Zach Weiner, of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, and Kelly Smith, of Weinersmith, interviewed me for their new podcast, The Weekly Weinersmith. I am actually only their second guest, so we’ll see if the podcast survives.

We talked about the James Webb Space Telescope, mostly, though as usual when I talk to Zach we both revert to 15 year old boys. But only briefly, and only if 15 year old boys paid attention in world history class.

I’ll note I made a mistake in the interview: I said JWST will have 6 mirrors, but it actually has 18. D’oh! I remember very clearly picturing the telescope in my head (it’s hard to do a web search during an interview) and for some dumb reason I was thinking of the old MMT, which I’ll admit is a little bizarre. Heat of the moment, I guess. I wasn’t even within an astronomer’s usual factor of two, so I guess I have to give myself three geek demerits.

I think I made up for it by calling JWST — since its future is uncertain — "Schrödinger’s telescope".

In fact, the stuff I said about JWST deals mostly with its politics and budgetary woes. I’ve written about this before:

- Where will JWST’s money come from?
- The Senate has “saved” JWST? Hang on a sec, folks…
- The watershed moment for JWST
- Hubble’s successor: doomed or saved?
- Congress puts NASA and JWST on the chopping block

So there you go. I’ll note that it’s mostly wondering about JWST’s and NASA’s future until about 45 minutes in, and then we get all optimistic and fun.

Zach and Kelly were great hosts, letting me blather on until I ran out of air. Knowing them both — Kelly’s a scientist, and Zach a hugely devoted science enthusiast and supporter (he’s teaching himself advanced calculus and blogging about it) — this will be a podcast to keep your ear on. Subscribe to it!

Just a quick reminder: I’m participating in a blogger’s challenge with Donors Choose to raise money to get science supplies for classrooms in need. I have added a link in the sidebar of the blog (just below the picture of me) so that you can see how much has been raised, and which also provides a link to the donation page.

If you can’t donate, that’s fine, but if you could, please help spread the word through the social networks; Twitter, Facebook, Google+, whatever you can. This is a great way to get people to contribute directly to kids who need to learn about the joy and wonder of exploring the Universe. Thanks!

Exposing people to science, to the wonders of the natural world, is a major theme here on the BA blog. There are so many amazing and interesting things going on in the Universe that sometimes all you really need to do is show them to people, and they’re hooked.

Sometimes, though, they need a little help.

A lot of kids in the US are in desperate need of school supplies to help them learn about math and science. That’s why, once again, I am starting up my Donors Choose page. This is a fantastic group that allows teachers to let people know what things they need and how much it will cost, and then people can donate as much or as little as they want, to the classrooms they want to.

Last year, Bad Astronomy Bloggees — that’s you guys! — donated over $2600 to worthy classrooms. I’d love to be able to raise that much or more this year, too. This is part of a challenge to see which science blogs raise the most money. So if you can, get a smaller cup of coffee, forgo one t-shirt with a snarky message on it, cook one fewer cupcakes, and take that money you saved and send it to some kids who want to learn about the Universe.

I set donation page up to list Math and Science classes with no region specified; they can be from east to west, north to south. But what they all need is a little support.

If you can help, take a look and see which one of the projects clicks with you. This year, the challenge runs from right now through October 22.

I bet a lot of folks reading this right now have a fond memory of a special project, something they did in school that stuck with them into adulthood. I can name ten, personally. So let’s help others have those great memories, too.

Thanks.

Speaking of talking… on Friday, August 26, I was interviewed by Todd Whitehead from "Versus the World" — part of what he calls his Alpha Geeks series, including folks like geek musicians Mike Phirman and Marian Call.

As usual whenever I talk, we covered a lot of ground: attacks on science, global warming (which is on my mind a lot lately), and the like. It was a fun interview, and it’s online now, or you can grab the MP3 file directly.

You should peruse his archives, too. There’s lots of geek fodder to keep you occupied!

I’m very pleased to announce that I’ll be giving a presentation at TEDxBoulder on September 24 this year. TEDx events are independently organized from TED, but feature the same sorts of talks: inspiring, entertaining, and designed to help make the world a better place.

My topic? Trying to make the world a better place by preventing an asteroid impact from making it a far, far worse place. The other talks look pretty interesting, including one from Kimbal Musk, Elon Musk’s brother, and also from Jake Nickell, co-founder of the Threadless t-shirt company. I think this will be a very cool evening.

Tickets are on sale now but I hear it’s filling up quickly, so if you’re in the Boulder area and want to attend, better hurry!

I’ve seen an uptick in traffic to my site recently, which means new eyeballs and more brains (BRRRAAAIIINS). Welcome! I’m glad you’re here. You’ll no doubt agree that this is the most wonderful, well-written, brilliant, and practically perfect in every way science blog in the known Universe.

But it also means people not familiar with this blog may see things they’re not used to. I’ve been getting a lot of, um, interesting comments in the past few weeks, so perhaps it will help if I post a little intro to me and my blog.

1) I post a lot of pretty pictures of astronomical objects, which I then use to gently inject a little scientific awesomeness into your life. In many of these cases, the picture itself is a link to a much higher-resolution version. When this happens, I will let you know with a bracketed sentence under the picture saying something like "[Click to embiggen.]". This is then nearly inevitably comically followed by commenters telling me huffily that no such word exists, despite it being perfectly cromulent. Whenever this happens, I like to think that a deceased Simpsons character gets its wings.

2) I hang out a lot on social media platforms. I’m on Twitter, and Facebook, and Google+. I’ll note that due to the limitations on Facebook, I cannot add any more friends. But I do have one of those fan pages which you can like or upvote or whatever the kids are doing these days.

Speaking of which, I also hang out on Fark and reddit. I’m also a big fan of StumbleUpon, which has been very good to this blog. If you’re a member of SU, feel free to vote up my posts; there’s a link at the top of every post on the right, just under the title.

3) I will sometimes post about politics, religion, "alternative" medicine, and the like. Reading these posts will no doubt elicit knowing smiles from some, and furious comments from others (generally of the "I thought this was an astronomy blog!" type of complaint). Please, before leaving the latter, read my page on this. I also have a short but sweet commenting policy.

4) There are times I tackle subjects that are complex and subtle. When I do, I try to keep the post short, and use links to other sites or posts that have details. This saves me having to write everything out, and you having to slog through three times as much material as you might need. Istrongly urge you to click those links. Life is rarely simple, and details count.

5) Speaking of which, whenever I use the term "denier" I get grief from some folks too who infer far more out of that word than I imply. This might help.

6) I’m a geek/dork/nerd. I love science fiction, Doctor Who, Star Trek, and many of the trappings of the sci-fi culture. I post about those, too, and sometimes pictures of my dogs and cat and biking trips. I don’t generally get complaints about those though, which I find funny in light of the parenthetical comment I made in #3 above.

7) I wrote a book! Two, in fact.

So there you have it: me in a nutshell. I hope you like it here! I love writing this blog, and it’s still fresh and fun even after all these years. I hope you agree and stick around. There’s a lot going on out there, and I plan on talking to you good folks about it for a long time to come.

Just as a so’s-you-know: the radio/podcast interview I did with Jules Sherred for Geeky Pleasures is now online for your listening nerdtainment. We talked about a ton of stuff, including the space program, Doctor Who, space colonies, Trek, asteroids, antivaxxers, and nudity.

Oh, did that get your attention? I figured it would. People love it when I talk about Doctor Who.