Bastards

[prog]

People who voted to declassify Pluto are the same sorts of people as Americans who wanted to ditch their constitution as soon as they realized that it's 200 years old and was written by squares besides. Wevowution, Vivian!!

I really want to not care about this but I'm finding that I can't not.

Comments

[ahkond.livejournal.com]

OI! That's "Vyvyan".

You complete and utter bastard.

[spatch]

Oh wow, right, like, so stop hassling everybody, okay, cause, like, it's already bringing the universe down, right, so we don't need your bad Y vibes either, okay?

Vegetable rights and peace.

[greenlily.livejournal.com]

I would reply to this, except now is the time for me to finish painting my astrological star chart.

[jadelennox]

Why can't they just classify all the big Kuiper Belt objects as planets instead?

My very energetic mother just served us nine cruncy pies made of carrots, xylophones, gravel, and bears with ginger sauce.

Er, I guess on all the names after gravel.

[chocorisu.livejournal.com]

Well I dunno, "planet" pretty much just used to mean "big thing orbiting the sun" and it's just that we didn't know of that many of them. The way I understand it, if we make Pluto a planet then we have to make a lot of other crappy rocks planets too. I think on the whole it's better to have consistent terminology where science is concerned?

[prog.livejournal.com]

Would it have killed them to at least grandfather in Pluto, which has been a planet for almost the entirety of living memory, and never said boo to nobody?

I'm totally unfriending astronomy out of protest, as it is filled with cackling kiddies with Invader Zim icons hooting about what a good decision this is. I want to punch em all in the nose.

[chocorisu.livejournal.com]

Well it's not like Pluto isn't there any more, or people are going to stop studying it as a fascinating object. It's merely a change in classification, from planet to *dwarf planet*. It even still has the word planet in it!

[cortezopossum.livejournal.com]

You know.. this falls into the same category of thing I commented on about a month ago in this entry Specifically:

Topic: Science as Religion

Many people believe that science is another form of religion -- a 'belief' in 'stuff scientists come up with'.

It is not. Science is a process, a methodology, whereby one uses verifyable evidence to obtain a greater understanding of the world (and universe) we live in. Don't believe in a scientific theory? Find verifyable evidence to prove it wrong. A real scientist will thank you if you're successful.

While it's sad to see Pluto's status as 'planet' being revoked I see this more as 'correcting a theory based on new evidence'. Keeping Pluto as a planet, based on new discoveries, would also support the idea of adding several more 'Kuiper belt objects'

This is a lot like the change a few years back in the skunk's status from member of the 'Mustelidae' family to 'Mephitidae' family -- a change based on genetic analysis. Keeping skunks as mustelids would support adding raccoons to mustelids as well since raccoons were found to be closer genetic relatives to the rest of the weasels thank skunks are. It just seemed better to give skunks a family of their own.

[prog.livejournal.com]

Which is why the most reasonable counterargument is: Who sez that "planet" needs to be a scientific term?

But apparently lots of people do, and so. (I don't necessarily think it needs to be, but IANAS so whatevs)

Yes! No! Maybe!

[taskboy3000.livejournal.com]

The old man in me (which is nearly all of me at this point) loathes change.

The solar system has nine planets. NINE! So, what? Now we live in a system of eight friggin' planets? That's total bullshit. Hell, let's also recategorize Mercury as the Sun's moon. That will bring us down to seven plantes. Wait! We can recast Jupiter and Saturn as binary quasi-stars! That will bring the total planet count down to five.

Hell, let's put the rocky planets and the sun together in their own system
and kick out all the gas giants to their own group. That way, Earth can be the BIGGEST planet in a three planet system (Mercury is Sun's moon, remember?)

Feh. I blame the Romans for infected us with a pathologic need for classification and order. Damned stoics...