One of the things NASA takes seriously is the goal of educating people about astronomy. Happily, while everyone takes the goal seriously, they’re not necessarily serious about how to achieve that goal…
Enter IRrelevant Astronomy: a series of educational videos about astronomy, leaning on the infrared aspects of it (because it’s created by folks with the Spitzer Space Telescope, which sees in the IR). These aren’t the bland, dull videos of yesteryear! The videos in this series are really, really funny — I mean laugh-out-loud funny — and frequently feature celebrities like Felicia Day and Sean Astin.
They just released a new one, "Destroyer of Worlds", and I bet you just might recognize the voice of The Physician…
There were many times I was laughing at this video. And not just at Wil Wheaton’s voice acting (though he’s really good at this). It’s got that perfect Warner Brothers cartoon zeitgeist: kids will like the zaniness, and the adults will get the jokes. I’m not sure if my favorite part is the insect-like spaceship near and dear to my heart seen several times, or The Physician’s ship itself. Either way, this is one of the best of the Spitzer videos. And the science, including binary stars disrupting their planets’ orbits, is pretty interesting and handled quite well.
Some people would correct me to say, "You mean Evil Wil Wheaton". But I heard he once phasered a man on Reno VI just to watch him die. So make up your own mind.
Just a wee reminder: This Saturday night, October 23rd, at 7:30 p.m. in the Boulder Theater is "w00tstock Presents" with Paul & Storm, My Close Personal Friend Adam Savage™, and me! There will be laughter, singing, stories, nerdery, more singing, astronomical naughty bits, and then singing. I might even sing.
Ticket prices were just reduced to $20 for General Admission. If you live anywhere near Boulder or even somewhere between here and UDFy-38135539, you should come. Get tickets here or get marginally more information here, and/or read my overly long slobbering praise of w00tstock here.
Note: Wil Wheaton won’t be there, as he has to be in Canada to film "Eureka". We will raise a toast of blood wine to him, then eat gagh.
The good news: I’ll be performing onstage at two w00tstock events: this Friday, September 17 at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall and again in my hometown of Boulder on Saturday, October 23rd at the Boulder Theater!
IMPORTANT! There are specific things to keep in mind for these two events, which follow:
San Francisco
The bad news: tickets are sold out for the September 17th San Francisco performance.
The medium news: there may be tickets available at the door, but you’ll have to go there that night to find out.
The other other good news: there will also be a performance in SF the night before, on Thursday September 16, and there are still tickets. However, I won’t be there (I don’t know if that’s medium news or bad news, so I’ll leave it as is. It’s just news).
As usual, Wil Wheaton, Adam Savage, and Paul & Storm will be there, as will singer Molly Lewis and magician Jamy Ian Swiss. There may be more special guests too! (more…)
I just found out that video of my talk at w00tstock has been posted on YouTube. The quality is a little shaky, since it was a handheld video taken from a distance back, so some of the pictures may be hard to discern, but I think it suffices to get the point across.
This may surprise you, but the content is pretty much Not Safe For Work. Yeah, I know: I’m not generally known for that. But hey– it’s an astronomy talk! What better place to go a little blue?
The video is in two parts; the first has the last couple of minutes of the warmup before my talk (I came on after the intermission), and the second part includes the premier of the trailer for my new TV show. The reaction of the audience was… well. It made me happy indeed.
I have no real news here, except that one of my missions at Comic Con was to meet up once again with Zach Weiner, who writes and draws my favorite web comic, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. My wife and I went over to his booth, and there he was! As this picture shows, I was overjoyed to see him:
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
