2007-01-12

Comet of Destiny

From earlier:

Also, talking of Paul Sutherland, I guess I should mention my tabloid shame. ;-)
Just to be clear, I can't stand The Sun, it's an awful newspaper, truly awful — it feels wrong to even call it a newspaper, but...

Paul's a fellow admin on the SPA BB, when he asked if he could borrow some bits that I'd written about the comet for an article he was working on I was more than happy to oblige (even knowing where it might end up). Anything that gets a story about astronomy out, if it's done well, is worth supporting. I knew where the story might end up but, ahh, what the hell...

So, okay, the story as it ended up in the paper (and, yes, it is in the actual paper too, my mother will be so proud) is very short on detail, but at least it doesn't make stupid claims and doesn't misrepresent anything. It might just have got a few people to poke their heads outside during the evening and try and take a look. Unlike this pile of total nonsense in The Daily Mail.

I could rant on about that all afternoon, but I'll save myself the trouble and point to the Bad Astronomer's page dealing with astrology instead. Yes, I know, no regular reader will need to be told any of this, we all know that astrology is wrong, but you never know who might end up here via a search.

In comparison to that pile of total nonsense a story about a pub toilet seems very sensible.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

In Jonathan Cainer's Daily Mail article he says that "Pluto now aligns with that point, called the Galactic Centre". That is rubbish. Pluto is a good 10 or more degrees away from that direction on the sky. Even Mars is closer (in both RA and angular distance)!

Jonathan Cainer. Grrrr.

Dave Pearson said...

You're a better man than me Stuart. I just decided it was all bollocks and didn't bother checking anything.

Bonus points for actually checking his claims. ;)

Anonymous said...

I don't know why I bothered really because neither he nor his readers actually care if what he says is based in reality.