The other night I decided to look through the online newsletter sent to me by the University I attended (York U). In the "Events at York" section, I noticed Phil Plait "Bad Astronomy" lecture listed for today. I stopped by and enjoyed the lecture he gave, this afternoon. Phil - I was one of those that walked in off the street - long walk that it was. His speech was part of the RASC's Annual Meeting.

He covered a number of topics from his book: egg balancing, seasons, meteors and bad astronomy in movies, amongst others. He did also mention today being the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska Event. He finished the talk with a Q & A. He was also presented with a touque. To show how hockey crazy canadians are, there even was a Stanley Cup in the lecture hall (?!).

I did get a chance to introduce myself to Phil, mentioning I was a BAUTer and snapped a couple of pics, too.

His talk had a nice mixture of info and humour. That style, reminded me of one of the associate profs that taught Intro Astronomy, when I took that course at York, some 22 years ago.

Afterwards, I did a bit of wandering, looking at changes to the campus, since my days there. I finished it off by having a Moosehead or two in the Orange Snail, the pub that served as my second home while a York student. To finish off the nostalgia, as I was hiking back to the street to catch a bus, one passed by as I was 3/4 of the way across the paking lot. Ahhh, even more memories.

Phil, I hope you enjoyed your stay in Toronto!

edit: LOL! I'm going to guess the Stanley Cup in the lecture hall was one of these.

__________________
" The universe is running away
I heard it on the news just the other day
There's this new stuff called dark energy
We can't measure and we can't see..." - from Jimmy Buffett's What if the hokey pokey is all it really is about?