The Bad Astronomer profile picture

The Bad Astronomer

The Universe is cool enough without having to make up crap about it.

About Me

I'm an astronomer, writer, skeptic, and lecturer. Extremist politics and religion are destroying science and critical thinking in the U.S., and I fight to protect them. I run the Bad Astronomy website.

My Interests

Astronomy, science, skepticism, humor, writing

I'd like to meet:

I gotta say, I'm meeting or have met a lot of people I wanna meet. Penn & Teller, James Randi, Michael Shermer, Julia Sweeney, Neil Tyson, Joe Haldeman... the list goes on and on, and I'm meeting 'em all.

Music:

Classical. Rock. Techno. Yeah, I said techno. Swing (Sing Sing Sing is the best song ever written, period).

Movies:

PeeWee's Big Adventure, Big Trouble in Little China, Kung Fu Hustle

Television:

Firefly, Penn and Teller's Bullshit!, My Name is Earl, The West Wing, Battlestar Galactica, Coupling (UK version)

Books:

Bad Astronomy, Contact, The Demon Haunted World

Heroes:

Carl Sagan, James Randi-- people who fight for the truth.

My Blog

Naked eye comet RIGHT NOW

A usually faint comet has undergone an ASTONISHING outburst in brightness; it's now naked eye and easily visible in the constellation of Perseus. See here for more: http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/...
Posted by The Bad Astronomer on Wed, 24 Oct 2007 02:15:00 PST

kilofriends

Wow. I just approved my 1000th friend.
Posted by The Bad Astronomer on Wed, 06 Jun 2007 05:49:00 PST

Help Shannon on the road to recovery

Last Saturday I posted a blog entry on my site that was harsher than I intended about a woman who nearly lost her life in a car accident. It's a medium/long story, but I implore everyone to read what ...
Posted by The Bad Astronomer on Thu, 17 May 2007 09:49:00 PST

Hubble spots a giant ring of dark matter

There was a news announcement today that is pretty cool: Hubble has spotted a giant ring of dark matter surrounding a galaxy cluster. Up until now, astronomers figured the halo would always be spheric...
Posted by The Bad Astronomer on Tue, 15 May 2007 03:34:00 PST

Sir Patrick Moore, sexist

I am very disappointed in Sir Patrick Moore, the UK's patron saint of astronomy outreach. He said some truly awful sexist things today. I blogged about it at Bad Astronomy....
Posted by The Bad Astronomer on Tue, 08 May 2007 03:06:00 PST

Global warming deniers beware

I just posted a rant against global warming deniers. Some people are trying to claim that other planets are warming too, so GW here cannot be due to humans. Foolish mortals! ...
Posted by The Bad Astronomer on Mon, 30 Apr 2007 09:18:00 PST

Announcing AstronomyBuzz!

I am very pleased to announce the opening of AstronomyBuzz, a new astronomy online community. AstronomyBuzz is like a blog, forum, YouTube, and MySpace all rolled into one. It's pretty cool. I wrote a...
Posted by The Bad Astronomer on Fri, 27 Apr 2007 11:05:00 PST

HUGE NEWS: first Earthlike planet found around another star!

Read all about it!
Posted by The Bad Astronomer on Wed, 25 Apr 2007 04:43:00 PST

New contest at Bad Astronomy!

I am giving away a copy of the new Astronomy Picture of the Day book Astronomy | 365, and a DVD called Ambient Space, on my website. Click here for details!...
Posted by The Bad Astronomer on Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:32:00 PST

All a'Twitter

I just joined up on Twitter, a sortof IM-meets-blog dealy where you can only post thoughts 140 characters at a time. If you wanna know what's on my mind -- and even I don't really want to know that ha...
Posted by The Bad Astronomer on Sat, 14 Apr 2007 11:28:00 PST