Bad Astronomy Blog

I love geeks. I love clever people. I love sciencey stuff.

So this fills my heart with squishiness: a skirt with rows of lights that illuminate when facing north:

Make those LEDs red and every astronomer could use it. Not to mention campers, hikers, and let’s face it, nerds like all of us. I would dance all night with someone wearing this.

Want one? She’s selling kits so you can make one yourself!

Of course, in 2012* when the poles flip the skirt will light up when facing south. Oh! I know! You could wear it backwards. Problem solved.

Tip o’ the compass needle to that bon vivant, Josh A. Cagan.

I have a Martian mystery for you today, and one that is writ quite large and dramatically. It seems weird at first, then simple next, but when you dig deeper — literally — things get very weird indeed.

It all starts with an out-of-control awesome picture that honestly made me reel back and say "Wow!"

I present to you out-of-control awesome:

Wow!

Click the pic to embiggen. This unnamed crater is about 700 meters (roughly half a mile) across, and sits in the northern mid-latitudes region of Mars. It’s interesting, isn’t it? The multiple concentric bowls of the crater are trying to tell us something, but what?

My first thought, also mentioned on the HiRISE blog, is that this is a coincidental double impact: the big terraced crater was the original impact, then a later, second object impacted almost exactly in the center of the older one, hitting the bulls-eye like William Tell splitting an arrow.

The topography seems to support that; the inner crater has a raised rim, as you might expect from a second impact, and that would be hard to explain in a single impact. The terracing — shelf-like structures sortof like an upside-down wedding cake layering — is seen sometimes when an impactor smacks into layered ground. Imagine a layer of dirt on top of ice on top of rocks: each layer reacts differently to the impact, leaving the circular, concentric shelves in the crater bowl.

Note too that the central crater doesn’t look exactly centered, supporting a second impact.

Case closed… but wait, Your Honor! We have a surprise witness!

This picture is actually part of a much larger region which provides some context:

You can see the extensive ejecta blanket (excavated material laid down from the impact ) around the crater now, which is nifty. But note the smaller crater to the lower right (indicated by the arrow): it looks a lot like the bigger crater! There’s a shallow bowl with a deeper crater almost but not quite in the center. There’s no terracing, but it’s a smaller impact and wouldn’t have dug so deeply into the surface.

So what gives? If all we had here was the big crater, I might believe the coincidence of a nearly perfect second impact bullseye inside it. But two of them? Right next to each other?

It seems unlikely, to say the least. And I thought I had an explanation for it… which I’ll give you. But note: I chatted for a few minutes with Alfred McEwen, the Principle Investigator of the HiRISE camera (which took the image), and he told me things still aren’t quite as they seem. Keep that in mind while I describe my thought…

My idea is/was this: both of those craters were single impact events. The terrain itself must explain the weird structures; there must be several layers of material with different solidity. In the lower right crater, the softer surface material deformed and splashed back, forming a shallow bowl. Underneath it is a stronger material, forming the raised rim central crater that’s slightly off-center. The fact that’s it’s not centered may be due to sloping in the surface, or that the surface layer isn’t constant in thickness across the surface. Perhaps there is stronger material to the left which resisted the impact pressure, leaving the inner crater off-center once the event was over.

This explains the big crater too. The outer bowl is shallow. Inside that is a raised rim, as you’d expect from a stronger material. The impactor was big enough to dig below even that layer to a third, deeper and even more resilient layer, leaving a beautiful raised rim. It’s not centered either, again perhaps due to the layers being irregular in thickness or to different material strengths in the layers themselves.

Finally, in the context image, you can see lots of shallow smaller craters. Again, I think this shows the top layer is something soft like ice, which leaves those barely visible bowls behind after smaller impacts.

Tadaa! Done.

But wait! Not so done. As Alfred pointed out to me, note that the second crater is actually sitting on the ejecta blanket from the first one (which is how we know that the smaller crater impact occurred after the bigger one). Since it’s on top of that material, the ground underneath the impact would’ve been different than the ground into which the original impactor hit. The other shallow craters are all sitting in that material as well. So we can’t simply state that the terrain was similar to the original event because the original impact changed the surface structure.

Also, the detail of the structure is difficult to interpret. Turns out that at this latitude glaciation is common, and that tends to screw up details, changing the way things look. Interestingly, the rim of the innermost crater in the big crater looks pretty fresh, too, like it happened after the original event, supporting the William Tell idea that a second asteroid impact hit right in the middle of the previously excavated crater.

Finally, in the top image, look at the floor just outside that innermost crater. See the two crescent-shaped lobes at 1 and 2 o’clock? Those may be slumped material from the walls of the crater. If a second impact happened in the center of a pre-existing crater, you’d get some disturbance of the material, including debris flowing down from the walls.

So what do we conclude?

This place is a mess. That’s what I conclude. Alfred said my idea that layered terrain explains most everything has some merit, but so does the idea that a second impactor did the deed. We simply can’t tell.

If you think I’m having fun figuring this out, then dingdingding! I am. Because it is fun. This is good old-fashioned sleuthing, detective work on the scale of a city block. When we look at pictures like these we get evidence of a crime scene, perhaps millions of years old — talk about a cold case! — but still fresh enough that we can puzzle out what happened. The big crater is the main clue, drawing our attention, but the second, smaller crater may be a smoking gun, the surprise evidence that just might make everything else make sense.

It’s CSI Mars. But in this case it’s not some procedural drama on TV. It’s real, it’s huge, and it’s sitting there on another world for everyone to see. All you need to do is go there and look.

I know I haven’t been posting much astronomy the past few days — Comic Con, w00tstock, and "Bad Universe" have kept me hopping — so to make up for it a little bit, here’s a lovely image sent back a billion kilometers from Cassini:

This is Tethys, an ice moon of Saturn. The angle of Cassini, Tethys, and the Sun light the moon as a crescent. The most obvious feature is Ithaca Chasma, a (more than) thousand-kilometer-long gash in the side of the object. Note that Tethys is only about 1000 km in diameter, so the chasm runs along a third of the moon’s surface (circumference = diameter x π, remember).

How big is that? Stand up and take a long stride. That’s about one meter. Now do it 999,999 more times. That’s a megameter: a million meters, or 1000 kilometers. Better pack a lunch.

The chasm is billions of years old, and may have formed when water inside the moon froze, expanded, and cracked the surface open. It’s a hundred kilometers across and 3-5 km deep, too. It’s far larger than the Grand Canyon, the largest canyon on Earth.

Space is big, and weird, where even small objects have huge features. It’s surprising, but surprising things are the best things to know.

Tip o’ the dew shield to Carolyn Porco.

Pareidolia is the psychology term for seeing faces in random patterns. This usually gets air time due to some vaguely Christlike shape in a stain or something, but not every instance has to be religiously motivated. I don’t want to ignore those secular ones, because, after all, I hate to let anything go to waste.

Behold!

This picture, taken by Mitchell Whitney, was snapped right after an, um, incident that required some vigorous plunging. The only conclusion is that the toilet itself was relieved when it was all over as well.

I have a series of puns all trying to push their way out of my brain, but I’ll let them go because it’s been an exhausting week. I’m pooped.

Tip o’ the plumber’s helper to Dan Durda.

I never get tired of the stunning pictures being sent to Earth from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. This one is particularly cool:

It’s a little weird, isn’t it? What you’re seeing is sunset over some mountains on the Moon, with only the peaks popping up into the sunlight. It might help to pull back a bit:

[Click to embiggen.]

That’s a little better. You can see the long shadows of the two mountains on the hills farther back, giving the image a bit of context and relief.

But you’re still missing the coolest part. Ready? Here’s the entire shot:

Whoa! Getting the picture now? Those three mountains are actually the central peaks of the crater Bhabha, a 64 kilometer (40 mile) wide impact scar on the far side of the Moon. With really big impacts, the shock waves bounce around inside the crater bowl, making the rock flow like a fluid. The rock flows outward, then sloshes back inward, splashing up to form peaks. Usually there’s only one, but Bhaba has three.

This shot is from the west, facing east. It was taken just minutes before the Sun set over the peaks, throwing them into two weeks of darkness — remember, the far side of the Moon gets light just like the near side; when we see a thin crescent Moon that means the Sun is shining down on the other side, just like day on one side of the Earth means night on the other.

This picture is a vivid reminder that the Moon is a world in its own right. Eventually, I hope, people will once again get to see views like this by simply looking out the window. Until that time, LRO will provide us with these amazing pictures.

Image credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

The Australian Vaccination Network, an antivax organization fronted by Meryl Dorey, has long been an antiscience group devoted to spreading any kind of nonsensical rhetoric they can. The good news? Now they’re being called out on it.

As The Sceptic’s Book of Poo-Poo extensively documents, the media used to be pretty easy on the AVN, but now are routinely pointing out that they are antivax, and one has even highlighted some of Dorey’s outrageous and fallacious claims. This all comes on the heels of the New South Wales Health Care Complaints Commission concluding that the AVN is in fact and in deed antivax, and needs to have disclaimers on their site — a finding Dorey has ignored.

The AVN has been the loudest of the antivaxxers in Australia, a country that has seen a rise in many preventable diseases, including pertussis, which has claimed the lives of several infants.

This is not a free speech issue, and this is not an issue where two sides need equal and balanced discussion. In this case, the AVN and Meryl Dorey are wrong, wrong, wrong, and what they are preaching is dangerous and, in fact, can be deadly. As I have said many times, vaccines are one of the greatest medical triumphs in history, saving literally hundreds of millions of lives.

The antivaxxers, on the other hand, only have spin, distortion, and scare tactics… which, sadly, can be effective with people. I am very glad the media have finally figured out Dorey, and are vocal about it.

Now if we can just get them to do the same with Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carrey, Kevin Trudeau, Andrew Wakefield, purveyors of homeopathy…

And remember: it’s not just Australia, and this isn’t happening to poorly educated people in rural areas. Whooping cough is making a comeback in Marin County, California, home of some of the wealthiest and best-educated people in the country. These diseases are coming back because vaccine rates are low. Go to your doctor and get the real info, and if they recommend getting vaccinated, do it.

Tip o’ the syringe to my brother Sid for the link to the MSNBC video.

As I wrote about recently, I have teamed up with Skepchick Surly Amy to raise money for the American Cancer Society: she has created 200 lovely hand-made ceramic Bad Astronomy pendant necklaces, and for each one she sells for $20 she’s donating $10 to the ACS. Each one is different, so check them all out!

Over half the necklaces have been sold, but there are still quite a few left. Hurry and buy one (or more) soon; the total raised will be announced at the star party at Dragon*Con this year, September 2!

Find out more at Amy’s Skepchick post, which has more pictures, including one cute one of how one necklace is keeping a couple together, despite their reading material.

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.

Here are both parts. Part 1…

… and Part 2:

That last slide with the Hubble image says, "W00tstock: Where no astronomer has gone before."

I want to make sure I give plenty of credit Amanda Bauer, aka AstroPixie, once again for her inspiration for this talk. It’s something I’d been thinking of doing for a long time, but her blog post really got things started. Way-hey. Giggity.

There are pictures going up about w00tstock all over the place, so check with Flickr to see ‘em. And also, please read Wil Wheaton’s thoughtful and wonderful words about that night.

Thanks also to Kevin Savino Riker for posting that video. One of the beautiful things about w00tstock is that everything is licensed under the Creative Commons theme, which means it can posted publicly. Why? Because like Wil, Adam, Paul & and Storm, I agree that things like this get better the more they are shared, and become more valuable when they cost less. Or nothing at all.

[Brief update: Julia Sherred has many more w00tstock videos on her blog.]

I was a big Green Lantern fan when I was a kid. It may have been my favorite comic book, and I used to sneak into my brother’s room and read every issue he got.

I’m a grownup now, more or less, but sometimes those comic book heroes still get to me. At Comic Con last week, this wonderful thing happened when a young lad asked Ryan Reynolds — who will play Hal Jordan in the upcoming movie – about the Green Lantern oath:

I still know that oath by memory. And you know what? In general, it’s a pretty good motto for life, too.

Graphing variables is a critical skill in science. If something depends on something else — like the speed of sounds depends on air density, or the surface gravity of an object depends on its size — then if you plot the two things on a graph, you should see a pattern. The result is a line, or a curve. If the two things don’t depend on each other, you get a random collection of dots: a scatter plot.

About a hundred years ago, two astronomers plotted the brightness of stars against their color (from blue to red) and what they found was amazing: a clear connection between the two! In fact, stars fell into several groups, and over the years we’ve learned about why that happens. Most stars are stable, like the Sun, and fall into the Main Sequence of the plot. Some are old, some young, some dying, some dead. And they all have their place in what we now call the Hertzsprung-Russel diagram, or H-R diagram for short. It’s one of the most useful tools astronomers have ever created.

And now my friend Stuart who runs Astronomy Blog has done it one better: he’s created an H-R diagram of media stars. It’s awesome:

That’s really funny, and I wish I had thought of it. The vertical axis is fame, as denoted by Google results, and the horizontal axis is peer-reviewed papers. I’m actually only first author on I think two papers, but I was listed as author on a lot due to my work on Hubble. So I do OK on this diagram. I note that Brian Cox is more luminous than me, but then, he’s an actual rock star. If there were a branch for white main sequence stars, he and I would be in a dead heat.

Next up, I hope: a space-time diagram showing warping due to massive astronomers.

[I know I already posted this, but the video of the trailer had to be taken down, fixed, and put back up, so I'm reposting to give everyone a chance to actually watch it. Everything works now. Yay! Also, it's up on reddit (actually twice) and Fark, too.]

Finally, at last, after many months, I can now officially reveal the Sooper Sekrit Project that has kept me so busy over all this time. I think you’re gonna like this… so why not just jump right in to the teaser trailer posted online by a small TV network you may have heard of called THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL!

[evil laugh]

How ’bout that?

I’ve been working with the Discovery Channel on hosting a new TV science show called "Phil Plait’s Bad Universe". It’s a three-part program where I dissect issues in astronomy and science, putting claims to the test. There’s no air date yet, but I’m hoping it’ll be on your TV sets this fall.

As you can see in the trailer, the first episode is about asteroid impacts, and we tackle the issue in a way that I don’t think has been done on TV. I get right into the mix, blowing things up, flying in a jet, going where the action is so that I can participate in experiments with scientists and try to find out what works and what doesn’t. The idea here is not to have some dry, narrated documentary. Instead I will show you what’s going on, take you along, so that you can see how these things work and what we’re doing to investigate these issues.

I’ve been having a tremendous time filming this, flying around the country, seeing things I ordinarily would never get to see. And the beauty is, you can come too!

Eventually I’ll post some pictures I’ve taken on this adventure, and we’ll be posting more video online as well as more information about the show soon. I’d like to thank everyone at Discovery Channel and Morningstar Entertainment for giving me this chance to fulfill a long-standing dream of mine. We’ve worked very hard on this program, and I hope you like it.

Yay!

Yes, I know I just linked to a David Mitchell video the other day, but this one is so good I figured why not.

Ha! That’s from the UK show "That Mitchell and Webb Look", which is a great satirical show. There are about a gazillionty billion reasons the Moon Hoax folks are wrong, but M&W have boiled it down to its very essence. Well done!

Tip o’ the spacesuit visor to TheShickle.

As I write this, last night I was at W00tstock, an incredible evening of geekery that was one of the most fun and wonderful things with which I have ever participated.

Run by Adam Savage™, Wil Wheaton, and singer/songwriters Paul and Storm, it features lots of geeks singing and talking about the stuff they love. A friend of mine called it a talent show for nerds. That’s about right.

I was invited by the gents above to give a ten minute presentation while I’m at Comic Con, and I didn’t hesitate to accept! I mean, c’mon. Adam? Wil? Chris Hardwick? Veronica Belmont, the Rifftrax guys, Marian Call? How could I turn that down?

When they asked me I didn’t hesitate to say yes, but then one minute later realized this meant I had to come up with a talk, and not just any talk: it had to be funny, geeky, and only 10 minutes long. Yikes!

I knew it had to be astronomy-related, and after a few more minutes of pondering and back-and-forthing with Mrs. BA, the topic seemed obvious: astronomical pareidolia, objects in the sky that look like other things. The obvious choices are things like the Eskimo Nebula, and all the heart-shaped craters and nebulae I post every Valentine’s Day.

But it had to be funny. And not just funny, but nerd funny. That became obvious too, once I realized what I could do. Without going into too much detail, let me just say that I borrowed a couple of pictures from my friend Amanda Bauer’s Astropixie website. I’d seen most of her imagery before, so I felt safe enough using them, and gave her full credit, of course. I ran with the premise, and perhaps went a little "bluer" than most people would expect from an upstanding citizen like me. But it was a lot of fun to do. I haven’t seen any video of my talk on YouTube yet, but if anyone finds any, please let me know!

I also showed the new trailer to my TV show, "Phil Plait’s Bad Universe", which got a very healthy and warm reception. In fact, I was overwhelmed with the response; a whole lot of folks came up to me and told me how happy they were and how they couldn’t wait to see the show! That makes me very happy and adds thermal energy to the cockles of my cardiac muscle. I realized later that I was nervous after my presentation; a common event for performers. But I was surprised to realize that I was more nervous about showing the trailer than I was about the talk itself! Interesting. I’m sure a psych student could write a thesis about me. If you do, be prepared for the inevitable B- you’ll get.

Anyway, the acts were incredible. I haven’t laughed so hard for so long in ages. But for me, the real magic was behind the stage. Paul said it was like a parallel world running along at the same time; I got to hang with so many cool kids!

That picture is fairly typical of the behind the w00tstock scene: Adam Savage telling (a probably dirty) story to Nerdist podcaster Chris Hardwick, fellow Mythbuster Grant Imahara, and magician Jamy Ian Swiss.

Here’s online goddess Veronica Belmont and my friend, the siren Marian Call:

You can see more of my pictures from the event and Comic Con at large on my Flickr page.

Aaron Douglas (Chief from BSG) was there, Jamie Hyneman made a cameo, and so many others. I can’t tell you in words how awesome and amazing the evening was. Smart people! A thousand of them! Laughing, sharing their joy, being unabashed geeks reveling in their nerdery! It was warm, it was welcoming, and wonderful.

In other words, it was w00tstock.

Thank you thank you thank you to Wil, Adam, Paul, Storm, and everyone else who was there and made this dorky astronomer feel like know that he belongs. And if you ever, ever have a chance to attend one, do not hesitate. If you’re a geek — and you are, it’s time to admit it — then this will be one of the best evenings you’ll have.

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:

While we were chatting and mutually insulting/praising each other, who should walk up but blogger, actor and all around good-guy Wil Wheaton! I was shunted aside, but managed to make my presence known:

Anyway, you should go read Zach’s comic and buy his stuff and support him in his attempts to take over the galaxy. Don’t forget to click the red button.

At Comic Con, I moderated a wonderful panel about how science sometimes gets screwed up by science fiction. Sponsored by Discover Magazine and The NAS Science and Entertainment Exchange, it’s the third time we’ve done this panel, and it’s been really fun every year. I already talked a bit about this — we had Jaime Paglia from Eureka, Kevin Grazier from BSG and "Eureka", Zack Stentz from "Thor" and "Fringe", and Sean Carroll who is a cosmologist and blogs for Discover as well.

We showed our picks for representative good and bad science in shows and movies, and I have to commend Sean for his pick of "Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure" for good science (the consistency of the time travel in that movie is wonderful) and "Big Bang Theory" for the philosophy of science — they discuss the physics of Superman, making the assumption that a man actually can fly.

We were short on time, and had to cut the Q&A off short, but as usual we got great questions from the audience and a lot of fun back-and-forth with the panelists. We’ll have the video up at some point, and I think you’ll like it when we do.

So far, I’ve seen two reviews: one from ScriptPhD, and the other from our own Science Not Fiction. You can check out my Comic Con 2010 pix at Flickr, too.

[Update: Eric Wolff wrote an interesting piece on the discussion of when to break the rules of science. I may write more on this later, but I don't think Zack Stentz's contention that science must bend to the story would faze any of us on the panel; we know we're talking about fiction here. Science won't bend when you're publishing in the Astrophysical Journal, but it must when put under the constraints of telling an engaging fictional story.]

Yes, you read that right.

Finally, at last, after many months, I can now officially reveal the project that has kept me so busy over all this time. I think you’re gonna like this… so why not just jump right in to the teaser trailer posted online by a small TV network you may have heard of called THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL!

[evil laugh]

[UPDATE: D'oh! There was a problem with the video, and Discovery is in the process of fixing it. It should be back up soon.]

[UPDATE: We're back, baby!]

How ’bout that?

I’ve been working with the Discovery Channel on hosting a new TV science show called "Phil Plait’s Bad Universe". It’s a three-part program where I dissect issues in astronomy and science, putting claims to the test. There’s no air date yet, but I’m hoping it’ll be on your TV sets this fall.

As you can see in the trailer, the first episode is about asteroid impacts, and we tackle the issue in a way that I don’t think has been done on TV. I get right into the mix, blowing things up, flying in a jet, going where the action is so that I can participate in experiments with scientists and try to find out what works and what doesn’t. The idea here is not to have some dry, narrated documentary. Instead I will show you what’s going on, take you along, so that you can see how these things work and what we’re doing to investigate these issues.

I’ve been having a tremendous time filming this, flying around the country, seeing things I ordinarily would never get to see. And the beauty is, you can come too!

Eventually I’ll post some pictures I’ve taken on this adventure, and we’ll be posting more video online as well as more information about the show soon. I’d like to thank everyone at Discovery Channel and Morningstar Entertainment for giving me this chance to fulfill a long-standing dream of mine. We’ve worked very hard on this program, and I hope you like it.

Yay!

Last year I wrote about the nifty website Ficly, a community where you can write short fiction. And I mean short: each story can only be 1024 characters — roughly 200 words or so. It’s incredibly limiting, which means you really have to be careful when you write.

The story I wrote then was loosely based on the last chapter of my book Death from the Skies!. I’ve been playing around again, and have recently become interested in zombies. Since I’m a scientist, of course I had to put my own spin on it… and I was curious if it was possible to have an overarching theme to a story when it was so short. I think the answer is: barely. So here, in its entirety, is my new Ficly, "Random Walk".

I know a mathematician’s an unlikely survivor. But it’s not axiomatic.

I have 7 days of food here. I suspect in week or so, I’ll have one last equation to solve.

If you like it, you can go to Ficly, register, and write a prequel or sequel, too. It’s a very cool place to play around with words.

Tip o’ the braaaaaaains to Wil Wheaton, who first twigged me to Ficly.

Darryl Cunningham, who took down homeopathy and Andrew Wakefield in comic form, has turned his attention to the Moon Hoax. His cartoon about it is very well done and worth checking out.

At TAM8 I was accosted by an honest-to-Armstrong Moon Hoax believer. I was surprised, as this particular species is very close to extinction, even in the wilds of places like YouTube. Perhaps I’ll tell that tale in detail sometime, as it was interesting, but suffice to say that while I was happy to be interviewed by him at first, his persistent and accusatory sideswipes at me (and My Close Personal Friend Adam Savage™) at the meeting quickly grew tiresome, and I told him to go away. I would’ve talked to him, but it was obvious that he couldn’t take "no" for an answer — he clearly had an arsenal of things he wanted to confront me with, and I knew if I engaged him I’d never get away from him. It was a matter of return on investment; spend an hour or more debunking his claims, or go have skeptical fun with friends I only get to see once per year during the short time we’re together at TAM. Hmmmm… but too bad. It would’ve been interesting to talk to him about all this, but he made it impossible.

I’m in San Diego, at Comic Con! W00t!

I’ve already been able to hang a bit with Craig Engler from SyFy, and a few other friends. Today, though, is a big day. I have my Hive Overmind Discover Magazine panel (Abusing the Sci of SciFi, with Jaime Paglia from "Eureka", Kevin Grazier (science advisor to Eureka), Discover co-blogger Sean Carroll, and "Fringe" producer Zack Stentz) and then I have to run as fast as my fleet feet will carry me to w00tstock! After that, I’m thinking coma.

But there’s no time for forced unconsciousness! I have to do stuff Friday, and Saturday (including — OMFSM — the SyFy/Entertainment Weekly party, where I will hobnob and squee over many people), and Sunday… and this time, things are a little different: my wife is with me. That will not stop me from squeeing, or from dancing with Felicia Day if given the chance.

I will try to post updates and pictures as the Intertubez allow. This is geekapalooza, folks, and I’m at its very core. Woohoo!

I’ve written many times about the gender disparity in science. It’s important to support girls who are interested in STEM — Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. I just found a new site that I think helps: Smart Girls at the Party. It’s done by SNL alumna Amy Poehler, who cracks me up, and two other women. They make videos where they interview young women interested in STEM, and the videos are, well… see for yourself.

Find more videos like this on Smart Girls at the Party

This video made me laugh; it’s supportive and funny, snarky and warm. I think a lot of young girls would really like it… though caveat emptor, I am not nor ever have been a young girl. I welcome comments from women and girls on this. What do you think?