Blogs / Bad Astronomy

Every month, I do a segment called "Brains on Vacation" on the SETI Institute’s radio show "Are We Alone". The radio program itself deals with the search for extraterrestrial intelligence in general, though once a month they have what they call "Skeptical Sunday" dealing with issues of critical thinking. BoV deals with people just doing silly stuff; we’ve covered star naming, the Virgin Mary underpass, and other slices of silliness.

The show has been airing on independent radio stations across the country, but we have a big announcement: we’re going satellite! We premiere our first show on Discovery Channel radio broadcast on Sirius satellite radio channel 119, on Wednesday, March 1. The episode of AWA is a Skeptical Sunday one called "Psychic Sleuth" and includes a BoV piece about buying star names.

And we’re actually going to be aired three times a week. The premiere of each show is 9:00 a.m. EST Wednesday, with a repeat at 9:00 p.m. EST Wednesday and another repeat at 11:00 p.m. EST Sundays.

The shows will be archived on the AWA site, and will be podcast as well. This will be done on Thursdays, after Discovery has had their first two airings.

So tune in! You may not find out if we are truly alone or not, but with this much larger satellite venue for the show, we’ll know our listeners aren’t alone.

‘Major bummer. Darren McGavin died on Saturday.

Most people probably know him as the dad in "Christmas Story", the movie where the kid wants the BB gun (and eventually shoots his eye out). But to me, he will always be Karl Kolchak, the gritty, goofy, news reporter who investigated weird deaths in Chicago, only to find there was some supernatural cause behind them (vampires, succubi, ghosts, Greek gods, aliens, a robot, you name it).

I loved that show when I was a kid. There are many scenes that still stick with me (like the monster that appears as someone you trust, and Kolchak says he doesn’t trust anyone, but then in a dark alley the old lady he works with comes up to him, and he shoots her in the belly with the blessed crossbow… wow). Chris Carter says "Night Stalker" inspired him to create "The X-Files", and McGavin later had a guest role on the show.

Yes, I know, I’m a skeptic and a critical thinker and someone who fights the idea of the existence of vampires, ghosts, succubi and what-have-you. But I still have an imagination, and still love to hear stories (the difference is I know when they’re true or not). And when I was a kid I sucked down all that stuff: monster movies, scary TV shows ("The Outer Limits" creeped the hell out of me when I was little) ,and all that. "Night Stalker" was the epitome of those shows, and Kolchak’s character — the surly but lovable anti-hero — was my favorite.

Don Knotts died yesterday as well, and I suppose in popular culture, his name is much bigger (I did love "The Incredible Mr. Limpett" when I was a kid, and he was really funny in "Pleasantville"), but it’s Darren McGavin who had a bigger influence on me. I’m sorry to see him gone, but I’m glad he was around as long as he was.

Update: Geez, Saturday was a bad day. We lost Octavia Butler, science fiction author, too. Also , Henry Morris, the person who is probably most responsible for the modern creationist movement, also died. Like I said when Moon Hoax originator Bill Kaysing died, I’m never happy when someone dies, but everyone has to go sometime, and some people do more bad than good in the world. Morris may have believed in what he was doing, but what he did has caused a vast amount of strife and set parts of the U.S. back a hundred years in science learning.‘

So maybe this is just an excuse to use the hotel wireless. I don’t have a lot to report, really. I did an interview with Paul Harris today, which was fun, and eventually he’ll have the audio online. I’ll link to it when he does. I walked around the St. Louis Arch, which was very cool, and I’ll post pictures later when I have time. I am about to attend a session by the Annals of Improbable Research, and if you don’t know what that is, do yourself a favor and spend an hour or two at that site. I’ll have details later after the event. I have a panel I’m on tomorrow, and I need to get my act together for that tonight, so I’ll just sign off.

Oops! One more thing: James Randi is doing much better! Hooray!

So now I’m in St. Louis, and it wasn’t easy. A big winter storm delayed flights across the midwest, and so I spent a lot of time today cooling my heels in various airports. I caught the last seat in a plane here, but I made it.

Did I say I was tired yesterday? I was stupid. I’m exhausted. Tomorrow the science meeting starts, so I may be able to start blogging about it then. Oh– I’ll be on the Paul Harris radio show Friday, probably at 3:00 central time. We’ll be chatting about science and such. Paul is an old friend, so this should be a lot of fun.

I’m sitting in my room at Adrian College (wireless! Yay!) and resting. Just resting.

It’s been quite a day. I got here last night, and was picked up at the Detroit airport by three Adrian College professors, all of whom had attended TAM4! That was cool. We had a nice dinner, and they drove through Ann Arbor for me, since I graduated from the U of Michigan almost 20 years ago (yikes). When we got to Adrian, I was taken to my room, the President’s Guest House. Woohoo! I like being treated well, it turns out.

This morning we went to a small diner in Adrian, and I ate essentially a stick of butter for breakfast. California has ruined me for eating breakfast out. Later, in the main auditorium, I gave my “Mars Attacks!” talk (debunking the face on Mars nonsense) to an audience of a couple of hundred people (I think, I didn’t count– but a couple of whom were old friends from grad school who showed up too!), then was whisked off to lunch (talking with students and faculty), then whisked to the planetarium to give a talk about Planet X (yes, really), then rest (for thirty minutes back in my room), then the general Bad Astro talk in the planetarium again (I got one egg to stand up).

I’ve never given three talks in one day before. It was exhilarating, in a way. Fun! But I’m tired now. I scheduled my flight out of here for later in the afternoon, so I get to sleep in tomorrow. Smart, I am sometimes.

So this was a long story to basically say: no astro-blog entry tonight. Mr. Deutsch still lingers in the news, so if I can tomorrow I’ll see what’s next in this soap opera (I got asked about him after two of my talks).

No guarantees on a blog tomorrow since it’s a travel day, but if I get in early enough I’ll try to write something up. The next few days I’ll be at the AAAS meeting in St. Louis, and I’m hoping to do some more moblogging, which is fun.

‘Until Deutsch opens his mouth again (and of course, he has), here’s a couple of fun links to keep you busy.

Did you know astronomers are all stuffed shirts with no emotion, passion, or capacity for fun?

Well, you’re wrong.

In fact, a lot of astronomers are pretty happening folks. That picture was from the last American Astronomical Society meeting (about which I live-blogged extensively, starting here). 3000 or so astronomers gathered there to discuss science, astronomy, research, the latest news, and much more. After four days, we needed to blow off some steam!

Enter "Out of the Rain". This group of hip astronomers (when going through the images, look for the woman in the black cat outfit, and another in the red devil outfit, for starters) combs the city at each meeting, looking for good nightclubs that will allow a few hundred eggheads the chance to revel. In January, it was the TomTom Club in Adams Morgan. We rocked the place for about four hours, and it was fun. Astronomers are pretty cool… except for that one dork I highlighted in the picture. Well, he was a pretty good dancer, and he did find himself surrounded by exceptionally cool, witty, and intelligent people, and he did party until about 2:00 a.m., and he did woefully regret it the next day during a business meeting with the head of a very large organization of amateur astronomers.

But he had fun.

Incidentally, a lot of other folks wrote about the meeting. I was particularly impressed with the views of this young woman, who was attending her first AAS meeting. She’s an undergrad, and has some interesting comments.

The next time someone tells you all scientists are boring, point ‘em toward those pictures, and tell them that should try coming to the next meeting. If they can keep up with us, that is.’

I was going to post this on my TAM4 travelog (which I’m in the process of writing), but that’s getting pretty lengthy, and I was afraid people might not read it all the way through… and I wanted to share this story. It’s a bit long, but bear with me.

Dr. Richard Wiseman is an extremely smart and funny guy. He’s a psychologist and stage performer, and he studies such things as peoples’ perceptions of luck and of change. Why do some people have such strong feelings that they are lucky or unlucky? How do we detect changes in our environment? For the latter, he conducts tests where people are put into situations where something is changed without them knowing what, why, or how, and he sees if they notice. It’s actually very funny, which brings us to the heart of my story.

Last year, at TAM3, it was brought to our attention that Richard and I look quite a bit alike (it helped that our clothes were similar too). Sure, there are some differences: he is thinner than I am, his glasses are different, and he speaks with a British accent, but overall all we could easily be mistaken for each other, as you can see in the picture there. This gave us both an idea for a fun prank…

We started exchanging emails over the next few months, mapping out our plan. Finally, when TAM4 rolled around, we hammered out a few details and got ready for his talk.

The next day, he was the first speaker, which was perfect. Before his talk, I went around behind the stage and hid. He went on, and I listened covertly as he got a lot of laughs showing various optical illusions and joking about them. About 20 minutes in, he started a video clip, which is where the fun began.

The clip was of a guy, the unwitting subject of a perception test, who walks up to a desk and is asked by another man sitting there to fill out a form. A few seconds later, the man at the desk bends down to pick up a piece of paper, but when he comes back up, he is replaced by an entirely different guy. Incredibly, the guy filling out the form doesn’t notice that the man he was just talking too has been replaced by someone else. The audience was getting a good laugh out of this, but I was hoping we were about to get a bigger one…

Right before showing the clip, Richard complained his throat was scratchy, so he walks offstage to get some water. However, instead of him walking back onstage, I did. I was dressed almost exactly as he was (actually, it’s weird we both have similar purple shirts), including wearing a spare pair of his glasses. To maintain the illusion, I was carrying a bottle of water, pouring it into a cup.

The hope was that I would be able to carry out this little trick for about 20 or 30 seconds before anyone would notice. I would talk with a British accent (I actually impressed Richard with my ability to imitate him) and then ease back into an American accent, talking the whole while on how things can change right in front of people and they won’t notice.

Before…

… and after

Unfortunately, things didn’t go quite as planned. Damned skeptics! They’re too observant! I hadn’t even gotten halfway to the podium before a roar of laughter erupted from the front rows. They knew immediately it was me and not Richard walking back out. I heard later that someone yelled out, "It’s Phil Plait!" (I’m sure the same kind of person who spoils movie endings to all his friends). Despite that, a lot of folks in the back were initially clueless that we had pulled a switch, including several friends of mine. It wasn’t until they heard the laughter and started looking more closely that they noticed I wasn’t Richard.

Anyway, it did get a huge laugh, and I had people coming up to me all day and the next telling me it was the funniest moment of the whole meeting. In fact, I was stayed in the those clothes the rest of the day (Richard changed into more casual clothes) and twice — twice — people came up to me and talked to me thinking I was Richard.

So in the end, even though it didn’t go exactly as planned, we still pulled off a great joke. Now I just have to think about what to do next year…