{"id":187,"date":"2026-10-15T18:56:36","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T18:56:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/markpopinchalk.com\/?p=187"},"modified":"2026-10-15T18:56:36","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T18:56:36","slug":"august-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/markpopinchalk.com\/?p=187","title":{"rendered":"August 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

August was technically a month of for me! But actually, we still did a lot!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Look at allllll these tshirts<\/mark><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Science Tonight! Merch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I decided we needed a month off from doing the live show, and it was a welcome respite from the intensity of putting on our one off tapings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I reached out to my cousin Helen Popinchalk, who happens to be an artist and professor<\/a> in Boston. She agreed to help me screen print some shirts and totes for the show, based off some of the illustrations that our live illustrator Charlotte Fleming<\/a> created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think they look great!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vacay<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
the night sky through these pines is my happy place<\/mark><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I kept going north from Boston for some time off. I used to work at Camp Mowglis<\/a> during college summers, and they now invite me back as an astronomer-in-residence. I give the evening program twice while I’m there, the first is usually flying around the universe in the great hall using my OpenSpace laptop. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year my visit lined up with the perseids, and so for the second evening program I took the whole camp to the lower ballfield to take in the meteor shower. We saw a few big ones, but one took the cake! We were wrapping up for the evening, which meant the campers were singing their goodnight song. Just as the finish the last note, a meteor shot across the sky, and the whole camp went “Woooah!” as one!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After camp I got to relax with more family, and catch a breather before the start of the semester!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lecture on Tap Double Header…<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I also managed to schedule my monthly Lecture on Tap talks back to back, that is Aug 31 – Sep 1!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now that I have ~11 talks from last year, I’ve been able to return to old talks and give them another pass. For my august talk, I returned to my take on the question of Aliens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Are Aliens Ghosting Us?” takes a good hard look at how we would hear aliens, if it’s likely they are there, and would they want to even talk? We imagine a galaxy full of dinosaurs, explore radio waves, and (like in all alien talks) really just end up talking about humans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

August was technically a month of for me! But actually, we still did a lot! Science Tonight! Merch I decided we needed a month off from doing the live show, and it was a welcome respite from the intensity of putting on our one off tapings. I reached out to my cousin Helen Popinchalk, who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markpopinchalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/markpopinchalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/markpopinchalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markpopinchalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markpopinchalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=187"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/markpopinchalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207,"href":"https:\/\/markpopinchalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions\/207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markpopinchalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markpopinchalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markpopinchalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}