The Daytime Astronomer

The best way to discover whether someone is full of crap or not is to look at their past predictions.  If you're digital media expert Jim Griffin and you put your rep publically on the line predicting internet video in 2002, you're probably on the side of 'smart and right'.Jim Griffin (onehouse.com) made a wager at LongBets that “A profitable video-on-demand service aimed at consumers will offer 10,000 titles to 5 million subscribers by 2010.”  He won, donating the $2000 prize to the EFF. Was this futurism, the random picking of potential paths by a random pundit? In his own analysis on a private list,

A good science fair project typically takes less time and is more interesting to do, than a bad one.  Does this make sense?  Do you want to spend extra time having less fun?  As a sequel to last year's "Secrets of a Science Fair Judge", I present to you my suggestions for making your science fair project go faster, be more fun, and still get you a higher grade.Choose an Interesting Question

This week I agree to give an invited talk at the AGU, soldered some more of my satellite, advised a student, gave several short lectures, and edited some papers.  All of these are things professors get paid for-- except the editing.  Yet, ironically, the editing was my only paying work.I am a reverse professor.  I do many of the career tasks an academic does, but I only get paid for the private sector component.  And that's the part that a 'true academic' would do for free.In practice, this means I have traded any form of job stability for complete academic freedom.  I can research anything I wish, write about any topic from any stance, and speak freely.  I have 'virtual tenure', only with no paycheck.

I enjoy a good romp in the hay as much as the next space scientist, and I'd love to go to Mars, so it's nice to see that researchers are tackling both issues simultaneously. Further, there are few things as satisfying as a good review article. A review article is one that simply summarizes the current thinking and theories on a topic. In this case, the topic is Sex on Mars.

"TAU researcher confirms oily "water" on a Saturn moon", so reads the email that crossed my desk.  Then I learned why no mountain or landform on Titan can ever be taller than 6,200 feet.  The reason surprised me, but first, the backstory about the paper.The Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn has generated many exciting discoveries about the planet and its moons - and now a Tel Aviv University (TAU) researcher associated with the project has determined that Saturn's moon Titan includes a unique population of lakes.

The prospective launch of the ambitious and successful Copenhagen Suborbitals rocket received a lot of press. The subsequent launch-abort and delay to spring may not seem an upbeat thing.  In a broad sense, though, it is."MAIN LOX VALVE FAILURE

Behold true tales of procrastination!  Learn whether to get a PhD!  Or just kick back and enjoy fall.  Enjoy another science webcomics interlude!  The first two are 'long form', so follow their links to get the full story.  The last, a poetic commentary on the new Fall season, stands on its own.First, an overlap of Science and Comic-Con-- the full comic has the entire tale.

We all avoid different things. I avoid polyester clothing. They avoid talking about death.  (Lisa Daxer)Projects on SETI projects look for extraterrestrial signals from space.  Work with dolphins, elephants, even chickens seeks to see if these animals are intelligent communicators.  In all this, we take for granted that we understand how we humans, as social creatures, think and react.  But our understanding of communications and social interaction relies on some unusual assumptions.

Fix can mean to repair or to gimmick, as in 'the fix is in'.  I'm not going to tell you how to repair science journalism.  A few wingnuts stalwarts here at Science 2.0 beat that to death.  Their suggestions include sack the journalists, and also rehire journalists.  Be like ESPN.  Be ISO9000 (say what you'll do then do what you say).  Possibly, don't fix it.

Ever been stuck in an airport? A foreign country? Try being stuck in orbit! Poor Air Force Major Abacha Tunde plus a colleague were trapped on a Soyuz in orbit for over 14 years. Fortunately, thanks to email, they were (presumably) able to get help getting down. Here is their tale.As related by Steve Johnson and verified using teh Internets, "the writer claimed to be an astronaut on the International Space Station who couldn't return from space due to a revolution in his country putting a halt to its space program. Fortunately, his rich uncle had just died, and if you'd let him use your bank account to route the money to China (for which you'd of course be rewarded), the Chinese would sell him a spot on their space shuttle."

As a freelancer, I ran into a pay issue with Human Resources, that worked like a bad Star Trek episode.  Distilling down the two weeks of back-and-forth, we get this mess:Me: My pay is short-- is it hours, pay rate, or deductions?HR: You worked X hours.  Denied.Me: Okay, is it the rate?HR: We payed the right rate.  Denied.Me: Is it... deductions?HR: Yes, we did deductions.  Resolved.Me: How can I find out what you deducted?HR: Your paystub.  Resolved.Me: How do I get a paystub?HR: VPN link #4 -> MyCompany -> Newsletter -> Quicklinks -> Paychecks.Me: That's... intuitive.HR: Answer invalid.  Try again.

As I bask in media attention for my Project Calliope, it's worth noting I'm not the only Antunes getting media coverage in the space/IT world.  This is one story of 'the other Antunes', and of NASA's Spacebook.NASA created an internal social network called Spacebook.  As with any social media project that makes it past its first year, it has morphed from its original intent into a compromise of various agencies. But what was its original point, its creation story?