Few days… Few weeks. Okay, I’m back. I just moved to the Midwest to start my new job as a post-doc working with CosmoQuest as informal education lead. Woo hoo! My apartment is only partly unpacked, my office just getting set up, the university doesn’t even have me in the system yet, but I’ve officially started! In fact, I’m at a NASA Education and Public Outreach retreat in New Mexico, getting to know my new colleagues.

I really look forward to getting back to blogging. There is a post coming together over at Skepchick about the formation of the Moon, and I’ve said my “Hello, world!” over at CosmoQuest. I’ve finally poked my head back into the Weekly Space Hangout and will be blogging over at Discovery really soon. Speaking of writing, once I’ve finished my corrections, I’ve decided to actually share the final version of my Ph.D dissertations with you all because, well, why not. Science should be open. My committee even encouraged me to write a blog-friendly version of my introduction, so look forward to that as well.

I’d really like to encourage anyone who can get to St. Louis over Memorial Day weekend to check out the College of Curiosity, a new kind of interactive skeptic and science event over at the City Museum. That place is ridiculously awesome all on its own, and you’ll also get to interact with a fun lineup of speakers who will guide you through weird things like math magic and alien life. I hope to see you there!

It’s really, really good to be done. But as the Cult of Done reminds us, Done is just the engine of More.

I woke up to the news that Christopher Hitchens has died. Well, that sucks. Controversial and ornery though he could be, he was also a superb writer, thinker, and pusher-of-boundaries. So, in his honor, I’ve dug up an old post I did in 2008, reporting on his debate with Frank Turek over the existence of god at VCU. Hope you enjoy.

September 11, 2008:

On Tuesday night, I joined my VAA fellows in going to Richmond to see Frank Turek and Christopher Hitchens debate the existence of god, as mentioned in an earlier post. And I took notes. Boy did I take notes. I was jumping up and down in my seat at some points with retorts and comments bubbling out of my brain! I don’t know why I’m so darn hyper sometimes. I’ve written about it and it’s appearing as a two-part post on Brother Richard’s Life Without Faith. [Editor's note: link no longer goes to my post. See below!] Many many thanks to him for taking me on as a guest blogger!

Thanks again to the fabulous guys and gals of the VCU United Secular Alliance for hosting this incredible event. And a “hello!” to their president, Roy, who I finally met in person but have known as the “bionic atheist” online. And of course, to the VAA people who were just great and witty and fun and intelligent and entertaining on the drive there and back, before the debate, after the debate, and at dinner.

Also, *fangirl moment.* So we were waiting on this huuuge line to get Hitchens to sign our books and chat and such. And I knew what I wanted to say, which I wrote about in my long post above, but what I didn’t mention is that I’m an idiot when talking to people I admire and stumble over my words, but I think it came out okay. However, when I went to shake Christopher Hitchens’s hand, he took it up and he kissed it! So of course I’m stumbling even more like a moron, but I think he took my compliment and understood my point. Anyway, that was charming and cool.

Off to go play with my new iPod Touch… I mean, get work done.

What follows is the review of the debate, at least the version that exists on my computer:

10 September 2008

On September 9th, the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) United Secular Alliance hosted a debate between Christopher Hitchens and Frank Turek on the pressing question, “Does God Exist?” Christopher Hitchens is well known in the atheist community for his book “God is Not Great” but has an impressive list of publications on the subjects of religions, politics, and anything else under the sun. Frank Turek, is co-author of “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist” and promises to show why you shouldn’t either on the video on his website. This was setting up to be a great debate. So, I headed on over to Richmond with the fabulous members of Virginia Atheists and Agnostics (VAA) from UVa. After a hilarious and intellectually stimulating car ride, we sat in the packed auditorium (there were TWO overflow rooms) chatting about our expectations for the debate and trying to pick out the Christians from the atheists by sight. Needless to say, t-shirts tend to give it away.

The debate was moderated by Dr. Timothy Hulsey, the Dean of the Honors College and Associate Professor of Psychology at VCU. He asked Turek to start the debate since he was arguing in the affirmative. To be honest, I was actually excited to hear what Turek had to say. After all, can he really show that atheism depends on faith? Can he bring something new to the discussion and make a convincing argument for a god or gods? However, one of his first statements struck a wrong note. he said that both he and his opponent had the burden of proof to present in this argument. He seemed to fail to realize that the burden of proof rest on the affirmative, or on the believer, in any test of reality. Okay, let’s let him make his points.

He claimed three arguments: cosmological, teleological, and moral. (Oh goodie, I’m an astronomer, I can’t wait to hear the cosmological argument.) Turek talked about the Big Bang and evidence for it, including the second law of thermodynamics (okay…), the expansion of the universe (good), the cosmic microwave background (great!), the irregularities in that background radiation (good), and Einstein’s relativity which links time and space (well done, sir!). His argument then turns to, and I paraphrase, “nothing was before the Big Bang, and something came from nothing, therefore an intelligent creator had to make that choice to bring it into being.” Hold it now, what? The current understanding of physics only probes back to the fraction of a second after the Big Bang, so we don’t know what came before it. For a time, before it was realized that the universe’s expansion is accelerating, it was considered possible that the expansion could decelerate, and the universe would collapse back on itself to create another Big Bang and another universe with a different set of conditions. There is also the hypothesis that there are many universes, or a multiverse, such that Big Bangs are happening all the time, creating different universes. The point is, we just don’t know. Science has a gap, and Turek is happy to fill that gap with his creator god. Has he not learned from the lessons of history that the “god of the gaps” argument falls apart in light of new evidence? Also, he ignores the problem of infinite regression. If the creator created the universe, how was the creator created from nothing? Turek basically proclaims, with a bit of arrogance, in my opinion, that he has all the answers in the face of deep questions about the universe and our existence. This is starting to sound like every other weak argument for god that I have heard. He falls right into the logical fallacy that just because something is currently unexplained that is must be forever unexplainable and thus relegated to the supernatural. And atheists are the ones with too much faith?

This argument continues with a string of quote mining from too many astronomers for me to count. Many scientists, whether theist, deist, or atheist, have used the word “God” to emphasize a gap in our knowledge or wonder at the majesty of the cosmos and how little of it we understand to date. So, that is fertile ground for quote mining, as if arguments from authority hold any weight in science. He extensively quotes Fred Hoyle, who, as any astronomer could tell you, rejected the Big Bang hypothesis in favor of the discredited Steady State universe, shunning scientific evidence and discourse to do so. Next, Turek goes on to explain that the constants of the universe and the placement of our planet and all of that is tuned just perfectly for life to exist. To be honest, I haven’t been able to sit down and work out the math, but I suspect that the error bars for the balance of forces in the universe are larger than many claim them to be, and that some sort of matter could still arise from a host of conditions, thus opening up the door for replicating matter, or life. I will get to more objections to Turek’s points through the words of Hitchens later on.

His teleological argument springs forward from this, claiming that life is clearly intelligently designed. He talks about “macroevolution” and the complexity of DNA and the impossibility of all of these arising by “pure chance.” This is, again, the same old drek that you hear from creationists, IDists, and others that gets shot down again and again. Natural selection is NOT equivalent to pure chance! Mutations occur by chance, and only the tiny fraction of those that actually help the organism thrive survive to spread throughout the gene pool. Evolution is an observed fact; natural selection is the clearest, simplest, and most well supported explanation and is widely accepted by the scientific community. You know the drill by now.

The final piece of the puzzle is morality. This is a concept that Turek twisted and misunderstood and kept ramming into the debate time and time again throughout the evening. Basically, he says that there cannot be moral objectivity without god, or, we do not know what is right and wrong without some higher power governing us. He points out that this does not mean that atheists cannot be moral or that theists cannot be immoral, just that morality must come from on high. After all, how can rationality and mathematics come from randomness? How does reason come about from chemical interactions within our brain? Here, he makes the fatal mistake of equating atheism with determinism, despite the fact that, and I paraphrase John Cleese, “since the 1920s quantum mechanics has destroyed forever the notion that everything can be described mechanically.” Turek again sees a gap in our knowledge, that being the questions, “Where does our morality come from? How should we determine it? What causes reason, consciousness, and the mind?” He says it must be another mind, that of our creator, again ignoring infinite regression. He ignores the advances in neurobiology that have discovered chemicals that create feelings of love and happiness. He ignores evolution and sociology and humanism. I strongly recommend that you read Michael Shermer’s “The Science of Good and Evil” to get a feel for this field of study, and to avoid sticking god into this gap.

Now, on to Hitchens’s opening statements. I’d like to pause to apologize for the long summary of Turek’s opening statements, since they are so full of my own rebuttals. Since Hitchens is not a scientist, he did not address those points in the way that I would have, so I have included my own for completeness, lest you think that Turek’s claims could go unanswered. But more on that later.

Hitchens points out that god is real, at least to some people. Just as heaven is real, and hell is real in the fear of children, and limbo is real to distraught Catholic mothers who have lost their unbaptized babies, even after the Catholic Church has said that limbo does not exist. Hitchens sees it as his mission of sorts to overthrow the type of people that would use this type of lying and fear to subjugate people under their supposed moral superiority. (May I say, wow.) He points out that religion in general claims infallibility of its belief system. In particular, the Catholic Church claims infallibility of the papal teachings, and yet the late John Paul II had to apologize for the mistakes in the Church’s past, such as the Holocaust and the Crusades. And people of faith just have to accept that. An atheist such as himself will not take that for an answer, and he has seen no convincing argument to date that says that god should exist.

Hitchens accuses Turek of “tap dancing” from deism to theism to Christianity in his arguments, and wonders how he knows which of the many gods throughout history, or which personal god, is this creator. He links religion to servility, wishful thinking, and ignorance. After all, there is no need for gods or supernatural explanations when natural explanations do a much better job. (Here, a reference to Laplace would have been appropriate, but again, I am astronomy-biased.) And even still, how does one get from a deistic designer to a personal god that answers prayers and all the rest? He calls the argument from morality “egregious.” After all, instructions from on high reflect a certain need for servility that is just callous and cruel in his point of view. He challenges the audience to think of one moral action or thought that a believer can do or think that a non-believer cannot. (It’s hard, and I couldn’t do it.) Then, think of an immoral action or thought that a believer can commit that a non-believer cannot. His examples include suicide bombing and genital mutilation. After all, instructions from on high certainly trump all else. Here, I digress to disagree slightly. Although I understand that religion is dangerous and allows for these sorts of atrocities to be considered moral, I do not think that these atrocities would not exist without religion. There are a host of irrational beliefs that need not be supernatural to encourage such immorality and claim superior authority. Racism, tribalism, patriotism, hero-worship, and many more can be used and misused without religion to attain these ends.

I’ll get back to Hitchens’s argument, where he points out that all the cosmological evidence points to a “heat death” of the universe. How does theism’s god allow for that? How does he or she or it allow for suffering? This creator is simply a totalitarian monarch, the ultimate “Big Brother” that looks for your mistakes and can convict you of thoughtcrime. Why would we “wish to live as an abject slave?”

Next, each speaker got five minutes for rebuttal, then asked questions of each other directly. This was followed by questions from the audience that were written on index cards and collected by ushers. I’ll try and keep this brief and point out the highlights, since after all, video should be available soon to satiate your hunger for the whole thing! Turek claims that other gods, such as Zeus, do not fit his notion of a personal god (isn’t that convenient) in response to the challenge to explain why his god is better than all the rest. He challenges Hitchens to a second debate in which they can argue New Testament theology and evidence, which prompts Hitchens to later point out that Turek never talks about his own faith, but instead hides behind scanty attempts at evidence in order to support his unsupportable world view. Hitchens also points out the obvious fact that theism asks us to turn away from scientific and moral inquiry. Here, I interject to mention Laplace again and his lack of a need for a “god hypothesis” in the motions of the planets. I am particularly moved by Neil deGrasse Tyson’s observations that Newton may have been able to figure out perturbation theory before Laplace if he hadn’t given up and said “god did it” when faced with scientific difficulty.

Hitchens conservatively estimates that homo sapiens has existed on the planet, at least once nearing extinction, a fate which has consumed at least 98% of the world’s species, for 70,000 years. First, this answers Turek’s point about the perfect design of the universe for life. After all, in this wide universe, only an immeasurably tiny speck that is this planet is known to support life, and is in precarious balance for life as we know it. Humans have just barely adapted to survive here, and not with the best of design either. The designer isn’t very good. Also, monotheism has existed for only 5,000 years at most, so what took heaven so long to intervene in our species?

The period in which they questioned each other convinced me that each man was talking past the other. Not on purpose, mind you, but each starting set of assumptions is so different, that they just couldn’t accept the basic premises of some of the questions. Turek kept harping on determinism and claiming to have all the answers, such as the belief that god will intervene before the universe’s heat death. Hitchens cannot possibly respond rationally to this and says, “Have it your way.” At one point, Turek keeps hounding on his “molecules” and starts to ask, “But where does evil come from…?” and Hitchens interrupts with, “Religion. Where does good come from? Humanism.” Turek proceeds to Godwin the whole discussion and Hitchens replies that Hitler, Stalin, Hirohito, and the like were anything but secular. I guess that answers my earlier disagreement with Hitchens that religion is not the only irrational, destructive belief system. Hitchens, finally, at one point, tells the audience that Turek has not produced on shred of scientific evidence for his claims of a creator.

Many more points are discussed, such as abortion, the meaning of a conscience, evidence that would change one’s mind, and a little bit about sex. At the end, Hitchens declines to make a closing statement, since he feels he has already made his case (”shot my wad” was the actual wording). Instead, he asks if anyone in the audience has a question for him. One man near the front raises his hand and asks why, if he does not believe in a god, does he spend so much time refuting one? Hitchens’s answer is one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard, and I will not do it enough justice except to say that he has been galvanized by the events of 9/11 to fight the evil in the world brought on by religion and to oppose theocracy. Man, what a hero. Turek then closes with a summary of his (awful) points and a little bit of weirdness. He says that even though Hitchens seems to say, “There is no god and I hate him,” that god knows there is a Hitchens and…. wait for it…. wait for it… god loves him. Half the audience groaned while the other half applauded. Amazing. Turek then likens Hitchens to an Old Testament prophet and even to Jesus, calling the supposedly religious away from tradition and back to morality, only it is Hitchens’s morality (actually the Enlightenment as mentioned in “God is Not Great”), and thus Hitchens wants to be god. The laughter from the atheist crowd was response enough.

After the debate, we joined the huge line that formed to speak to Hitchens, books to be signed clutched in hand. Turek also had a table with a few people around it, where he tried to defend his claims to questioning audience members. Why most of the theists in the audience did not stick around, I’m not sure. At one point during this, he abused Occam’s Razor and then went on to say that the multiverse hypothesis calls for multiple creators, and so nothing good was going on there. I finally got up to Hitchens’s table where we chatted for a bit about how he should visit UVa since, after all, he quite admires Thomas Jefferson. I complimented him on his speaking style and expressed my wish that more scientists could speak like that to refute the misuse of science by people like Turek. He agreed, and was of course just as tired of hearing the same old rubbish. Overall, he was charming and intelligent and very laid back. Hopefully, we can get him to come to UVa and spend more time discussing!

So who won the debate? It’s hard to pick a clear winner when neither side could accept the other’s starting premises. It’s crystal clear which side I favor, but I hope that Hitchens’s words have planted a seed of doubt in someone’s mind. After all, he is on a heroic mission, and he doesn’t need a god to send him on his way.

Links of interest:

Christopher Hitchens
Frank Turek
“God is Not Great”
“I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist”
Wikipedia on the Big Bang
Wikipedia on Natural Selection
John Cleese Podcast
Neil deGrasse Tyson on God’s retreat from cosmology
Wikipedia on Godwin’s Law
Wikipedia on Occam’s Razor

And finally, the debate itself, all delicious 2 hours of it, was posted online several months later.

Turek vs. Hitchens Debate: Does God Exist? from Andrew Ketchum on Vimeo.

Even though it’s been a few weeks, I still want to bring attention to some of the interesting stuff on the internet that has caught my attention…

via NASA

Earth had a visitor of the rocky kind in YU55 which passed within the distance of the Moon’s orbit. See the radar video from NASA and get your dose of science from the Bad Astronomer. I got to see the asteroid fly through the field of view of the 26-inch telescope at McCormick Observatory, thanks to Ed Murphy, who is my new favorite candidate for space-laser-operator after the great job he did of finding and tracking it.

Then, it’s the Carnival of Spaaaaaace! Latest one is 223 with a fun picture of Apollo astronauts just lounging about.

Chances are, you don’t suck at that thing you think you suck at. Another reason to *heart* LifeHacker.

More solid information on flu vaccine safety and efficacy from Dr. Steven Novella. I got my shot!

Meanwhile, Delta Airlines is running a public “service” announcement by the National Center for Vaccine Information. It actually seems like a disservice to public health, promoting the NVIC’s anti-vaccine agenda. Delta has responded, but they have not yet removed the ad. Elyse from Skepchick has collated all the ways that you can tell Delta that you are unhappy with this, so keep the pressure on.

The Skeptical Teacher, Matt Lowry, encourages us to support Science Debate 2012. See story immediately above this one to be reminded of why science literacy is important in the public sphere. Shouldn’t our elected representatives know their science, too? This group got Obama and McCain to respond to their questions about science policy in 2008.

More on the science behind Celiac disease, or the autoimmune disease that responds to gluten, from “Smaller Questions”.

A really great example of why falsification is important to science, by Barbara Drescher.

George Hrab exposes the idiocy of “77 non-religious reasons for man/woman marriage,” including the silly use of a slash in their title.

The creative minds at Mad Art Lab have gotten hold of a 3-D printer. Only awesome-ness can come from this. Or the robot apocalypse. Or both. Maybe they’ll even make a space laser!

I found this to be a rather poignant essay on the “Occupy” movements and rape culture. (Not found on my own, but found it here.) Also, the Occupy Wall Street protestors were kicked out in the middle of the night, but have returned this evening. Rock on.

For me, last weekend was pretty fun. I went to Philly, spent some time with Tim, hung out with an old college friend with whom I have way too much fun, took a workshop in “Circus Aerials,” and did a really cool historical walking tour. And I took part in my very first TuacaCon! This is a really fun virtual event where authors read their work to you. It’s like storytime for adults! At least some of the segments are posted on the UStream site, so check it out! I got to talk about astronomy and extraterrestrials with P.G. Holyfield for a bit which was really great. He’s particularly interested in astronomy due to a story that he’s working on right now that I can’t wait to read. In the meantime, you can read or listen to “Murder at Avedon Hill” which combines fantasy and mystery in a world that I very much hope he revisits in the future. Also, I learned about Write Or Die. NOW I can finish my thesis.

Speaking of podcasts, I had a lovely chat about astronomy with Kylie Sturgess a while back, at Dragon*Con actually, which she recorded and posted, and I don’t think I ever linked to that. Sorry about that, Kylie! Some of her other recent episodes are from SkepTrack, so you can re-live (or for-the-first-time-live) those panels.

Finally, if that’s not enough to keep you informed and entertained for a while, the James Randi Educational Foundation posted two talks from The Amazing Meeting 9 so far, one by Sadie Crabtree on skeptical activism:

Sadie Crabtree – Winning Hearts and Minds for Skepticism from JREF on Vimeo.

… and the rather spirited panel on space, which contains the “shush heard round the world.”

TAM Panel – Our Future in Space from JREF on Vimeo.

If you’ve made it this far down the page, then you probably have time for this (via Tim).

Waking up is hard to do…

My sleep schedule is bizarre. However! I still have my favorite links and stories from the week to share…

The OPERA instrument

Space sound files and ringtones from NASA! Go ahead, get your geek on.

Brian “El BoomBoom” Thompson tells us about diversity at the JREF’s The Amazing Meeting 9 last July, referencing Christian “Vanna” Walters and his take on how local groups can encourage diversity in the skeptical movement.

The whooping cough vaccine fades in efficacy, which is why adults and older children should absolutely get a booster! But three years? That’s shorter than I thought. Get your shot!

How many slaves work for you? The United States may have finally abolished slavery in the mid-19th century, but chances are, someone has been a victim of forced labor to make your stuff. (Site not letting me sign-up, but still interesting to poke around.)

The Skeptics Guide to the Universe did their part to save the world with a 24-hour live broadcast. I caught some of it and thought it was *fantastic*. Catch up on some of the fun with the videos recorded by justin.tv.

What’s the deal with gluten?! Skepchick Surly Amy talks about gluten hype and fact with Dr. Terry Simpson. I have known people who have developed Celiac’s disease, and I once worked for a bakery that specifically catered to them! However, avoiding gluten for any other reason seems to be based in pseudoscience.

Speaking of allergies, I am ready to subject myself to the scratches of allergy testing and shots with the hope of diminishing my allergies to cats. After all, I can’t ask Tim to choose between me and this lovely lady that already lives with him:

Picture of Jinx taken by me BEFORE I started to develop serious asthma symptoms to cat dander.

Expect reports from the allergy frontier!

And in a bit of shameless self-promotion… CHICKENS IN SPACE!

Finally, thanks to people that bought or bid on my eBay stuff. Cleaner closet and drawers, and my old stuff gets a second life! Whatever didn’t sell is going to be trucked over to Goodwill.

Have a good Monday, everybody.

Last night, at 11:08PM EDT, Troy Davis was executed by the state of Georgia, despite local and international outcry. Today is one of those days where I really don’t like being a part of humanity. So, let me get this off my chest, even though it has nothing to do with astronomy.

Mixed messages? Uh, yeah. By Dan4th on Flickr. And from my very own state of Virginia.

I have always been against the death penalty, at least as best as I can remember. (Human memory is fallible, and that will become important shortly.) When I was religious, I believed that only God had the power to judge, to create and take human life. Who are we mere mortals to judge? I don’t think that the overall sentiment has changed now that I no longer hold a belief in an omnipotent and just deity. Who are we, still, to determine who should live and who should die? By what standards? After all, as a humanist, I am “committed to treating each person as having inherent worth and dignity,” as discussed in the Humanist Manifesto. The civilized world is trending away from capital punishment, and I believe that we should follow suit, even if we have to do it state by state.

In addition to moral and ethical reasons, the Troy Davis case has shown us that significant doubt can be generated for a death-row inmate. The United States (or more precisely, its constituent States) may be guilty of killing innocent inmates, and that should bother every single citizen. To date, 139 death row inmates have been exonerated. I do not accept such a failure rate. Amnesty International, the organization that fights against human rights violations all over the world, makes a pretty good case against the death penalty if you desire to explore further.

To make sure I’m clear about this, my position is against capital punishment, regardless of guilt or innocence, and I’m extremely disgusted at how easily an innocent person may be sentenced to die. I cannot know for sure if Troy Davis was innocent or guilty, but I reject his execution either way. And, I am repulsed that his execution went forward in light of so much doubt.

However, there is an aspect of the Troy Davis case that disturbs me even more, that is, the case of his original conviction. Though there was some ballistic evidence that he had once been in possession of the gun that was fired, the murder conviction was mostly based on eyewitness testimony. Most people have focused on the fact that 7 of those 9 eye-witnesses have recanted their testimony, but my problem is with the conviction in the first place. Modern science has shown us time and time again that eyewitness reports are anything but “beyond a reasonable doubt.” There are so so many examples from research and from everyday life that tell us this. And that doesn’t even take into account the possibility of testimonies gone wrong.

As the Skeptical Teacher reported just a couple of weeks ago, at least one state is starting to get it. Are we all really going to be shown up by New Jersey? Our justice system is in big trouble if we rely too heavily on eyewitness testimony. Remember that when you are up for jury duty. Remember that if you are in law school. Remember that, as you write to you local politicians and petition your judges. Remember that when discussing crime and punishment with anyone who still thinks that eyewitness testimony is enough to send a person to jail, or a man, proclaiming innocence, to his death.

… says Derek Colanduno, director of the massive sci-fi/fantasy/geek convention’s Skeptic Track.

“It’s other people’s Halloween,” quips biologist and evolution defender Eugenie Scott.

Frankly, it’s a little bit of both. Not enough candy, mind you, unless you really enjoy Tuaca (which tastes like Christmas in your mouth). But there are costumes… costumes galore! From Storm Troopers and Star Trek officers to Cookie Monster and “Macho Man” Randy Savage, thousands fly their geek/freak flag for one massive party in Atlanta.

"Oooooooh yeeeeeeeeeaah!" Photo by Tim LeGower

As it is, I’ve recovered from the epic weekend, gotten nearly enough sleep, and seem to have avoided the dreaded “con crud.” Dragon*Con is not just excellent because I get to geek out over my favorite sci-fi shows and books, though that helps. (Geeking out over James Marsters geeking out over Apollo 11 was pretty cool.) D*C is also a great place to reconnect with some of the smartest, funniest, most creative people I know: astronomers, authors, musicians, designers, bloggers, and real-life superheroes. The Skeptic, Science, Space, and Podcasting tracks were full of them. George Hrab sang, Scott Sigler read, Phil Plait proposed a way to save the Earth, and Sara Mayhew entertained through her art. Superheroes like Maria Walters and Jamie Bernstein raised thousands of dollars for cancer research and treatment while vaccinating over 200 people against harmful diseases. I even got to bring a little bit of the universe down to Earth with model meteors and comets. And those are just the tip of the iceberg!

Discussing world-ending catastrophes with Scott Sigler, Pamela Gay, and John Cmar

So, what is it that I’m trying to say? Well, if you missed out, come next year! Tim and I have already secured a room in the Hilton, home of the “reality” tracks, for Labor Day 2012. I’ll be there once again to help spread the love of science, have a great time with some of my favorite people, and, oh yeah, be a fangirl.

It's like this. Every night. (By Bruce Press. With 3 bald skeptics, a physics teacher, two Skepchicks, and tiny double trouble.)

Hello, dear astronomy enthusiasts and friends and followers and encirclers…

This month has been heavy on GET STUFF DONE, but I’m taking a much needed break this weekend for Dragon*Con in Atlanta. This is the East Coast’s biggest sci-fi, fantasy, geek, nerd, etc. convention. I hope you are coming as well!

My only official event this year is the pre-Dragon*Con Star Party, put on by the Atlanta Skeptics in honor of Jeff Medkeff, a brilliant and active astronomer who succumbed to cancer a few years ago. So, we’ll be celebrating the night sky, the universe, and raising money to kick cancer’s butt. (Metaphorically speaking.) If you have a ticket, then I look forward to seeing you there! Unless you cannot come, in which case, get in touch with the organizers so that someone on the very long wait list can make it. There will be telescopes, green lasers, a singing Geo, astronomers, and some special activities that I have planned. You’ll just have to wait and see!

For the rest of the Con, I get to play geeky nerd fangirl. I’ll probably be spending time around the Skeptic, Science, Space, and Podcasting tracks, as well as exploring some of my favorite sci-fi goodness with Tim. I can say that we’ll be at the live showing of Doctor Who on Saturday night dressed as different incarnations of the Doctor. I’m also hoping to finish an astronomy-pun-themed Tron costume, so look out for that as well.

I’ll be updating Twitter and Google+ as I go along, in case you want to find me there or live vicariously through my tweets if you cannot make it. (I feel your pain. I had to sit out last year!)

And all the planning and craziness leading up to today is over. Let the adventure begin! I’m heading to South Africa to work on The Precision Array to Probe the Epoch of Reionization, aka PAPER, aka the project on which i am writing my thesis. I’ve talked about PAPER a bit before, as it is a radio telescope that is being built to look for hydrogen in the very, very young universe, over 10 billion light years away.

I’ll be gone for three weeks, though it seems that I will have internet access in the desert after all. We’re putting out 32 antennas to join 32 already there, for a 64 antennas array to search the sky at low frequencies. Will send pictures as I can! And, I’m using the hashtag #psa64 on Twitter. Please do comment and tweet as I’ll be looking to keep up with the outside world even when I’m on my adventure.

Brief paper-writing break to showcase my two favorite videos this week. First, Tim Minchin’s STORM has been animated and is finally available on YouTube! Seriously, let the whole thing upload, then watch high-def full screen. It is so awesome. I am floored by the talent of the illustrators and their ability to convey the message, and the fun, of Minchin’s infamous 9-minute beat poem.

(Note of awesomeness, Tim and I got tickets to see him live in Boston on June 4th!)

Second up is a video of my favorite bald, be-spectacled skeptical men doing a LIVE performance of “Death From the Skies”, based on the awesome book and on this awesome album, in New York this weekend.

Sadly, I could not make NECSS, but that is mostly because I am a) working and b) saving up to attend TAM9 From Outer Space! in July. I already have my registration in, thanks to the lovely, fantastic donors to the TAM Forum Grant (please donate so even more students can attend!), and my airfare booked.

So excited! So… think we can get Phil and George to do a live performance at TAM???? (Pretty please??)

One of my favorite sources of local news, cvillenews.com, delivered this little gem of a story from our local CBS station: Cupcake Helps Overdue Moms Deliver Babies. Now, there is no doubt that cupcakes are a magical delivery device for happiness and yumminess, but inducing labor?

Thus begins a skeptical eye on Charlottesville’s “labor-inducing cupcake” on SheThought.com. Read the rest of it here!