Thursday, August 24, 2006
ONE LESS PLANET
Well everyone else is going to blog about it, so why not?
As my wife put it, “the Death Star of astronomical nomenclature” has removed Pluto as a planet from our solar system.
I’m of several minds on this, as all in all I don’t see how it affects anyone in the least, with the possible exception of all the people who worked on those decorative orreries that have been built since 1930. Personally, I think anything that has its own moon – or two – should be called a planet. However, I also think it’s neat that in future anything not quite a planet is going to be called a “Pluton”.
As long as we’re at it, though, maybe we should cut some excess from some other areas of scientific overabundance.
Seven colors of the rainbow? What the heck’s indigo supposed to be, anyway? Hey, we might be able to ditch orange while we’re at it.
Seven seas? Hey, if it’s not big enough to be an ocean then just call it a bay or an inlet.
Twelve months in the year? It’s never really matched up with the Earth’s rotation, and they have to adjust the atomic clock every so often because of that. Adjusting an atomic clock just to make the calendar salesman happy? Just decimalize the thing already and we can have a nice even ten month year.
Seven deadly sins? If sloth really counted for anything, then no one would blog at all.
I guess that last one was more theological than scientific, but I think we’ve got a real opportunity here and we shouldn’t squander it. I noticed that most of the examples I came up with dealt with groups of seven, but we are down to eight planets now, and you have to know that Mercury’s days must be numbered…
Well everyone else is going to blog about it, so why not?
As my wife put it, “the Death Star of astronomical nomenclature” has removed Pluto as a planet from our solar system.
I’m of several minds on this, as all in all I don’t see how it affects anyone in the least, with the possible exception of all the people who worked on those decorative orreries that have been built since 1930. Personally, I think anything that has its own moon – or two – should be called a planet. However, I also think it’s neat that in future anything not quite a planet is going to be called a “Pluton”.
As long as we’re at it, though, maybe we should cut some excess from some other areas of scientific overabundance.
Seven colors of the rainbow? What the heck’s indigo supposed to be, anyway? Hey, we might be able to ditch orange while we’re at it.
Seven seas? Hey, if it’s not big enough to be an ocean then just call it a bay or an inlet.
Twelve months in the year? It’s never really matched up with the Earth’s rotation, and they have to adjust the atomic clock every so often because of that. Adjusting an atomic clock just to make the calendar salesman happy? Just decimalize the thing already and we can have a nice even ten month year.
Seven deadly sins? If sloth really counted for anything, then no one would blog at all.
I guess that last one was more theological than scientific, but I think we’ve got a real opportunity here and we shouldn’t squander it. I noticed that most of the examples I came up with dealt with groups of seven, but we are down to eight planets now, and you have to know that Mercury’s days must be numbered…
# posted by Renfield @ 10:58 AM 
