Google alerts are very useful: you sign up, put in some keywords, and if those words show up in an online newspaper article then Google sends you an email with a link to the article.
I signed up ages ago, and on a lark stuck my name into it, and promptly forgot about it. :-) So when I got an alert earlier this week in the email, it caught me by surprise. It was an article in The Herald, a UK paper, and it was a series of book reviews by various people. My name popped up in a review by novelist Christopher Brookmyer (these comments are on page 10 of the article):
At a time when more and more people seem to be taking a near-Tertullian pride in retaining their “faith” in spite of evidence, fact and logic, I sought succour in a number of works evincing a vivid, clear and entertaining rationalism. Best among these were Bad Astronomy, Philip Plait (John Wiley, £10.50), and James Randi’s Flim-Flam! (Prometheus, £9.98 and The Supernatural A - Z, (Brockhampton Press, £8.95) and, a veritable beacon for the sane, Why People Believe Weird Things, Michael Shermer (Owl Books, £9.19).
Shermer, Randi, and me! Wow, that’s some fine company I’m in. And it’s propitious enough that I’ll mention that Randi’s annual meeting is coming up (Shermer and I will be there with a host of others). I guess I’ll mention too (it’s the holidays coming up and all, so insert gratuitously cheesy grin icon here) that I have a list of skeptical and science books which make good gifts. Over the course of the next few days I’ll have some more gift suggestions as well; I know a lot of people get perplexed this time of year over gifts, especially for skeptics. Stay tuned!
