… in this case, death from it. Carolyn Collins Petersen is the aforementioned Space Writer, BABlog commenter, planetarium show creator, and also a friend. I’m sure that last bit in no way influenced her review of my book, which is stunningly accurate in its portrayal of my book being really good.
C2P, your check is in the mail.
Also, there is a review on The Melbury Gentlemen’s Club site. It’s a polite review, fitting for "a blog of manners". The previous post is a guide to cigars, which personally interests me as well. Hey, if the world’s gonna end, then a nice cigar is probably your best bet.
The California Literary Review asked me to answer some questions pertaining to Chapter 1 of my book, Death from the Skies!, where I talk about asteroid impacts. They’ve posted my replies on their site.
This is such a broad and interesting topic, and it’s really hard to boil down the important stuff to just a few dozen words. I tend to be a bit, um, wordy, so sometimes I have a hard time saying my name in a few dozen words, but I hope that the Q&A gives you a sense of what’s going on.
For the past few months I’ve been doing a series of short astronomy videos with producer/director Tom Lucas. Unlike my own videos I do in my house, these are professionally made, and I’ve been very happy with the past few.
Yesterday the sixth episode was posted, called "Hubble’s Hotties". It’s a Top Ten List of Hubble images, except it’s only really the Top Six. Sorry, but there’s only so much you can squeeze into five minutes!
It’s also available in high-res (click the link under the video on the YouTube page).
We filmed this at the Denver Museum of Science & Nature, and I’m grateful for the use of their facility. And I’ll be back there on the 11th of December to give a talk about asteroid impacts and my book, Death from the Skies! It’s a great place, and I hope some of you can join me there.
Reports are coming in that fragments have been found from the bright meteor that lit up Canadian skies last week. I don’t have much info, but this is good news. The object that came in must have weighed several tons, so there should be plenty of meteorites to be found. This is very cool, obviously because it’s always good to get new samples. But also, the path of this object is very well observed from all the videos taken, and that means its orbit can be determined. This gives scientists a pretty good handle on the object itself, and may give more clues about Earth-crossing asteroids, the kind that smack into us like this one did. And it’s always good to know more about them!
Tip o’ the Whipple Shield to BABloggees Michael Lonergan and AJ Milne.
My fellow skeptic Paul Harris is also a long-time radio show host; I used to listen to him at WMAL when I was living in DC, and I’m happy to call him my friend now. I’ve done a few interviews with him in the past, and on Tuesday we had a nice chat about my new book. He’s posted the interview online, so go give it a listen and send him some love.
I haven’t listened to the whole thing, but right in the middle my "call waiting" lit up, and I think it may have interrupted what I was saying (you may notice I repeat myself several times in the course of about 20 seconds at one point). Then my cell phone rang (it sounds like a doorbell), so much hilarity ensued as I galloped out of my office rapidly. I don’t know if Paul heard all this, so don’t tell him. But that does make live interviews fun sometimes.
I got two very nice reviews today for my book, Death from the Skies! These in particular mean a lot to me, because one is from my brother, and the other is from webgod Chris Pirillo.
Chris’s is in video form, and has a pretty good opening shot. And hey, I can make moving pictures magically appear here! Let’s see, what’s the incantation? Ah, yes. Videus opticantum!
Supposedly, there are reviews coming in some major market dead-tree media, but I’m still waiting for those to go to press. I’ll post ‘em here when I find out more.
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.
The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking, movie reviews, and all that) can be found here.
Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com
"If things worked the way I wanted them to, any reporter about to do another 'sensational' story on deadly meteors would consult this volume, and bang! common sense would find its way into the news. How strange would that world be?" -- Adam Savage, Mythbusters
"Reading this book is like getting punched in the face by Carl Sagan. Frightening, but oddly exhilarating." -- Daniel H. Wilson, author of How to Survive a Robot Uprising
