TED and The Huffington Post are excited to bring you TEDWeekends, a curated weekend program that introduces a powerful "idea worth spreading" every Friday, anchored in an exceptional TEDTalk. This week's TEDTalk is accompanied by an original blog post from the featured speaker, along with new...

[Note: this is a shortened version of what I wrote on my own blog. Feel free to drop by there for a longer rant.]

As an astronomer and educator, I had a slap-in-the-face moment last month when I read that John McCain called funding planetariums (in the biz we...

Forget, for a moment, about Obama.

Forget about Clinton's latest gaffe. Forget about idiot Fox commenters and their "slips of the tongue". Forget about Bush, about the economy, about gas.

Just for a moment, forget about all that.

Instead, look at this picture:

Whenever the Bush administration balks at spending money on some needed issue, I always mention on my blog that the Iraq war is costing us 11 million dollars per hour.

I am embarrassed to admit that this figure is wrong. I apologize. It has recently come to light...

Tonight, while you're pondering, weak and weary...

Oops! Wrong poem!

Before you settle down for a long winter's nap, let me suggest something a lot cooler than visions of sugar plums dancing in your head.

Astronomy may be the most visual and beautiful of...

Permit me a moment to toot my own horn, if you will. It's for the greater good, anyway.

The annual Weblog Awards are here again. This year, as they had last year, there is a category for Best Science Blog. My own

The Hubble Space Telescope never disappoints. The latest is a spectacular image of two galaxies in a near hit:

These two galaxies are named NGC 3808A (the face-on spiral on the right) and NGC 3808B (the edge-on cigar-shaped galaxy on the...

Take a break from stances, finances, and romances, and go outside.

Seriously. Right now, there is a naked-eye comet gracing our skies. Usually, comets are far too faint to see. Comet 17/P Holmes, more than 150 million miles from Earth, is usually no exception. Up until October 25 it was...

I wonder: is nationally syndicated radio talk show host and CNN blowhard Glenn Beck vying with Rush Limbaugh to see who can pack more stupid statements into one segment?

Beck's latest bloviation is on global warming. It was on his radio show, not CNN, so it's possible a few people...

Remember Louisiana Senator David Vitter, the one who cheated on his wife with a woman and not a man, so he's still AOK with the GOP?

Yeah, him. Turns out he's slimy in more than one way. He has inserted an earmark into a Senate appropriations bill to give...

Stephen Colbert: I am putting you On Notice!

On the August 21st show, Mr. Colbert made allegations that the Apollo Moon landings were faked. As an astronomer, Apollo fan, and scienciness guy, I cannot let such allegations, such slandericious statements go unchallenged.

So Mr. Colbert, I challenge...

There's a meme going around the internets and in the MSM that Earth is not alone in global warming: other planets, according to this story, are experiencing it too.

The usual crowd, along with many others, are taking this idea and running with...

With all the hullaballoo going on down here on Earth - and so much of it sequestered in Washington's 68 square miles - it's easy to forget that there's a whole Universe out there. But sometimes our neighbors remind us of things bigger than just us.

Score one for the good guys: the House recently passed H R 985: the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act!

Scientists in government agencies (NASA, NOAA, FDA, etc), laboring for years under the heavy cloud of scientific suppression, can now feel safer if they want to call foul. And call foul...

Even as a dyed-in-the-wool political junkie, I can get weary of the unending stream of horror from that arena. How long can you listen to people talking about Iraq, elections, surges, torture (and it's torture to hear about torture), and the wingnuts before going a little wingnutty yourself?

Of course,...

NASA announced today that they will be sending up a mission to repair the ailing Hubble Space Telescope.

Cool!

Hubble was launched in 1990, and was designed to be periodically upgraded as technology improved (it was originally launched with a processor that was designed in the 1970s-- even when...

I know I just posted about cool Mars pictures a few days ago, but when Cassini delivers, you kinda have to pay attention.

Cassini is a space probe that has been orbiting Saturn since 2004, and has been sending Earthward a nearly unending stream of images that awe and...

Sometimes, local news (meaning stuff on Earth) gets depressing. You need to lift your eyes to the heavens to get better news... literally.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is a NASA probe that got to the Red Planet a few months ago. It began a series of maneuvers that put it...

As a scientist who dips daily into the festering cesspool of far-right antiscience (evolution deniers, creationists, Big Bang naysayers, and so on), I sometimes think I'm beyond the capability to be shocked by neocon wingnuttery.

Then something comes along that's so dumb I wonder how much lower the...

Astronomers meeting in Prague today have announced that they have drafted a set of rules that declares Pluto will officially be recognized as a planet (Goofy was unavailable for comment, badda bing!).

Not only that, but these rules add three more planets to the roster: Ceres (up until now...