5-Minute Interview with Mike Brotherton

I just realized this was online…I’d forgotten I’d done it!
I gave a talk about dark matter at the local science fiction convention Sagecon last April, and one of the reporters from the University newspaper interviewed me afterward. Enjoy!

Supersized Starlinks

Some of these go back to before my Spain trip last week…
Newspapers retract “Climategate” story.  Journalists, the lying right, and lots of others associated with this crap just suck.  The sheeple and the true deniers will only remember the story, not the retraction.
Another slightly on target and slightly stupid article by Chris Mooney, about how [...]

Travel Travails and a Rant about Why You Can’t be a Fucking Sheep on the Road

I got home from Spain on schedule late on Saturday and seem to have mostly avoided jet lag on this end, but the travel home nearly soured my whole experience and I need to reflect on it some more.
First, I am a rather experienced world traveler, although it was my first time in Spain and [...]

Finishing the Conference in Spain

It has been a busy week of science and socializing with a great group of my fellow astronomers.  I learned a lot about starbursts that I didn’t, and probably that was the case for everyone.  Slides from the talks will be posted online in a few weeks.  Tomorrow morning, I head home again and I’m [...]

Jetlagged in Spain and the Internet is Altering my Mind!

I got in last night to Granada, Spain, to participate in an astronomy meeting, a relatively small international workshop of 60 astronomers presenting and discussing our research into extreme starbursts in the local universe.  I waited too long to buy tickets and due to price issues (I hate to waste grant money!) I had a [...]

Ten Mainstream TV Shows or Movies that are Science Fiction or Fantasy “Light”

A few days ago I blogged about mainstream stories that I thought could be categorized as light versions of fantasy or science fiction.  To qualify, the stories had to fail to reflect reality in some fundamental way without being obviously science fiction or fantasy.  When that failure was over-the-top and great liberties are taken with [...]

Neil deGrasse Tyson on Black Ho/les

With regards to the NAACP putting pressure on Hallmark to remove their “racist” black hole card, which I talked about over the weekend and called on Tyson to speak out, a friend pointed me at his Twitter feed.
Tyson wrote, in reverse order:

Moral to the Hallmark-NAACP story: Read more astrophysics. [...]

Science Laughs! Ha ha ha!

There are more science comedians out there other than just my very funny friend Brian Malow, although he’s the one who got sciencecomedian.com.  I was reading Physics Today today, and saw a short article about physicist comedian Norm Goldblatt.  And looking for Norm Greenblatt’s act online, I came across something called “Science Laughs” that featured [...]

Mainstream Stories and a Metaphorical Science Fiction/Fantasy Dichotomy

I was thinking about the movie 300, Nnedi Okorafor’a detractors, and this recent blog post and comments therein.  Thoughtful people get upset by art, whether it is a book, movie, or just about anything.  I think there are good reasons and bad reasons to get upset.  A good reason is when you’re disappointed because something had [...]

Overly Sensitive People Need to be Eaten by Black Holes!

If  you’re a minority of some sort that has experienced overt , subtle, or institutionalized prejudice, I feel for you and sympathize.  Most people are minorities in one way or another or experience some sort of prejudice at one time or another, maybe not as often or as bad as others, but enough to sympathize.  [...]

Saturday Starlinks

A big pile of starlinks, with some commentary as usual.
The Table of Contents for the Best of Talebones anthology, which includes my story “Jack in the Box.”  Tiny killer clowns.
I caught an episode of the Science Channel’s new show Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman.  I mostly enjoyed it and it had some interesting stuff, [...]

It’s Got to be Tough to be an Astronaut (Poll on Future of Manned Space Program)

I have mixed feelings about the path Obama has chosen to take with NASA.  I hate it when discussions develop along mindless political lines, like how some conservatives say that private industry is always better than the government (it is sometimes but not other times), how some liberals and libertarians think that the government has [...]