The Bad Astronomy Newsletter

Bad Astronomy Newsletter #11

Contents:

1. Book reviews, including a negative one
2. Off to Pittsburgh!
3. More news about Yahoo!Groups
4. Subscribe/Unsubscribe info

1) Book reviews, including a negative one

As a scientist, I feel obligated to report not just the good reviews of my book, but the bad ones too. And I do have a bad one, literally. A man wrote a book review for a UFO mailing list, and not-so-surprisingly claimed that I was unfair to UFOs in chapter 20. Also not-so-surprisingly, I think he is almost completely wrong. The UFO mailing list in question is archived on the web, where you can read his review.

Take a look, then read my rebuttal.

I keep a list of the reviews, good and bad, on my book page.

2) Off to Pittsburgh!

On Saturday and Sunday, April 13 and 14, I will be in Pittsburgh to speak about Bad Astronomy at the Pittsburgh International Science and Technology Festival. Any stellar Steelers are welcome to attend! You can read about it (with links) on my calendar.

3) More news about Yahoo!Groups

Well, as reported in Issue 10b, I was wrong about Yahoo!Groups possibly charging for this newsletter service. However, something new and sneaky has cropped up. I am not sure if they have been set this way all along or if they have been reset by Yahoo!, but evidently if you are a Yahoo!Groups member, some advertising settings need to be adjusted. From what I can tell, this only affects people who are members of Yahoo!Groups, so if you get this newsletter via email you can ignore this message.

Go to Bad Astronomy Group page at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/badastronomy/. Click on "Account Info", which is at the top right of the page. You may need to log in for this. Once at the next page, click the "Edit your marketing preferences" link. You will probably want to reset all the buttons to "No".

I apologize to all of you who have to do this. I chose Yahoo!Groups to send out this newsletter because they were free and convenient; newsletter software can be very expensive and usually requires administrator privileges on the website, which I do not have (my site is hosted by a third party company). Since this newsletter now has nearly 1300 people on it, it would be very tough to move it to different software.

Please let me know if there are any problems.

4) Subscribe/Unsubscribe Information

If, for some weird reason, you want to unsubscribe to this newsletter, just send email to badastronomy-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com with no body text. Make sure you send it from the address to which the newsletter is sent! Alternatively, you can unsubscribe from the Yahoo!Groups website. Go to http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/groups/groups-32.html for more info.

Remember, the newsletters will be archived on the website at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/badastronomy so even if you unsubscribe you can still read them there. I suggest staying subscribed so you get them as soon as I send them.

Also, I do not sell your email addresses and neither does Yahoo! Take a gander at the Yahoo!Groups privacy message if it makes you feel better: http://privacy.yahoo.com/privacy/us/ Note that the email addresses are visible to me, but I have no prurient use for them. If that makes you nervous for whatever reason, feel free to unsubscribe and simply read the archived newsletters at the website listed above.

Phil Plait
The Bad Astronomer
badastro@badastronomy.com
http://www.badastronomy.com