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”…
This story on cvillenews.com showcases a whole lot of fail. City Manager Orders Censorship of Chalkboard For those of you who don’t live in the fair town of Charlottesville, the chalkboard in question is a monument to the freedom of expression on a large wall at the end of the downtown mall, upon which citizens…
If you know me in person, you’ve probably heard me talk on and on about Dark Skies, Bright Kids, aka DSBK. This is an astronomy club for elementary school kids in Albemarle County, run by volunteers from the Astronomy Department at the University of Virginia. We visit a different school every semester, meeting with the…
If you are my friend on Twitter, you’ve probably been oversaturated with this already… but it FREAKIN SNOWED here in Charlottesville! We unofficially measured 20 inches outside of my apartment, and some people in the area measured even more. A snowstorm like this can be very dangerous as some lost power (most of us had…
In response to a post on the Hook news blog, “Pelt Michaels? Climategate includes swipe at Pat.“ I hope I don’t sound like a total goober… I’d like to briefly respond to the Hook news blog post by Lisa Provence titled “Pelt Michaels? Climategate includes swipe at Pat.” It was incorrectly reported here that Dr.…
I have updates on some of what I’ve been writing about lately. So listen up! In my H1N1 post, I mentioned the “backwards walking cheerleader.” Via Skepchick, please read this entire post by Orac summing up the aftermath. In summary, Desiree Jennings was taken in by Generation Rescue, the anti-vaxx group that Jenny McCarthy associates…
This semester, a number of astronomers at UVa are participating in a project called Dark Skies, Bright Kids. Each week, a group head out to a local elementary school and do astronomy-related project with the third, fourth, and fifth graders who have joined the astronomy club. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to join the Friday…
A few of our athletically inclined graduate students in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Virginia are going to participate in a bike ride to raise money for multiple sclerosis at an event called Best of the Blue Ridge. MS is chronic and often crippling autoimmune disease. The National Multiple Sclerosis Society is…
All kinds of chitter-chatter has been erupting in Charlottesville in reaction to the Hook publishing an article* on successful UVa alumni that posed for Playboy while in college. The article itself is not the issue, but some object the tiny but fully nude photos that accompany it (so that should tell you, but I’ll say…
Edit 9/7: Link fixed! Wow, I suck at typing… Go visit it now, seriously. Today is the first day of Dragon*Con, and thus the first day of the Skeptrack (watch it here!). You can celebrate skeptically one more way by heading over to Grassroots Skeptics, a new effort to connect skeptically minded people in local…
On March 22, 2013 we found out that many NASA EPO programs will be suspended as a direct result of US budgetary sequestration. We are proactively working to raise money to make sure that CosmoQuest can continue to support its staff and its programs.
Your donation will support science education that produces science!
Total Raised: $3,385 (as of 2pm CDT, 4/18/2012)
I’m a brand new post-doc in astronomy working as part of the CosmoQuest team. My thesis focused on radio astronomy instrumentation. That means, I got to build cool telescopes that will open up new frontiers in the universe. I also love to teach, both in a classroom setting and informally. I'm happy to talk about the universe with anyone who will listen, and I am skeptically curious about all things.
