Libel is a serious issue in the UK: the laws are seemingly right out of the Dark Ages, making it easy for antiscience cranks to sue journalists when unflattering pieces are written about their crankery. That’s why the Libel Reform campaign was started, and that’s why they’re trying to raise money. And what better way to popularize this serious issue than to make a decidedly unserious geek calendar?

I love that picture; it’s of my friends Gia Milinovich and her husband Brian Cox. If you’re from the UK he needs no introduction, but if you’re American, he’s a scientist and TV presenter and becoming quite the media darling — not the least reason for which is that he speaks his mind when it comes to nonsense.

Brian and Gia are just one page of the Geek Calendar, which you get purchase online. Lots of other photogenic geeks are pictures as well, including The Hive Overmind’s Discover Magazine’s own Ed Yong.

And while I do like that picture of Brian and Gia, I think I may still like the one I took of them better when I was visiting them in London. I can’t prove it, and they wouldn’t admit it at the time, but I’m pretty sure when I snapped this shot they were texting each other.

Oh– I also totally believe he would jam a screwdriver into a toaster to try to fix it. And I know it would be up to Gia to actually get it working again.

Graphing variables is a critical skill in science. If something depends on something else — like the speed of sounds depends on air density, or the surface gravity of an object depends on its size — then if you plot the two things on a graph, you should see a pattern. The result is a line, or a curve. If the two things don’t depend on each other, you get a random collection of dots: a scatter plot.

About a hundred years ago, two astronomers plotted the brightness of stars against their color (from blue to red) and what they found was amazing: a clear connection between the two! In fact, stars fell into several groups, and over the years we’ve learned about why that happens. Most stars are stable, like the Sun, and fall into the Main Sequence of the plot. Some are old, some young, some dying, some dead. And they all have their place in what we now call the Hertzsprung-Russel diagram, or H-R diagram for short. It’s one of the most useful tools astronomers have ever created.

And now my friend Stuart who runs Astronomy Blog has done it one better: he’s created an H-R diagram of media stars. It’s awesome:

That’s really funny, and I wish I had thought of it. The vertical axis is fame, as denoted by Google results, and the horizontal axis is peer-reviewed papers. I’m actually only first author on I think two papers, but I was listed as author on a lot due to my work on Hubble. So I do OK on this diagram. I note that Brian Cox is more luminous than me, but then, he’s an actual rock star. If there were a branch for white main sequence stars, he and I would be in a dead heat.

Next up, I hope: a space-time diagram showing warping due to massive astronomers.

In April 2010, physicist and outspoken lover of science Brian Cox spoke at a TED meeting about the state of science funding in the UK and the world, and why we do science. Trust me, you need to find the 17 minutes today to watch this.

Man, he’s good. Someone should give him a TV show.

Tip o’ the LHC to Goran Prunk.

The Symphony of Science strikes again! This time, it’s The Case for Mars:

These songs are very catchy and ethereal. And what fun to see my friends Brian Cox and Penelope Boston in this one! Penny is made of win. She rocks.

Having said that, I have some comments. In general I agree with the general thrust of these videos, making science cool and interesting and even — dare I say it? — fun. But this is the first one where I’m not sure I agree with the premise.

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Last year I linked to Crispian Jago’s brilliant Skeptic Trump playing cards, featuring a few of skepticism’s stars. He included me in that constellation… but apparently was determined to make up for it by updating the cards and implying I have gained weight, presumably all in my mandible:

Hmph. I think Rebecca faired better, though apparently she ironically has the mumps (I blame Jenny McCarthy). To be fair, though, he nailed Ben Goldacre’s hair and Brian Cox’s teeth. And, I’ll admit: it’s not bad company for a chipmunk.

I have not yet seen "Wonders of the Solar System", because it hasn’t aired in America yet. It’s a BBC astronomy documentary hosted by my friend Brian Cox, and from what I have heard is an extraordinary event. I can’t wait to see it.

Some folks, though, have a different opinion. Brian, like me, is an outspoken skeptic, and will brook no nonsense. In one episode of the show, he said, "…astrology is a load of rubbish."


This is, of course, completely accurate. Astrology has no mechanism, no predictability, and no physical way of working. When tested even using its own standards it fails miserably.

Astrology doesn’t work, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.

Just as obviously, those people who are selling something have taken umbrage at Brian’s impolitic uttering of truth. They have started a Facebook page where they can get together and reinforce their silliness, make fun of Brian, and grossly misrepresent science. My favorite bit is this, in the page description:

His careless assertion was unresearched, unsubstantiated and unscientific. Has he done any empirical studies? Has he explored his birth chart? Can he cite any scientific studies disproving astrology that are not fundamentally flawed? Of course not. I have certainly never seen him at an astrology conference or read anything written by him about astrology. Cox is simply not qualified to speak on astrology and his comments amount to no more than prejudice.

Yes. Brian, a PhD physicist with decades of training in the scientific method, research, analysis, logic, and critical thinking, who has written a book on relativity and works at CERN on the Large Hadron Collider, is not qualified to speak on astrology. Heh.

By the way, astrologers: in the link above I do cite scientific studies that are not flawed and show astrology to be nonsense, just as they trash flawed studies that support astrology. I have explored birth charts and found them to be nothing more than tarot cards/Ouija boards/tea leaves/cold reading tools. I have seen empirical studies, and they all show astrology = nonsense.

And "prejudice"? No, it’s not prejudice. You just assume that because we disagree with you. But I’ve studied astrology, and I conclude that it’s garbage. That’s not prejudice. That’s reality.

And don’t forget:

My friend and fellow science promoter Brian Cox will be on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross tonight on BBC America (it already aired last week in the UK). Brian is funny and smart, as is Wossy (as Ross is called), so this should be a great time. And speaking of Matt Smith and Doctor Who, Mr. Smith will be on Wossy’s show as well.

Speaking of speaking of Doctor Who, oh how I wish this were true.

Tip o’ the sonic screwdriver to Fizzygoo for the Obama link.