Overmind Discover Magazine, Top Banana (OK, he’s the CEO) Henry Donahue and I were talking about how the move should increase traffic for my blog and increase Discover Mag’s online presence. We were joking around about how popular Carl Zimmer’s Science Tattoo Emporium is, and how much traffic the site overall had. One reason I joined the Overmind was to help broaden my reach, so we started brainstorming. And as we talked, somehow we decided that Henry and I would both get tattoos if in the period of one calendar month I got 2 million page views to my blog, and the site overall got 5 million, and, moreover, I would take suggestions from my readers on my tat.

No alcohol was involved in that conversation, I’ll note. I almost wish there had been. At least I’d have an excuse.

Henry took the conversation seriously. That’ll learn me. However, I think deep down I didn’t really believe it would happen. It meant tripling the overall traffic to Discover, and more than doubling mine. That’s a tough goal! But it sounded like a good challenge and not one that was entirely crazy…

So, remember last month how I mercilessly and relentlessly asked folks to follow me on Twitter, and to send my posts to social networks like Fark, Digg, Reddit, and Slashdot? Yeah, that was all part of the nefarious plan, all to reach that goal.

And what happened? Heh. This happened:

That’s right: thanks to all of you, I made it! In fact, that picture was grabbed before the end of the day; I broke the goal by about 50,000 page views. And it really was on that last day when it went through 2M, so it was something of a nail-biter.

And if you think I am not going to go through with this, I kinda have to. Discover Magazine made a press release for it.

So now, well, I’m stuck. I have to get a tattoo. I have some ideas, but since you all are the ones who propelled me through my arbitrary goal, I’ll ask you: what should I get? Assume I’ll get the tattoo on my upper right arm, just below the shoulder, and it’ll be maybe 2×3 inches or so. I want it to be safe for work, not too elaborate, something sciencey, but something that is special. You know I write what I think here, so if you read my stuff, you’ll have an idea of what I might like.

Mind you, I’m not saying I’ll go with whatever someone comes up with! For example: "Colbert" = no. I’m looking for ideas here; it doesn’t have to be fully-formed and perfect, but can be something I can use as a jumping-off place to think about ink.

And may I say to everyone who helped without knowing why: thanks. It was very cool that y’all trusted me. And it was way fun watching the counter go up every day, and to see it hit 2M was very, very gratifying.

So. Ink me! Whaddya think?

1) The Guardian has a nice little article on the future of NASA, including a quote by a guy you may know.

2) Speaking of newspapers with funny accents, The Globe and Mail has the history of a perfectly cromulent word I use a lot here on the BA Blog. (Thanks PharmacistScott!)

3) The Carnival of Space #96 is up and running at Cheap Astronomy. As usual, you can spend a whole lot of time perusing outer space at the carnival.

4) Someone playing the Star Formation game thinks they are the Sean Connery to my Alex Trebek:

Nice. I can only assume they are talking about the formation of black holes after the high-mass stars explode as supernovae. In that case: well-played, sir!

Also, #9 must be an MST3K fan. Awesome. But don’t order the pizza.

Tip o’ the electron degenerate gas to Xavier Onassis for pointing this out to me.

For those few of you left who aren’t sick of hearing my voice, I did an interview with the podcast EUSci that’s now online (here’s the direct link to the mp3). We talked about IYA, JREF, my book, astronomy… you know, all the ho-hum usual stuff!