Reviews
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Book Review: DEATH FROM THE SKIES! by Phil Plait
Among science communicators, there’s an ongoing discussion on how best to reach people. There’s the Carl Sagan-route, full of awe and gentle wonder and turtlenecks, and there’s the Mythbusters-route, which relies upon explosions and goofy shenanigans to teach while entertaining. And now there is the Phil Plait-route, defined by educating the audience while scaring the pants off them. Death from…
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Spiritualism, Carl Sagan, Fact and Fiction…
I’ve enjoyed reading a lot of fiction lately. I’ve read primarily fiction twice in my life: when I was in school, and when I first stopped going to church. For the past 15 years or so, I’ve been reading nonfiction almost exclusively. Lately I’ve noticed that my reading started slowing down a lot because I wasn’t finding books that were…
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Tyson Talks of Space Exploration
I’m just home from Neil deGrasse Tyson’s talk at the University of Houston, and I wanted to get some thoughts down while they are still fresh. Don’t worry, I’ll stick with a general review of the talk, and leave the details for you to consume when he next speaks in your town. Sponsored by PBS, Dr. Tyson’s talk was different…
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Monster Sunday 8.31: Atheists and Aliens
Monster Sundays are back! What better way to start than with atheists and aliens? OK, so here it is Sunday morning and I haven’t written about monsters yet. I just went out to breakfast with Mr. Writerdd, so the monster post is a little late. Today I want to write about atheists and aliens in movies. Depending on who you…
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Winning at the Poles
The sexual revolution in the 1960s was great, but you know what? It didn’t fully take. We can speculate about why. It could be due to periodic resurgences of conservative idealism over the last few decades, or it could be that Americans got too busy with consumerism and eating to care much about sex. But the inroads of that glorious…
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An open letter to Chris Carter
Dear Mr. Carter, As a loyal fan and viewer of your earlier work, I ventured out today to see your latest offering, “The X-Files: I Want to Believe”. My expectations weren’t high, but I figured I’d at least get a good hour and a half of smart writing and a somewhat thought-provoking plot, with a bit of nostalgia thrown in.…
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Trick or treating for eye candy
A few nights ago, while perusing Youtube for morsels of David Tennant-y goodness, I came across an episode of Derren Brown’s Trick or Treat with David in. The premise of the show is that Derren will choose participants from a pool of applicants, and then surprise them with the news that they’ve been chosen, at which time they must blindly…
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We’ve got a friend in Eddie
Ever since a certain “documentary” was released earlier this year, we’ve been engaged in an awful lot of discussion and debate about framing and public relations. We’ve argued over the best way to get our message out there, how to get more people to be interested in understanding science, whether or not we should try to silence or distance ourselves…
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