Pluto is officially a planet – an announcement which is already sparking controversy in the astronosphere (that’s the sexy world of astronomers). Seems that professional stargazers have battles just like bloggers do. The Bad Astronomer, as always, sums it up nicely:

The problem here is simple, really: we’re trying to wrap a scientific definition around a culturally-defined word that has no strict definition. Doing this will only lead to trouble. Why? For one thing, it’s divisive and silly. How does a definition help us at all? And how does it make things less confusing than they already are? Charon is a planet? It’s smaller than our own Moon!

Gawd, this sounds exactly like the whole RSS vs. Atom vs. Feed debate all over again – with a lot more comet dust. I bet our kids will have to study and memorize the names of all the plutons in the solar system soon enough. Coincidentally, the face on Mars just sneezed (five minutes ago, according to Wikipedia).

Planet Pluto

I became a Coast to Coast Streamlink member this weekend – I just love following the lunatic fringe. Dr. Phil was on to talk about the planet Pluto last night, and when he referenced “Giant Ice Balls” – I sent him an instant message, claiming that I had “giant ice balls.” To which he immediately responded, “mine are brass.” Talk about paranormal!

Anyway, I generally enjoy listening to C2C – especially when JC comes on (great comic relief). Tonight’s guest is Glenn Kimball – and he’s going to be discussing the history of terrorism. I’m sure skeptics will be debunking Glenn left-and-right, but that doesn’t make his research any less interesting. History does not come from books, you know? Sometimes the only way to truly understand history is by challenging its “truths.” The Earth used to be flat.

While we’re on the subject of UFOs (even though I hadn’t had a chance to work them into the conversation until now), I’m convinced that the C2C Web crew are aliens. When I asked ‘em for the direct podcast URL, they said: “The recent release of iTunes is non-compatible with our Podcasting system.” No, their “system” is incompatible with the rest of the galaxy – get it straight. No matter, I can always download the archives on-demand.

Normally Paranormal