Pluto

This is my call out to anyone with an interest in our solar system to stand up for the little guys.

OK - I "get" that Pluto occupies a different neighborhood of the solar system and its physical characteristics put it out of place with the other eight planets. However, in my mind it's extremely short-sighted to completely drop it from the "official" list (after 76 years), because of size.

I'm particularly upset about the rationale used, in particular the claim that Pluto hasn't sufficiently "cleared out" its orbit using Neptune as the "reason".

What a minute --- shouldn't it be Neptune that clears out Pluto (owing to its much higher mass) instead of the other way around? Of course this doesn't even get into the issue that the two orbits don't exactly intersect (they appear to in 2-d from "above" but since they're elliptical orbits you have to take all the elements into consideration).

So ... by their own definition, we can also eliminate Neptune from the list of planets too.

Hold on - but if that's true - what about Jupiter? Surely the encounter with Levy-Shoemaker 9 indicates that it's not completed the task of clearing out its own
orbit, so Jupiter is out too.

All the terrestrial bodies show cratering, and there's no indication that that process has completely stopped.

So that leaves Saturn and Uranus as the only two planets. Uranus' 98-degree axial tilt suggests an impact history, so it's suspect, and Saturn's grandiose rings definitely indicate an excess of debris in its area of influence.

Which means that there are no planets in our solar system at all now.

I hope the Belgians are happy.

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Instead, why not go with 11 planets using the other two criteria: orbits a star, and is large enough to be mostly spherical. That handles mechanics and some physical parameter to distinguish planets from other bodies.

Then you have five terrestrial planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and Ceres;
four giant planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune; and at least two icy planets: Pluto and Eris (with others certainly to follow). Since they all nicely
"clump" into their various neighborhoods in the solar system, it won't be too taxing for astronomers to keep them straight and concentrate on particular classes of objects as desired.

Breaking Dates

I should've known this was coming.

Once again, I made plans to visit with someone (4 hour drive) with their intent to call me the night before to make the final arrangements (when, where, etc.).

Of course that call never happened, and there hasn't been a call today.

Why do people do this? I would've been disappointed had they said "Gee, I'd like to get together while I'm in town, but I don't think I'll have enough free time." but I would've understood and that would've been that.

Instead I clear out time on my schedule, arrange to get the car, etc. and now I'm socially "on hold" waiting to see what - if anything - is going to come of this, at least for a few hours.

Where Santa Clauses Come From!

This is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time:

Well, so much for that!

So, I had decided that it would be fun to join a second bowling league. After this week, I think I'm never going back.

It's not as if it wasn't a problem from the outset. Although they advertised for new people, there weren't any open slots and so I ended up as a substitute waiting for an opening on a team when someone else left. It didn't help that I also had the lowest average in the league. So, when a team DID have an opening they were "stuck" with me and they pretty much made that clear.

If that weren't enough, these guys were really loud all the time and fairly crude. The other league that bowls next to them can't stand them.

But the tipping point came this week when one of my teammates started a long, loud, and angry tirade full of verbal abuse because of a few missed shots (I was definitely having an off night - it wasn't as if I didn't KNOW this on my own!). Somehow being called a f#$()*$ing retard by one of your own teammates doesn't tend to support to encourage loyalty.

So, after some thought, I decided to change venues and maybe show up more often for the Tuesday tournament in Davis Sq. instead.

Then I remembered this morning that I already had plans for next Thursday anyway and wouldn't have been able to show up. Oh well.

Meanwhile things are going GREAT in the Monday night Sports league. We're in 3rd place (might be 2nd) and there my team is completely supportive. There are still some jerks in the league: the vice president needs to be removed from office, and one of the teams (as we found out last week) has a real problem with poor sportsmanship and just being crybabies when they lose.

Current average: 167 (which is about 180 on a house pattern).

But the BEST news was discovering that for the first time in 6 years, I made the high score board (under the sport category) for a 220 game.