Bad Astronomy

AAAS Report #4.5: Joel Achenbach name dropping

I was able to check email and such Saturday night using the hotel lobby wireless, but Sunday was too hectic. Well, that was my fault: I woke up late, and then went to a reception sponsored by a bunch of NASA satellite observatories (the food was terrific; that’s what a few billion tax dollars pays for). Anyway, after that I helped out at a symposium about a super-magnetic neutron star that blew its lid back in 2004– that was avery cool series of talks, and I’ll blog about that eventually. I wrote something on the plane, but it’s 1100 words. Yikes.

Anyway, after that I ran to the airport and flew home, so I haven’t been able to update my blog until just now. I have a nice, meaty entry for tonight about my talk on Saturday, so for now I’ll just say that Joel Achenbach, a humor writer for the Washington Post with whom I hung out the other day, mentioned me by name in his blog. Cool! I actually met Joel years ago at an American Astronomical Society meeting, and it was fun hanging out with him again. Did you know that St. Louis was originally French, then sold to Spain, and then sold back to France as part of a secret treaty with Napoleon, which was only announced three weeks before the French sold it to America as part of the Louisiana Purchase? This is the kind of stuff we were talking about in the bar (and I had wireless so we could look all this up). Meetings are fun.