Five Minutes with an Astronomer

        Astronomer Stuart Robbins should be familiar to all regulars here, if only by his nickname "astroguy." He produces the wordpress blog Exposing Pseudoastronomy, whose raison d'être is similar to this one, but with a far more rigorous approach and with more command of online media.

        Robbins has a new project which I'd like to recommend—it's a series of five-minute talks jointly produced with The Reality Check. I've heard the pilot and I think it's very good—a succinct and factual answer to the question "What the heck is Dark Matter?" The talk is unscripted but I thought it was very fluent. I wish I could force Mike Bara to listen to it—he might, thereafter, stop being so scornful about the topic.

        Anyone can "sign up" for this feed. Just send e-mail to the astronomer and be willing to provide some feedback. The part of the e-mail address before the squiggly sign is stuart, and the part after it is sjrdesign followed by a period and the abbreviation for the word commerce.

        As to how often these chats will appear, that's not yet decided. I'm sure Stuart will record a bunch at a time then release them at fairly regular intervals.