Sometimes, news comes pouring in to Bad Astronomy HQ, and I am but a man, so I can’t keep up (writing about Saturn’s moons and giant galactic panoramas and big weird Scandinavian spinny thingies keep me pretty busy, y’know).

So here are some quick bits o’ interest.

1) Dr. Harriet Hall will inject (haha!) some medical sense into Oprah

2) You already knew this, but Rush Limbaugh is somewhat misinformed on basic matters of science and medicine^*.

3) Obama’s science advisor John Holdren reads a book by my Hive Overmind compatriots!

4) Pulsar-discoverer Jocelyn Bell-Burnell blogs.

5) My friend, the Aussie skeptic Richard Saunders appeared on national TV and handed an astrologer his head.

6) My evil twin Richard Wiseman is fun at parties. Here’s the video:

OK, good. That oughta keep y’all busy while I write up my next big astronomy post.

One of the problems with being an ideologue who abandons reality is that it makes for very, very strange bedfellows.

For example, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh — two guys who would rather soul kiss Michael Moore than be identified as lefties — have both jumped on the antivax bandwagon. Beck is spouting long-debunked paranoid antivax rhetoric, and Limbaugh is, well, he’s just being Limbaugh. He’s long planted his flag in knee-jerk anti-government silliness, never admitting that maybe, just maybe, sometimes the government is right.

I don’t know who this speaks worse for; the antivaxxers or the talk show bloviators.

In the end, though, we all lose. Because either way, this shows that nonsense doesn’t have political boundaries. Once you step off that narrow path that is reality, you’re surrounded by antireality in every direction. So it doesn’t matter if you face left or right; you’re still wrong.

If you want arguments rebutting the offal flying from the above group, go to Antiantivax, Joe Albietz’s swine flu FAQ, and Steve Novella’s antivax FAQ.