Blogs / Bad Astronomy

I just got back from LA a few hours ago, and even with a nap I’m still pretty tired. Way way too much happened to blog about easily. But here’s a quick rundown:

We wrapped principle shooting on Skeptologists yesterday (Saturday). It was a whirlwind five days, and it was fantastic. It was amazing how rapidly and easily the six of us on the cast got along and became a team. Of course, through various means we mostly knew each other from previous ventures, and that helped. We went from not really being sure how this was all going to work (typical for a pilot!) to having a living, breathing show in just a few days. I can’t speak for the others, but it really looks like we all had fun and could easily make this a viable program.

I have tons of pictures and such — wait until you see the places we went to shoot! — but until I can find my camera battery recharger you’ll have to wait (I know it’s around here somewhere). It’s also not completely clear how much we can say about the show and what we did, but I can tell you that in my opinion, we have a really good show on our hands. Now we just need to convince a network of that…

While I was there I hardly had any down time at all, but I managed to spend an evening with Wil. That’s a whole story in and of itself, and while I’m not the type to eat cottage pie and tell, I will say that we had a great time, and he is every bit as cool and personable as he seems. Sometimes folks you really respect online can be still manage to be very cool IRL. And he can manage to sign two books quicker than I can sign one. I have resolved not to be in any sort of contest with him ever again. Losing twice is all I can bear.

I had other friends in LA I wish I could have seen, but we were exhausted nearly every night and had to be ready for the next day bright and early. It’ll be a while before I think I can catch up on my sleep…

… and I certainly won’t get my chance tonight. Tomorrow is the start of the Conference On World Affairs, and that will be the second straight week of awesomeness in a row for me. While I was at Denver airport today coming home from LA, I coincidentally met up with Randi who is attending CWA, as well as my buddy Andy Ihnatko. Hal Bidlack and Denver Skeptic organizer Elaine Gilman are dropping by in a few minutes as I write this too, on their way to see Randi tonight, so I need to wrap this up and get my life in order.

Now that I’m back home, I’m hoping to get the blogging back on track as well. There’s a lot of stuff going on, and this blog’s not gonna write itself.

OK, I’ve had enough.

I want my transfat back!

I was at Target recently picking up a few things, and saw that HoHos were on sale. Yes, the little chocolate-like log things; when I was a kid I loved them, and I still sometimes buy them so I can be a kid again for a little while (like I need an excuse). Plus, I’ve been a good boy: I finished my book, I’ve been working on the blog and the website, and doing other things that need to get done. I want to treat myself. So I buy a box.

In the car I opened the box, got out a HoHo, and took a big bite… and almost spat it back out. It was awful, like someone had injected it with pure suck. After a moment to overcome my shock, I reached for the box. With increasing dread, I looked over the ingredients, and there were the words I knew would be there:

"Trans fat 0g"

AIIIIIEEEEEEE!

What are companies thinking? Do they really honestly think that by removing all semblance of flavor and replacing it with — I’m guessing here — toe cheese, they’ll be able to keep customers, just because they took out the transfat?

Piece of free advice to Hostess from an ex-customer: put the transfat back. That’s what makes the HoHos taste good. That’s why people buy them.

Sure, transfats are bad for you. But you know what? I’m buying a HoHo. I know I’m getting something that is not healthy for me. The same thing happens when I grab a candy bar, or a bowl of ice cream, or a piece of fried chicken. I’m not eating these because they’ll give me six-pack abs, I’m eating them because they taste good.

I am really, really tired of people making my decisions for me. Kids are getting fat eating Twinkies and HoHos? OK then, parents, here’s more free advice from another parent: stop feeding them to your kids. The Little Astronomer gets lots of healthy food in her lunch every day, plus sometimes a snack, a goodie, a treat. Three cookies, or a pudding, or some other sweet. But that’s after the banana and the sandwich.

It’s not all that hard. Moderation, folks. It’s that simple.

Transfats are bad for you, but not if you take care. Eat good stuff, walk around a little bit, bike to the store sometimes instead of drive. That way, the occasional 4 or 5 grams of transfats won’t kill you.

And to any company that takes the transfat out of their food: you can bite me. Because I won’t be biting you.

My brother-in-law (not the title character in this entry) just bought himself a fantastic digital SLR camera, and has been merrily snapping away. He stayed with us this past weekend, and after a light snowfall got this shot of a visitor in our driveway:

It’s definitely a woodpecker, and he caught it just as it was taking flight. Thing is, it matches the pictures we looked up of a Gilded Flicker, but a guidebook I found says they only live in the desert. What was he doing in Boulder?

I’ll tell you what he was doing. He was eyeballing the siding of my house, sizing it up for a vicious pecking. We’ve been woken up a half dozen times at 6:00 a.m. by woodpeckers attacking the house. When we first moved here, I noticed a lot of houses had plastic owls hanging up, or drawings that looked like faces two feet across hanging over the neighbors’ eaves. I recognized them as being woodpecker scarer-offers, and had second thoughts about living here.

I love Boulder, I really do. But I will eat the next frakkin’ bird that wakes me up that early. I’ve taken to keeping tennis balls outside the door to the back yard so I can throw them near (not at) the bird to scare it off. It works, but he’s always back the next day.

Pain in the butt bird. Sure is pretty though.

A Russian farmer is suing the Russian Space Agency Roskosmos for <Dr. Evil>one million rubles</Dr. Evil> because a rocket booster fell on his farm.

The story is a bit weird. If the booster came down and smashed his house, or crushed his outhouse, or flattened his dog, then sure, sue away. But the thing fell in his yard, as the article pointedly says, missing his outhouse (phew!). Sounds to me like he has a goldmine on his hands.

Problem is, stuff falls from rockets relatively often in that area, which is along the Russian launch path, so the novelty worth of the booster may not be that high. You can’t beat a quotation like this from the Roskosmos spokesman:

Technologically speaking, these parts are supposed to fall off during a launch. They fly, they fall, they fly, they fall. It’s how they work.

Well, yeah, boosters and such fall. But the article also mentions things like bolts, engines, and casings? I suspect there may be a translation problem here; he means fall to the ground, not fall off. Still. Yikes.

Anyway, given how cash-strapped the Russian agency is, I can’t imagine he’ll get anything from them. He should put the thing on eBay if he wants to see some money. Maybe he could paint a ghostly face on the side, just to up the value, too.

The new season of Doctor Who starts on April 5!

W00t!

Mild spoilers below:

The first episode is called "Partners in Crime", and Catherine Tate returns as Donna Noble, which anyone who reads this blog should know by now. Personally, I think her character had a lot of room in it for some great development between her and the Doctor. When he said he doesn’t need anyone, and she replies, "Yes you do, ’cause sometimes I think you need someone to stop you,"… well. The Doctor is a tortured man, and I’d like to see more of this. We got a glimpse of that in "Family of Blood" and the season 3 finale as well. I certainly hope they develop this idea more in Season 4, and given what spoilers I’ve heard… well, we’ll see.

I know coincidences happen; I certainly see no evidence for any sort of universal harmony aligning the stars or anything like that. Any stellar alignment is a matter of our own brains interpreting data.

Literally.

Such is the case, I assume, when two separate BABlogees independently send me links to the same site for two different reasons. The site in question is Strange Maps, which is about, well strange maps.

Case 1: Dan Fingerman sent me to a Strange Maps page about a Dutch map showing what Mars would look like if it had water on its surface. This is an interesting idea, and of course with modern technology (specifically, laser ranging topographical maps of Mars taken using orbiting satellites) we have much better such things, but I’m fond of the old style of map-making. This one has that Percival Lowell feel to it that makes it cool. Why it has south facing up I’ll never know.

Case 2: dj empirical told me about a Strange Maps page with a fairly unusual map of the sky, with star names and constellations re-imagined by an eccentric (read: whacko) Brit who thought our starry vault needed more Hitler and Mussolini. You can’t make this stuff up. Well, that guy did, but you know what I mean.

Strange Maps looks like a fun blog, and I’ve added it to my feed reader. I’ve always enjoyed looking over maps, and this appeals to my odd sense of humor.

I was recently interviewed by Dale Basler and Brian Bartel from Lab Out Loud, a podcast for the National Science Teachers Association, and it’s now online. I was a member of NSTA for several years back when I was doing education workshops at Sonoma State University. They do great work for teachers across the country, equipping them with the science they need to educate students, so I was really happy to do the interview.

We talked about eggs and the equinox, my first and second books, and spent most of our time talking about the need for skepticism, especially in the classroom. I suggest going to their site and taking a look around, or you can download the interview MP3 directly.

Turns out they had a warmup interview with someone else as a prelude, an apertif if you will, for mine, too. Think of it as a calamari appetizer.